Hill training....

.....with Miranda Lambert and the Beatles. It doesn't get any better than that.

There's a 375-meter hill in my neighborhood. Anybody who knew the younger version of myself is aware of my running up and down Y mountain, and doing multiple reps of all 13 (well 26 if you take into account that they're broken into two for each floor, 27 if you go up to the roof) flights of stairs in the SWKT. Needless to say, when I found this unexpected hill, I was really excited.

I've been working up the distance I can take in my barefoot shoes...I'm up to 6 miles, but it makes my feet sore to go that far. I have less pain everywhere else (ankles, knees, hips, even shoulders), but my foot muscles are still not very strong, it seems. Last night I ran reps on the hill in them. Holy wow.

When I do hill training, I run from home to wherever the hill is, then pace how long it takes me to run continuously up the hill immediately after that. Then I try to speed up every repetition of the hill. Yesterday I went consistently down from 2 minutes and 15 seconds, to 1 minute and 50 seconds over six times up the hill. I was really pleased with the 1:50.

It's been a long time since I ran like that, where I was really pushing my body trying to make it work as efficiently as possible, focusing on my breathing and stride and the way my muscles were moving....and I remembered again what it is that makes me love running. When you feel that perfect combination of how God made your body to work, everything so smooth and fluid even though it hurts like crazy....it's just amazing to think of how He did it. A perfect balance, capable of continuous improvement....and then He gave us the senses to recognize it, the remarkable sensory experience of it.

In my highly un-academic opinion, it's just cool.

Switching places

Me: I wish I could go to the grocery while you stayed home to "dissertate."

Ben: I could dissertate for you!

Me: At this point you could probably do as well as I can, starting off...

Ben: "Once upon a time, they didn't have computers. So they made plays."



I'm staying home to dissertate. :-)

Officially boring

I have nothing to say. Due in large part to the fact that I've been either out of town, slogging through the dog having worms and all the fun THAT entails, translating like a crazy person (without getting paid for it....apparently since I'm a woman and "have so much free time" I should not mind being put on a delayed pay schedule....but that's another rant entirely), or cleaning up after vomiting children.

When I despair of ever being a good mom, however, I look at my reaction to the fourth round of puke in the middle of the night. I tend to sit up in bed (yes, I sleep in bed with my kids when they're sick....call me crazy, but I have to make sure they're still breathing), grab the baby to hold their head while they puke, plop them in a warm tub while I change the sheets and disinfect everything (in the slight hope that the rest of us can avoid the plague), and roll back into bed with cleaned-and-new-pj'd baby to start it all over again. I mutter reassuring words in a soft voice....and realize that maybe I'm NOT a terrible mom.