All is well

Just a quick post - my parents got in with just one hour delay on Thursday morning and other than that their travel went smoothly. We were all grateful for that.

Yesterday we walked downtown, did several errands, and then had lunch on the Grote Markt right across from the cathedral. It was rainy but we didn't mind!

Today will be filled with shopping, cooking, setting up tables, taking kids to activities, and basically getting ready for tomorrow.

Tomorrow is Felix's big day and we are all looking forward to it!

And then Monday Mom and I are planning to run at the Finnish track together. My back is feeling better every day and so I am really looking forward to that.

Have a great weekend!

Thanks

Thanks so much for your encouraging comments the last couple days. You bloggers are such nice people!

My back is feeling loads better this morning but walking Felix to school I could still feel I need to listen to my osteopath and indeed be careful today. So that is what I plan to do, and get the boys to help me this afternoon with the heavier tasks.

I am also keeping my fingers crossed that the latest Icelandic volcanic outburst doesn't throw a wrench in my parents' travel plans and that they arrive safely tomorrow morning.

As always, I tell myself that "things will work out just fine". And mostly, they do.

Lucky Me

On the off chance she might have a last minute opening, I called my osteopath this morning. She is normally fully booked, but you never know, right? She said she would see if she could get me in by the weekend. So I was trying to get some stuff done around the house when she called and said she had a cancellation and I could come at 4 today! Halleluja!

I was so glad I could go and now, even though she wants me to take it easy the next few days (including no running), I feel much more positive and confident that I will be feeling good for the party. The house might not be as clean as I want it to, but I am glad to have gotten some immediate relief.

Ikea Injury

Last Wednesday I went to Ikea to pick up some things for our living room and one of them was the low cupboard our big TV is now sitting on...it was a struggle to lift the box into the car, but what choice did I have, so I got it in. At home, my oldest son helped me to get it out and then I spent 3 hours putting it together. After that my lower back was killing me!

Thursday my back was still sore when I got up, and I thought maybe my run would help but Friday the pain was even worse so I took painkillers and tried to stretch it out. This weekend it slowly seemed to get better, but it still meant my run on Sunday was rather uncomfortable. But since I have to get my weekend run in for my own sanity, I did it anyway! Just slower and with less joy than usual...

Now it's Monday morning, and the back is still nagging at me. I walked Felix to school and I am planning to go to the gym - I still think that keeping active is helpful as long as I am careful not to overdo it. But I am not sure if I am doing the right thing. **Sigh**

It bums me out because I have a lot to do this week (my parents arrive Thursday morning and we have my youngest son's confirmation + party on Sunday). Hopefully things will improve by the end of the week...

Pics!

We are finally able to "live" in our living room again...here are some pictures of what it looks like now:

First up is the piano room, and my little "office space" and the comfy chair where I sit with my laptop:

Then the front part of the living room, where the new couch and ginormous TV (the boys have been begging us for ages to update our ancient and tiny old one - teenagers are so persuasive)!

I still have some work to do on the back section of the living room. But for right now, I am just happy I can sit down and relax properly on my new comfy couch.

The Perfect Quote

"The best day of running is not the day you start yourself,

but the day you get someone else to join you."

- Marc Parent, The Newbie Chronicles, in Runner's World (June 2011)

So true! I am so excited because not one, but two women I recently met will be joining me at the Ladies Run in Kortrijk this year, and for both of them, it will be their first race. This course was my very first race, it is a nice all downhill race, all women, some local celebrities participate every year (one year I did it, Princess Astrid of Belgium ran it, too!) And it will be so cool to be there for someone else's first time. Yay!

Today I had a lot to do and one of my errands was going to the bank. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone and run to the bank. I took a longer loop out - nearly 5 km to get there - and then took a more direct way back home. It went really well (except for being really sweaty while waiting at the bank) and I ended up clocking in at 51 minutes for 7.7 km total. Sweet! The funnest part was weaving past the pedestrians on our busiest shopping street and feeling like I was just flying. What a joy!

Waiting for my couch...

This afternoon I will be at home waiting for the couch guy to come...

This morning I had an appointment at 8:50 to take our car in for its annual inspection. So I packed my gym bag and put my running things on because my plan was to go to the gym on the way home from the inspection place and get my run in.

The inspection guy gave me a funny look when I got out of the car with my flashy Paris Marathon Asics on! So glad I got those shoes... ;-)

Anyway, the inspection was very speedy and I was at the gym by 9:15. It's been a long time, actually, since I got a run in on the treadmill and it felt kind of strange at first. But I quickly got into a rhythm and (I just love numbers) ran 7 km in 47 minutes and burned 480 calories. Woo hoo!

Busy Weekend

We were at a communion party all day yesterday, and Saturday was filled with driving our two oldest boys to parties, errands, and cooking for the communion on Sunday, so I knew if I was going to get a run in, it had to be on Saturday morning.

So that is what I did - I ended up doing 10 K in 66 minutes... it felt good and with all the stress of the weekend, I was so glad I got it in.

Our new couch comes tomorrow - we are all looking forward to that! I'll share some more pictures later this week...

Blogger Issues?

Has anyone else been having problems with Blogger when posting? I see my post from Thursday just disappeared and I couldn't get on all day today. So I will post this to see if it works now...

Happy Friday!

Lots of Excitement

I just found out I won a book over at AJH's blog - Running on Empty by Marshall Ulrich! How exciting! It is always fun to win something and I am especially looking forward to reading this. Thanks, AJH!

It's been a crazy week again, but our digital TV finally got hooked up, so the boys are in 7th heaven - they let you try the premium channel package for the first two weeks for free and I have two kids who are huge soccer fans so they have been glued in front of the premium sports channels for the past couple days... I hope they won't be too disappointed when the two weeks are up! I have a feeling they will start a serious lobbying campaign to get my husband and I to sign up for the extra channels... anyone want to put bets on if we cave or not?

Things with the house have been moving along and we just found out that our new couch will be delivered next Tuesday - yay! I still have a lot of little jobs to do, including making curtains, which I have been putting off...I guess I just don't feel like hauling my sewing machine out of the closet, you know what I mean?

I did get a run in on Tuesday (a short one because I had to be back home at 9 am for the TV guy) and I hit the gym again yesterday and did 30 minutes of free weights and 20 minutes on the elliptical. One thing I know for sure today - I definitely chose heavy enough weights yesterday! I am SORE!

I am going to head out in a few minutes for my Thursday run - I hope it will loosen up some of my sore muscles...

Hope you are all having a good week!

Back to the gym - finally

It's been ages since I've been at my gym - for a couple of reasons. First of all, we've had such a gorgeous spring, I haven't had to go to the gym for any indoor running - I've been able to do all of it outside, which has been great. And then I've been busy with the renovations, so to save time I decided to do strength workouts at home (the 30 Day Shred). BUT... we all know how good intentions to work out at home can be difficult to keep up, when everything else seems to get in the way, and take priority. So let's just say it had been awhile since I got a good strength workout in!

I also HATE the idea that I am paying for my gym and not going, so this morning I was absolutely determined to get myself back there, and I did! It was so nice to be back and see some familiar faces, and work up a good sweat on the elliptical and then do a short weight routine (I don't want to kill myself on my first day back, do I?). I purposely made it easy for myself to ease back into working out by planning to do just two upper body exercises (chest press and lat pulldown), two lower body (leg presses and curls) and then two abs and then stretch. Then I biked home and treated myself to a smoothie - soymilk, blueberries, some fresh parsley, flaxseed, hemp protein powder and some cinnamon. Yum!

My intention for the next couple weeks is to get my three runs in, just going by time (40 minutes, 50 minutes and 60 minutes) - which is what I have been doing all spring, and then also get myself to the gym three times each week for strength and additional cardio. I think I might want to do another difficult weight program this summer, but I am not sure yet which one. Last year I did New Rules, and the year before Body for Life, and each time I really made progress on my fitness level. Summer seems to be a good time for me to focus on something like that. Any suggestions anyone?

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all the great moms out there, but most especially my mom!

Among the many, many things I am grateful to her for, one thing for sure is that she got me started with running and encourages me to keep up with it. Thanks Mom!

And yes, I got out for a mother's day run with my husband today, it was warm and humid and it felt hard but very good to get out after being stuck at home this past week.

Pictures!

Hurray! The floor is in and it looks beautiful! Our floor guy did a great job (he did our second and third floor bedrooms as well, so we had a lot of faith in him) and we are all so happy that it is done.

It's such a relief to have the biggest part of this job completed. There is still a lot to be done, however: install the new light fixtures in the living room, hang the mirror over the fireplace, make new curtains, get the couch we ordered delivered (most likely next week), move our other furniture back into the room, get a few pictures framed and hang them and the rest of our artwork, and probably something else I am forgetting at the moment... everything still looks very bare right now and my kitchen looks like a dump. Can't wait to get things all balanced out again, although there really is something appealing about a very plain empty room. Except for the annoyingly loud echo, that is.

I'm sure our neighbors are loving that right now...

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Has it been a whole week???

Gosh, yes, it has... things have been kind of hectic and disorganized around here - everything had to be moved out of our living room, piano room and front hall, we sanded, painted, wallpapered, polished and cleaned. We are trying to live with all of our stuff crammed into our kitchen and laundry rooms and stashed in the bedrooms...

But the end is in sight - the floors are being installed today and tomorrow and then I can start putting things back in their places. I am so excited! It's been a lot of work but it will be worth it when it's all done.

Not much else to report, except that I am signed up to do the Kortrijk Ladies Run 5K in June with a new friend who is relatively new to running and up for a challenge! This race was my very first race EVER in 2006 and I can vividly remember how scared I was standing in the crowd of women at the starting corral, not at all sure if I was going to be able to even finish the race, just having NO CLUE! And how amazing it felt to run, to see my husband and boys there cheering me on, and finally to actually cross the finish line - what a wonderful feeling! So I am really looking forward to being a part of such a neat experience for someone else.

I am also looking forward to catching back up on all of your blogs, getting back into my regular routine, and I am just ITCHING to get out for a run - haven't been out for one since Sunday and I'm starting to have withdrawal symptoms...grrrrr...