Scenes from my Favorite movie!

New Ben Stein Documentary in 2008

Winter as Offseason? Not here.

The last several weeks, we have been visiting a local park with a running track for our shorter runs.  It’s a nice paved track and it’s always lit up at night. Why? Because the lights get turned on by parents and/or coaches with kids from age 4-5 up to possibly 13? out there practicing their competitive sporting skills.  Just an observation.  Every night we’ve been out there, which has been at least 3 out of the five weekdays, there has been a combination of fathers/coaches working with a young teen girl (or younger) on her fast-pitches and small groups of younger boys working on their football skills.  Now this doesn’t really suprise me, I mean we are in Texas and football is king, so the indoctrination and training must begin early.  And hey, the spring fast-pitch seasons don’t wait until “spring” to start down here, so why not practice so that you can be a better pitcher next year.  It’s just seeing all this in action that I’m not used to.  I’ve been down here for over 4 years now, but this whole becoming active …and staying active through the cold weather is just a new thing for me.   Up north,  you typically can’t just go run outside most days of the week because you will fall on your butt.  I know, I’ve done it, and I wasn’t even running.  Outdoor activities were typically reserved for when you were bored inside and it had snowed so you had snowball fights or just ran around in the snow.  So this whole active winter thing is still a foreign concept to me.

I know people who have still been playing in their 3rd softball season of the year! The only reason people stop organized sports around here this time of year is because they all take off time for the Holidays.  The weather has nothing to do with it.  Just something to get used to.

Hey, I’m all for not falling on my butt everytime I step out the door.  It makes running a few miles much easier.

Here we go again

January 7th, 2008

OSU vs. LSU 

It ought to be a good game.

All I have to say is, Go BUCKEYES!!!

That girl in the mirror

So, I went to kickboxing class yesterday for the first time since, oh, July? maybe even June?  I can’t even remember it’s been so long.  I’ve had good reason mind you.  All that talk about Mud run training? Those always were the same time as KB class, so mud run trumped.  Plus, the first couple of times I went to KB class after I got my heart rate monitor….wow.  Apparently taking all of one’s anger, frustration and bits of rage and focusing all of that energy through your fists and feet at a red punching bag….gets the heart rate up quite a bit. Who knew.  So I probably needed the break from the high intensity stuff anyway.  Not that MRT wasn’t hard, but it was a different kind of hard.  Kickboxing is a 30 min class, whereas MRT usually lasted 1.5 hours.

So I went back to class yesterday.  I started my half-marathon training program this week and thursday’s are crosstraining so YAY I can go back to kickboxing class.  It was nice to do my favorite thing again – roundhouse kicks.  But it was honestly funny to be back in there doing this class and to look in the mirror at the girl in the hot pink gloves.  This may not make any sense to most people, especially if you don’t go to group fitness class surrounded by huge mirrors that show you EXACTLY how stupid you look when you have your feet in the air and you are doing reverse crunches.  Bright side: everyone else looks just as silly, so it evens the playing field usually.  Anyhow,  if you take a class long enough, you just get used to what YOU look like when you do the workout.  You’re working on your form, doing exercises correctly, etc. and just generally not trying to make a fool of yourself.   If you happen to lose weight while taking this class, it generally happens gradually and you don’t necessary notice the changes quite so much.  It’s when you take a break from the class and then come back. (Although, it seems counterintuitve that STOPPING a class would lead to weight loss, but just say you went to a different class).  Anyway, I’ve been maintaining my current weight for almost 2 months now, so it’s not really new….but the last time I was in kickboxing, um…Iweighed about 18 pounds more than I do today.  So I was like what the? So THAT’s what my arms look like when I punch! I have muscles under there?  Where did the rest of my thighs go? What the? It was a nice change, but still caught me by surprise.  Funny thing was, this thought actually went through my head before class started: “What if I can’t hit the bag as hard as I used to because my arms/legs don’t have as much mass as they used to?”  How completely silly is that.  Anyway.  All of this was basically a long rant to say that I went to the gym and thought I looked skinnier in the mirror, and that was nice.  =) That’s all folks. Happy Friday.

Ummm…it’s Tuesday.

Just for fun.

the next great thing.

So, I have been doing a lot of thinking about what running/race goals I would like to set for next year. Here is my current tentative list. It just keeps growing.

End of Feb- run a half-marathon at the Cowtown Marathon in Fort Worth. (that would be about 13+ miles)
Sometime in May is the Muddy Buddy in Austin, that I may run with a friend.
I am also interested in started to do some sprint triathlons
In July, there is an event called ‘El Scorcho’ It is a 25k and 50k (I want to try the 25k) that is run in July at Midnight. Fun times.

That is my list of things right now. I’m just getting started training for the half-marathon after taking a full week break after the Mud Run. I’ll try not to bore you too much with run talk, but I can’t promise anything.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Something to think about…

Found an interesting post today HERE, considering war and how a Christian should view war…  Interesting stuff. I’ve only watched Part 1 of the documentary, but it’s interesting.

Why We Fight  (this is the main page)

Part 1 of Why We Fight

(this is the link to the 1st part on youtube. you can find the other 3 parts on you tube, or just see the article mentioned above)

If you watch this, come back and let me know what you think about it.

Oh What a Day.

The highs and lows of our last full day with our visitors.

- High: Everyone showed up ready to go to the park and a tour of John’s work (seperately, of course). And we developed a “schedule” for cat playtime.

- Lo: Right before we left for the park….both toilets and showers…became clogged/backed up/unusable. What fun! With 9 people who needed to use them throughout the coming day! This subsequently meant that our offer of “please come and do laundry at our house, it will make your life easier” became less of an option. Armed with this new information, we went to the park and the work tour and tried to use the restrooms at our lunch stop.

- High: The park was great and loads of fun!

-Random: the guys on the tour caught a glimpse of the leader of Norway, apparently..

-High: After lunch, (#1) was excited to watch the Colts game.

-Lo: He had to watch the rest of it at the laundromat while H washed their clothes. I’m such a helpful sister. “Please come do your laundry here. Oh, wait, nevermind.”

-High: We watched a fun movie with the kids at one of the few affordable theaters in town. John was still ‘working on the problem’ when we left, but he had it all fixed by the time we got home. He’s so wonderful. Did I mention he was wonderful?

-High: We had a yummy supper, thanks to H doing all the work! Good call on the rotisserie chicken btw. Plus, the cat started gettting used to his ‘interactive audience’ and started to play with them a bit more.

All in all a good day with lots of fun with a few twists and turns. That’s life right? We’re just so glad that they could come to Texas and we could spend time with everyone!!