Try try again

So we decided to try to have another baby. 

We aren't having one at the moment, but since the internetz have been helpful to me in term of reading stories, I feel like should reciprocate. 

In early fall 2013, I did my battery of bloodwork again (I had done it in 2010 shortly before my wife got pregnant; I did one IUI that year). I did an HSG as well, and got a stamp of approval. 

Since I appear to be quite healthy, we went with a natural IUI cycle. My instructions were to use OPKs and go for a check and IUI (due to our spern availability we are just doing one IUI per cycle, not the two this clinic does as standard). 

I'd been "practicing" for a couple of months, and never got a positive OPK. So, this cycle, I peed every 6 hrs. I had one sorta kinda positive around lunchtime, and on the advice of the on call doc, who I called sort of in a panic when my evenin OPK was very negative, I went in the next morning. Bloodwork and ultrasound confirmed ovulation was imminent, and we did the IUI, but alas no luck. I did burn through a lot of HPTs testing out my trigger and looking for anything though...

To be continued...

Hartford Half Marathon

I haven't written this up because its a little depressing, but this was my slowest solo half ever. I have been dealing with achielles tendinitis this fall, and this was a painful and super undertrained run. But I finished. And the race itself was lovely. Good course support, decent scenery, beautiful weather and a great finish zone. This was also the first time I stayed in a hotel near the start/finish and that totally kicked ass. 

The medal was kick ass and huge and heavy too. 

2:20:16. Less than 50th percentile. Oh well. Better luck next time!

Garage, issue 1

Our garage is in sorry condition to say the least. It really should be demolished and rebuilt, but we'd never get a permit for a two car garage one foot from two property lines on our 5000 sqft lot. So, renovation is the only option. 

We decided to start with the wall with the most visible wood damage (rot of the lower (sill plate?) beam on the floor and obvious water staining on the (apparently thrice replaced) wall covering. 

Before, in the storage section from the door

Before, from the left stall: 

After, same vantage points:

We decided to go with a big header and open the space up. It took about 6 hours of hard labor, but I am pretty pleased with the job so far!

Also, shout out to the Forester for getting all the lumber home on the roof, and props to us for getting that 10"x14'x3" header into place on our own. 

kitchen complete

We finally "finished" the kitchen a month or two ago with the addition of the kick plates under the cabinets. Since that took 18 months or so, it is only reasonable I wait a while to update the blog.

It's not the most impressive kitchen in the world, but it's what we could do without moving an entire bathroom, stairwell, or losing a bedroom. So some (fabulous cell phone) before/afters...

The view from the back door...

Before....

 

 After,  complete with sippies on the drying rack and lunch bags on the counter.

 You can just see the fridge in the right hand side of this photo. The kitchen didn't HAVE a fridge before - here's the wall where it is now...

back on the wagon

A short 2 week goal to stick to Weight Watchers. Starting at 176.2 yesterday.

motivation? 10k on Memorial Day and my 58:22 time from 2012 to beat.  Based on my last half marathon time, I should be able to hit a 57:12 (9:12 pace) 10k.

So McMillan tells me I should be training at 9:23-9:50 steady state (which is, uh, faster than my run this past weekend), 1:55-2:02 400s and 4:00-4:11 800s.  I guess I should knock out some speedwork this week and next...I'm thinking two interval sessions, a short run and a 6 miler this weekend, and the same next weekend (with the race on Monday). Reasonable? I hope so.

NJ Half Marathon

More later, but a quick recap...

2:07:32.  an over 30 PR by 1:13 (I think, it was at least 60 seconds!). Still 15 minutes over my lifetime PR, but for how little I train, this is ok.

Overall Place

2690

of 5347

Womens Rank

1410

of 3352

Age Grade

51.59%

Pace

9:45

mins/mile

NYC half details

Part 2 of 2. The wordy follow up to the much more exciting picture recap.

The NYC Half is a NYRR race, and has grown a TON since I was first registered for it in 2008 (when it was still in July. And I didn't run it because I broke my foot 3 days prior. Womp Womp.).  As you would expect (marathon debacle aside, though I suspect a lot of that had to do with Bloomberg and not NYRR, but guess who took the fall?), it was what you'd expect from NYRR. Clean, polished, well organized and such.

Pros:

• Terrific course
• great corral set up (including potties in each corral, which made a last minute pit stop enroute to the start line easy)
• relatively fast start for a 20k race (took me about 20 minutes to cross, and the streets were moderately full the whole way, so I think this was appropriate spacing)
• TONS of water, every half mile or so
• Did I mention the awesome course?
• Fair amount of spectators
• Tons of photographers (if you're into springing for race photos. some of mine were ok, but I am not buying)
• Great baggage system
• Good weather (30s, dry, not windy) considering the weird winter we had

Cons:

•  kind of weird demand to be in corrals 30 minutes in advance of start time
• TIGHT finish area
• finisher bag had a sport drink, water, and pretzels. Disappointing. I expected a banana and a bagel.
• Medal was so-so

I had a decent race, especially considering I was only 70% trained or so (running theme with me, pun intended, ha ha). I did 90% of my long runs and 30 or 40% of my midweek runs. My Garmin was all over the place, I assume due to the city influence, but here's my splits:

5k: 29:33
10k: 1:00:10
15k: 1:31:20
20k: 2:02:07
Finish: 2:08:42 (9:50 pace)

Age/Gender: 927/1679
Gender: 4134/7609
Overall: 9402/14535

So overall a somewhat sub-average finish, and still no where near back to my 2008 sub-2 hr half time, but for sub-par training, respectable. And no tears, no frustration, and I enjoyed the race, so that's a win.

NYC Half

Part 1 of 2

Just the photos.

This WAS one of the cooler courses I've ever run. Probably second to the NYC Marathon :)

Times Square

Intrepid (shuttle is covered in tarp things)

West Side Highway/new WTC I can't recall the name of

Brooklyn Battery Tunnel

decent medal. It's silver hued, not gold. Instagram magic.

Hiring it out

While we are pretty dedicated DIYers, we decided to hire out a pretty big project recently. We had our second floor and back entry stars redone, and the door opened. I am not sure i have great before photos (oops), but here's a couple of progress pictures!

view of the backdoor and stairs (from the sink) before

view from the door onto the porch in process (old stairs, but railing gone)

same angle as first photo (but 5 feet closer due to tarping!)

up our new stairs!

rundate

I give last week a C+

I missed a 5 miler, and split my long run into effectively 2 5 milers. So mileage sort of in, but not well.

2, 3, 6 and 11 on the plan for this week.

Winter

This has been a good running week.

I did five on the treadmill Wednesday, did a run in the dark for the first time in ages Thursday, and ran after the snowstorm today. I was going to wear my yak traks, but after half a mile decided the streets and sidewalks were too clear (at noon. Seems you have to go early to run in snow when it is a significant storm).

Tomorrow: 10 miles. I may do 8 and do ten next week (seeing as next week is a step back and I am using it to make up last weeks 8, but we will see how I feel, as well as how the roads are and the wind!)

do over

Let's just call it day 1 again :)

173.6

5 months to my 32nd birthday.

8 miles

I knocked out an "easy" 8 miles yesterday for my long run. It actually wasn't that bad, albeit cold, and I only stopped 3 or 4 times. 1:19:19 (without stops). Pretty good.

The amazing part?

I was thinking, around mile 6.5 when I was ready to go home, how 5 (FIVE!) years ago I was knocking out 8 milers midweek marathon training.

That made me feel a little crappy. Besides that I don't run 30+ mpw now, I'm a good 15+ lbs heavier and quite a bit slower now.

But then I got to thinking...in 5 years I've(/we've):

• bought 2 houses
• sold one
• moved three times
• had twins

• took two new jobs, then got promoted/moved to a new role at the latter

So maybe I'm really doing ok?

and on the upside, I'm pretty on track with training for my March 17 half, and its been a LONG time since I said that.

2012 review

Considering I didn't have a "good" training year, I'm pretty damn impressed with myself. I guess every mile does add up.


So far I am on mile 7 of my 1000 goal for 2013. Good thing my half training is starting for real this week...I think I'm going with (the latter 10 weeks) of Hal Higdon's Novice II.

Day 1

Ate: 42 points
Used: 12 earned activity points (6 running; 6 elliptical) and 3 weekly points.

Today's big takeaway: maybe eating two big cookies for breakfast at home (then having real breakfast at work) isn't a great idea.

On the upside,  I ran for the first time in almost a week...30 minutes, 3 miles and change (3.27?). I decided to add "Run 1000 miles" to my goals for the year. That's about 2.7/day and almost 20/week, which is ambitious for me at this point and I think a good motivator. I hit 700 in 2007 running Jan-March (half training) and July - Nov (full training)...

2013

In the spirit of looking forward, I'm not going to rehash 2012...

Here's my goals for 2013:

• Follow Weight Watchers (effective Jan 3, hah). Post-holiday weigh-in to follow tomorrow...
• Lose 25ish lbs by July 7 (my 32nd birthday...that's a bit under 1 lb/week)
• Defend my dissertation proposal
• Complete the IRB process
• Do interviews for proposal
• Complete a first and second draft of dissertation
• Run a 2 hr race at the NYC Half March 17
• PR at the Ridgewood 10k Memorial Day (57:xx?)
• Complete the Warrior Dash in August
• Run the NYC Marathon in November
• Don't buy any clothes/shoes until July (unless I need a new pair of jeans...) and then stick to a $600 budget for the remainder of the year
• Do one kid-centric family activity out of the house each weekend

I might come up with a couple more...

holiday tipping

I'm kind of a cheapskate, but the internetz (and Emily Post?) tell me that some people tip mailmen, garbage men, and other similar service people...

A woman on a message board I follow was nice enough to tip her mailman (I've never even met our mailperson, so sorry if you're out there, no tip for you) and this is the thanks she got.

I'll stick with tipping my hairdresser (and a special tip to daycare for the holidays).

first week

So my first week of weight watchers was a mixed bag.
Downside: no weight loss. I actually was down 1.5 lbs on Friday, but then ran out of "extra" points and didn't track all weekend. fail. so back to where I started.

Upside: I've determined my HUGE issue is I eat almost no fruits and veggies and a SHITTON of candy and other assorted bad for you things. Omg. I don't even LIKE candy that much.

So here is my December goal:
(pretending this weekend didn't happen)
Stick within my WW points (including activity and weekly) for the entire month.  I'd like to aim to lose 5% of my weight (about 8.5 lbs) by Jan 1, but I know that is a stretch.. so sticking with points will be it for now!

Turket Trot

My dad and I (and my mom and a friend of mine) did our annual Thanksgiving 5k this past weekend. We started running it in 2009 (I even managed to blog about it in 2010).  I ran it in 29:02 (on my watch, the chip times were all screwed up. I didn't run a 23:xx nor did my mom do a 40:xx (she did come in under 50 minutes though which is a huge PR for her, not that she keeps track...).

It's a great race, sizeable (at around 2k runners) for a local run, if crowded at the start. I can't blame the runners for me time (ok, maybe for 30 seconds of it). I can only blame myself, my walking on the hills and my lack of general training.

In other news I started weight watchers today.

the Race that Wasn't

It's not big secret in the world of social media that  the NYC Marathon was cancelled this year in light of Sandy (which I won't go into any detail on, since unless you've been living under a rock you probably know that parts of the Jersey Shore, Staten Island, Queens and Long Island are quite literally in the ocean now - we were lucky, losing just some shingles and holding onto our power. A week out and millions are still in the dark.).

I will say I am WILDLY disappointed in how this was handled by NYRR, and I suppose, given the source of the announcements, the Mayor's Office.  Any idiot could have said on Tuesday, seeing the wild destruction, that it needed to be postponed. Not held. Whatever. I can't speak to the motivations for not doing so immediately (though I imagine they were financial), but it was really disgraceful and disrespectful to both the runners (many of which were traveling from far away, and travel to NYC is by no means cheap) and the city as a whole. And cancelling 36 hours before the race due to (I assume) wild backlash in social media and a general feeling that the runners might not be safe (from people, much less the environment)? Salt in the wound.

That said, I am glad it was cancelled, though I admit I am (perhaps selfishly) dying to know what will happen to our entries. We went to the expo Saturday, spent a good deal of money (some of which is supposed to be donated to the relief funds) and got our numbers and tees for The Race That Wasn't.  I know these things take time, blah blah, but I do want to know. To be honest, in light of our questionable training and the fact this is a bucket list item for Chris, we are not registering for another marathon this fall but just riding this out. We'll run if it is rescheduled, though I would prefer automatic deferral to next year (and donation of this year's entry fee to a relief fund would be nice, are you listening NYRR?). I promise to train properly next summer if you make this happen Running Gods.

Now, in light of my fake taper, I basically haven't worked out in weeks, so I have 3 weeks to try to get into shape to try to PR in the Thanksgiving turkey trot. Given that my 5K PR is around 26:30 or something like that, it should be achievable. Except I am still 172 lbs and haven't been training.