Wedding and Biking and Triathlons...oh my!

The weeks have been busy as always and when I do finally make my way home, I just can't pull myself up to the computer to write up a blog entry.   I find more and more lately that staring at my computer all day makes me uninterested in looking at it in the evening, especially when we have so little time to sit still as it is.  But I really do think about catching my blog up just about every day.  Maybe sometime soon I'll find a pattern that will make me more consistent :)

Mark and I have been back in the pool a few times and have promised ourselves to get our butts back to Masters in April.  He's been working on bilateral breathing and I'm trying to concentrate on technique.   Still not done any biking but I'll touch on that more here in a minute.  Running has been the bulk of our exercising and it's been great since the weather is finally getting nice.  We are in the base week of a 5k training plan aimed at the Irvin 5k on June 18th.  Unfortunately due to our crazy schedules we've missed the sunny early evening and get stuck running near sunset but I just try to breathe and remember that hopefully somewhere in the next year our housing situation will be resolved.

This weekend is ALARC core class Saturday morning, a MNOC orienteering event at Hyland park in the afternoon, Wizard of Oz at the Orpheum that night THEN Sunday morning an LTF Indoor Triathlon again in Maple Grove, the big wedding expo in the afternoon and possibly a bike ride on our new bikes after that.  More about the "new" bikes in a minute.....

Quick note on that, Mark has landed a new job that he will start in a few weeks and will becoming an employee of the contract house so we should be able to start looking at qualifying for loans in another month of two.  I think I mentioned this before but we want to stay somewhere on the west side of the cities and need a two level house.  Cat level and dog level :)

This last weekend we volunteered for the Team Ortho Get Lucky 7k which was fun.  We did packet pickup at Kieran's new location in Block E on Friday evening and stuck around for a drink and dessert.  Saturday morning we course marshalled on the west river pkwy and thought we could take off for a run right after that.  Unfortunately we got roped into a few other volunteer jobs and didn't get out of there until noon.   Due to needing to get ready for evening plans we didn't get in our run.   Mark went gaming with the boys and I was out for Girls Night with Joni and Deb.  Always a fun time to catch up with them and we tried out the new JJ's Coffee and Wine Bar in EP.  Great place to hang out for a simple dinner and glass of wine and great service.

Sunday we slept in ( yay!! :D) and headed over to a small wedding fair in Chanhassen.   I think we came out with a few good ideas and even won a 50% discount on DJ services which we think we are going to take advantage of.   It's always fun to walk around those expos sampling too many pieces of cake and telling people about our destination wedding and waiting to see if you get a "wow fun!" reaction or a deer-in-the-headlights "what the hell would you do that for?" look and a "oh, wow, that's nice" reaction.  I personally like getting a mix of both to keep things fun :-P 
We do have the big Twin Cities Wedding Fair coming up next weekend and after that we are going to start making some decisions and probably putting down the depositn on our reception site.  I think the Garden Room is still coming in first place due to the great space and price but we'll see if we find anything else.   Still struggling with that to do for the wedding party for the reception in terms of their attire....

Diet has been going ok although we have been letting ourselves slide quite often here and there but still feeling like progress is being made.  Maybe just a little slower than I would like.   One thing I taught myself again (for about the 20th time) is NOT to go running on an empty stomach.  We tried to go for a 3 mile tempo run last week around Lake of the Isles after work and I hadn't eaten anything since lunch.  Horrible stomach pain and thought I was going to puke a few times.  Argh....  hopefully I've learned THIS time.
I have come to what has been a barrier for me in the past.   Last week I weighed in at 145.5.  145 has been a sticking point I have gone down to and back up again a few times now over the past years so it will help me physically and mentally to get below that number.  Yesterday....still 145.5 (sigh...)   I think my body naturally wants to stay at 145 and getting below that is going to be hard to do and maintain.  And maintain enough strong muscle for racing so we'll see if I get much below it in these last few weeks.

And Mark and I made the decision to buy mountain bikes and start adding that to our repertoire.  Since we've gotten into trail running, this will now also get us into off road triathlons and adventure racing as well.  I am a complete novice at real mountain biking so this is going to be a learning experience for me.  Hopefully one that doesn't include any broken anything on my body!

And i'm looking at buying a tri bike.   I just CAN'T tolerate the idea of ever getting back on my road bike.  It's a mental thing but I think I would break into tears if I had to use that for another season.  So I found a barely used 2008 Felt S32 for sale and long story short, I'm picking it up tonight and putting down a deposit to try it out for a week.  I want to try it out and get some opinions on the price he's asking.  I've been told from two sources already that I shouldn't pay more than around $700 for it but he's asking $925.   But I'll work negotiations once I decide it will work.
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And to finish off, my random little story of the week:
I had gotten another betta fish a few weeks ago and one day we were sitting near the tank and I looked at it....looked at Mark and said "uh...where's my fish?"  He had no idea.  I thought maybe it died and he was nice enough to flush it for me before I saw it but that wasn't the case.  After much confusion and a little investigation, I figured out that I left the tank lid open and he jumped out, falling to his death in my recycling bag.   The bag was all crumpled up too since the cats were trying to get at him but they failed.   We found the poor little thing dead in the bottom of my paper recycling.   I was truly bummed but learned never to underestimate a normally docile betta.

Week 6 and 7, Wedding Updates and Training

I feel like I start out this way alot but once again I'm behind in blog posts!  I think about writing all the time but just don't seem to actually get around to it.  So I'll apologize if this one is a little "jumpy" in topics!

The diet is going ok although we have been letting ourselves slack a little this past week.  Last week I weighed in at 146.5 which I was happy with.  But this morning after two days of overeating I was up 1.5 lbs.   Argh!   But I guess the good thing is that I know why I didn't lose weight this week.  It's my own fault and now I just have to work to correct it.

Run training has been going ok.  Since the weather is finally getting up in the 40's (F), Mark and I have been outside for a few good runs.  The current plan is to concentrate on 5k speed but get our long runs up to 1hr 30 min before the Lake Minnetonka Half on May 2nd.   I know I still owe you all a list of which races we are signed up for :)

This past weekend Mark and I did the Lifetime Fitness Indoor Triathlon at the Eden Prairie club.   I think had we not signed up and paid for it ahead of time we may not have made it there.  Motivation and sleep has felt low lately and I'll get into that more in a minute.   The indoor tri was 10 minute lap swim, 10 min transition, 30 min spin, 10 min transition, 20 min treadmill run.  I knew I couldn't push too hard on the swim or bike since training in those areas has been lacking but I was basically ok with how my swim went.  The spin was ok, just found a comfortable mid-level pace where I could still talk and managed to keep my legs moving.   I have been on a bike seat MAYBE 2-3 times for a spin class since IMoo.   The bike was really what makes me regret all the time I wasted on that one stupid race.  But someday I'll come out of that funk and maybe accept my finish.  May require a good psychologist but definitely no budget for that.

I digress....

The run was the one real spot I felt (and I think the same goes for Mark) that I could really try to push a little.   I started off at 7.5mph and felt pretty good only being 0.5mph behind where Mark was but of course as he increased his speed, I had to throttle back to 7.0 for the last few minutes and then bumped up to 8.0 for the last minute or so.   Heart rate average was somewhere in the mid 180s topping out at 193.   Here's a link to the results if you wish to see:  LTF Indoor Tri - EP

We also have been passing back and forth this nasty head cold over the past month and that's been our reason/excuse for not getting back to swim training at Master's in the mornings.   I am feeling increasingly guilty ever day I'm still not going to swim training but at the same time I am SO tired in the mornings that getting up seems much more painful than another hour or so of sleep.  We do still enjoy going to Core with ALARC at least once a week for strength/core training.

I am looking forward to the trails clearing and drying up soon as I want to get out for some trail runs.   I'm looking forward to giving that more of a try this year.  Just to mix it up a little and it will also come in handy for our other adventures of adventure racing, orienteering and geocaching mega events that will be talked about on our combined blog. 

Wedding plans are going pretty well.   I had the thought of unveiling the plans more grandly than this but I think I've got to just find one of those planner pages to fill out and keep you connected to as I make updates!   (Suggestions anyone other than The Knot.com?)  So the countdown clock on my blog is headed for Dec 5th, 2010.  For those of you that don't know, we have decided to run the Las Vegas Rock and Roll Marathon that day and get married at their "run through" ceremony.   Go to the website and click on Entertainment and then "Run Through Wedding Ceremony"  We run/walk to mile 3.5 where about 50+ couples will either be getting married or renew their vows under the Eiffel Tower at the Paris hotel, we kiss to seal the deal and then take off to finish the marathon.   We met running, got engaged on a run and now will get married on a run.   We wanted to do something different and unique and what would be more fitting?   We are planning to come home and have a reception dinner and dance probably the following weekend.   We have checked out a few venues, one in Eden Prairie right now is the front runner.   The top choices we looked into were Guthrie Theatre or Mill City Museum (can we say WAY expensive!?!) and the MN Zoo (which will be closed for rentals next winter for construction).  

Kinda bummed that money is coming in the way of doing something downtown since we both also have a love for going to downtown shows and restaurants but I guess it's more important we try to save some money to hopefully get a house together.

Currently we still aren't in a place financially to be able to house hunt so our motivation and sleep has been lacking to due the fact that we still need to do a LOT of running back and forth to end up in the same spot in the evenings and keep the cats and dogs taken care of.  Hopefully we can at least start looking before we get married as I think it will be slightly depressing to be looking towards our first anniversary and still have two separate houses.

So this weekend is a fun 5k for St. Patrick's Day.   OSE Shamrock Shuffle.  Results to follow....hopefully less than a week later :-P