Rained Out

Well the stormy night has turned into a stormy three days and yes, we did get up and both of us put our running clothes on, but when we got down to the kitchen and heard the rain pounding on the skylight, saw the wind frantically blowing the trees in our backyard, and stepped outside and felt the temperature...we decided to wait a bit and see.

Now it's nearly lunchtime and I have decided to do the long run tomorrow, on the treadmill if need be. I was prepared to run in the rain, but neither one of us was prepared to face rain and wind and cold and mud for 110 minutes. So I will simply have to rearrange my workouts a bit next week, but my main priority will be to get the long run in. I'll keep you posted!

Photo: American Cemetary in Normandy. You can't see it too well on this small version of the picture, but it was pouring down rain the day we visited it and we had to stand for a long time under the sides of this monument, and admire this statue until the rain finally let up. If you click once on the photo you'll get an enlarged version of it, and then you can really see the rain quite clearly!

Stormy Stormy Night

Last night we had an unbelievably ferocious storm blow through Belgium. The shutters were banging and shaking all night long and even this morning it was blustery and raining. It even snowed already in the parts of Wallonia that are high altitude!

Poor Florian had to bike the 4 kilometers to school in it, but I dropped Stefaan at the station and then drove the two younger guys to school. They've been driven three times this week, that's a lot! My good neighbor Kristel came to check in on me on Wednesday after she had seen me driving the boys to school two days in a row - she was worried I was injured or something and wanted to know if I was okay and able to do my training! I was surprised and touched by her concern. I can't wait til things calm down a bit and we can go for our long delayed lunch out together, it's been ages since we've been able to get together.

The thing about the weather that is worrying to me is that we have to do our longest run to date this Sunday (15.4 km) and I am just keeping my fingers crossed that the weather reports are wrong and that this bad weather does not continue through Sunday! Going to the gym and running on the "dreadmill" (I love Amy from Runner's Lounge's knickname for it!) is not even an option, because even if I could make myself run on it for the nearly two hours it will take...unfortunately the gym will be closed for the national holiday of Armistice, November 11. So if anyone has any useful tips about running in really bad weather, let me know!

Today I did my speed workout (yes, on the dreadmill at the gym): it was 8 times 2 minutes at fast tempo, plus 2 minutes recovery, and it went fine. My left hip was a bit achy but nothing too bad and I managed to do 5.2 km in 35 minutes.

Brain Fuzz

I was really out of it this morning when I went to the gym because I hopped right on the elliptical machine and it wasn't until I was halfway done with my 40 minutes that I realized that I was actually supposed to do a speed workout today! Oops. First I was really irritated with myself but then I thought that I will just do the speed workout tomorrow, no big deal. But still, DUH! I guess being preoccupied with my groups yesterday and staying up late after they left to catch up with the latest news about the political crisis here in Belgium took a toll on my brain!

Yesterday I chose not to swim and instead had a hot chocolate in the café at the sports hall, while I worked on a writing project. It was just too dang cold to even think about getting in that pool! It wasn't a devastatingly bad choice (like skipping a Sunday long run or devouring a pizza at 10 pm would be!), but I was still a bit disappointed with myself, even though at the same time I didn't want to be too hard on myself. I find it hard to know if I am walking a good middle ground between the two extremes of "it doesn't make any difference if you slip up" and "every little mistake undermines your determination and motivation and makes it even harder to reach your goal". My hope is to get to a balanced and healthy place between these two mind sets!

If there was one important lesson that came out of my groups' discussions yesterday, it was that you do need to make any goal you have a priority project in your life and you can't let the everyday chaos of life get in the way of it. It's so easy to let ourselves be distracted by all kinds of other things and then feel stressed out and put upon when we think about, on top of all that, working on our goal. It helps to remember that we all choose our goals ourselves, and in most cases, no one is making us undertake these challenges. So if we choose to do it, we can choose to do it well, do it poorly, or quit and do something else. It's a choice, not an obligation!

The other lesson was that success can sometimes be dangerous! Especially if we allow it to let us get complacent. When things are going well we sometimes let our guard down, slack off, and think we are getting away with it! You think things are going so great, that you stop paying attention and you start to slip. It is a slippery slope, however, and once you start sliding down it, it's very hard to get yourself turned around and back in the right direction again. So the lesson is to be vigilant and avoid those slippery slopes like the plague!

It's All Good

As usual, the Daily OM was spot on today:

You cannot distance yourself from life's inconsistencies, irritations, and upheavals, but you can relinquish your desire for perfect order and gain peace of mind in the process. Needless aggravation is seldom worth the cost it exacts.

I had a great plan for today, I had even pow-wowed with Jenny about it. I had an appointment with my osteopath at 9 a.m. and I knew it made no sense to get all showered, go to the osteopath and come home at 10 and still have a 45 minute run to do. I have a ton of other things to do today to prepare for my group tomorrow. So I let Jenny gently talk me into the idea of getting up at 6 and doing the run first - which makes the most sense, of course! I even talked my husband into running with me, so I wouldn't have to run alone in the dark, set my alarm and drifted off to sleep, knowing that my plan was rock solid.

The alarm went off, I got up, got all my running clothes on, managed to get Stefaan awake and just as he was starting to get his running things together, I heard "the sound"... and looked outside where it was POURING like it sometimes does here... the kind of rain where if you just take some shampoo with you you can get showered while on your way. For a split second we looked at each other, and then Stefaan crawled back into bed and in a couple minutes was snoring again. What to do?

So I got showered, got my kitchen all cleaned up, got the kids off to school, vacuumed, practiced piano, and went to my appointment. As I drove home it was sunny again so I thought I could change into my running clothes and get out there and be done with running before 11. Came home and just caught my friend Jane's phone call as I walked in and while we were talking made my soup for tomorrow... and then it was 11:30 and raining again! Now what?

So I grabbed my gym bag, and drove to the gym, determined to get this dang run in! When I got there I realized, in all my haste, I had forgotten to change into my running bra (oops!) but I thought, what the heck, IT'S ALL GOOD! Things are going to happen, plans are going to be messed up, but at the end of the day...we just keep plugging along and doing our best and it's all good.

And with that attitude in mind I had a really enjoyable run (in spite of the fact that there was a whole lot of shaking going on!) and did 6.5 km in 45 minutes. Ha!

Back in the saddle again...

Monday morning, the boys are all back to school and I am back in my usual routine. After a meeting with Linda first thing this morning to prepare next week's workshop, I headed home and got my strength training out of the way. I had a lot of other things I could have done to put it off, but decided just doing it would be best!

Inspired by Nancy and Jenny's discussion of "girlie" pushups, I tried to do regular pushups (I managed two!) and then finished out the set with girlie ones. They are hard but not impossible!

My updated strength routine for at home is the following:

• crunch
• leg extension
• twist crunch
• side plank
• lower back extension
• squat
• pushups
• deadlift/shoulder press up combo
• angled calf raise/standing row combo
• hammer curls
• chair dips

I do two sets of 15 reps for each exercise and 30 seconds per side for plank.

By the way, I did get my yoga in yesterday evening and boy did that help with my tight leg muscles!

Act of Contrition

Forgive me hamstrings for I have sinned...it has been two weeks since I last did a yoga workout and you and my right gluteus maximus certainly let me know it today!

I could feel it even before we started running this morning, my right leg felt really tight just under my behind and along the whole back of my leg. The further and further we got with our loops around the lake the tighter and tighter it felt until I felt like I was just on the verge of cramping up. So I just kept my pace slow and steady and and promised myself that I would get right back on the yoga bandwagon tonight. I have simply started to get a bit complacent about that and my usual stretching...time to turn things back around! Obviously it does make a big difference.

Other than the tight leg, the run went fine - Stefaan sped up for the last half loop and got ahead of me, but I continued along and ended up doing the 9 loops (12.6 km) in exactly the same time I ran the last time we did 9: 85 minutes, which makes me very happy. We also changed up our usual routine by doing the first three loops without stopping (4.2 km) which took us 28 minutes. Then we did the remaining 6 in sets of two.

Next Sunday my plan says to run 11 times around the lake, which will be our longest run to date (15.4 km). Aside from getting my yoga in, I plan to really focus on good food, good sleep and good stretching this week in order to be in tip top shape for that run. It all counts!

And on another positive note, my youngest son's best friend's mom, Griet, ran a half marathon in Etten-Leur (Nederland) last Sunday and she finished in 2 hours and 4 minutes! Wow! Way to go, Griet! Her advice to me was to make sure we start out slow and don't get swept away by the crowd into running too fast - she and her group actually made this mistake and she said her last six kilometers were pretty tough. All the runners she had passed at the beginning ended up passing her at the end! But it is still a great accomplishment and she can be proud.

Total kilometers run this week: 22.55
Total year to date: 530.25

Fall Fun

We had a gorgeous day on Wednesday and really took advantage of it with our outing to Zoet Water (see photo). The colors on the trees were beautiful! The boys were hot to get to the natural spring, where we filled up our sports bottles and then continued on our way through the woods. Of course a fall walk in Belgium is not complete if you don't end it by stopping at a café for a coffee, or in the case of the boys, a pancake or waffle with ice cream, whipped cream, hot chocolate sauce, powdered sugar, or carmelized apples on it....I was good and limited myself to the coffee, but even that is a real treat here:

Yes, Mom and Mark, that's a mini cream puff on that little plate!

Yesteday we headed out to Stefaan's home town for the yearly tradition on the first of November to visit the graves of family members. It's actually a lovely tradition and the cemetaries look very festive with huge flower arrangements on all the graves. We bumped into Stefaan's cousin Dirk and his family and talked with them for a bit - turns out that his wife Nancy has also taken up running! What a funny coincidence! We both agreed that the best thing about running is how when you start out you can hardly run for 30 seconds and you can simply not imagine how you are ever going to run for 5 kilometers, but how you see yourself progress and get steadily better, and eventually you can do it. So hang in there, Joy, you're going to get there!

I'm getting so excited for the Corrida in Leuven...not only is Joy going to do the 4 km, but her hubby Patrice decided he's going to join us in the 8 km! If they still give out two bottles of wine for participating, we're looking at 8 bottles - that will make for a very jolly post-race party, ha ha!

Back to business...this morning I biked to the gym to do my speed workout, it was not so cold out which was nice. I did 7 times 2 minutes at fast tempo plus 2 minutes recovery. My total distance for the 28 minutes was 4.25 km. The running went fine, I felt kind of tired to start out with, but once I got going it was okay. I was sweating like a pig when I got finished - ugh!