Posts Tagged ‘marathon’
Random words, interspersed with random pictures.
I wish the mail came at 7 am. Then I wouldn’t have to wait all day for the letter telling us if the boys got into the French preschool we applied to. But what if they do get in? I don’t speak any French except for what I haven’t forgotten from elementary school. Poisson! That’s fish. That’s about all I got. (Okay, not really.) (I also know bon jour.) I need to talk to my friends who have their kids in a similar school. How does it work? Anyway, this is all a moot point until we find out if they got in or not.
My back hurts again. That’s right, the $280 epidural steroid injection I got didn’t work. Boo. I knew there was a decent chance it wouldn’t (even the doctor who did it said there was only a 60-70% chance it’d work) but I was optimistic it would. I felt great for about three days afterward, but then the pain started creeping back. I have insurance authorization for two more, but those copays are a killer. That’s over a week of daycare per shot! Argh. I hate money.
In spite of the aforementioned back pain, I’m going to try to get the boys’ big boy room done. We’ll see if George feels up to it. He hasn’t been feeling well either. We think he has what the boys had last week.
I haven’t been walking in a while. Almost two weeks. Last weekend was the half-marathon that my walking buddies were training for, but I think their recovery period should be over by now! I have to admit, not waking up at 5:30 is nice, but I do miss catching up with the girls.
Okay, enough of being a downer…in very GOOD news, I’m going to have a new nephew by next week at the latest! Yay! So excited to meet little whatsisname! Well, not meet, but see. I won’t be able to see him until April, probably. Boo!
Also excited because tomorrow is a playdate with my triplet group. I love seeing all the kids play together!
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For the past four or five weekdays, I’ve been walking around the neighborhood with some girlfriends. We go at 5:30 in the morning. That’s right, five-thirty in the morning. Yes, I am slightly crazy, but I am loving it! Not the waking up part, the walking and talking for 45 minutes. The 4 activity points I get (for Weight Watchers) daily. That achy feeling in my legs that lasts all day and is a constant reminder that I did something good for myself that morning.
Man, I’m corny, but it’s awesome.
And I found this cool app for my (Android) phone that tracks our mileage, maps it out, keeps track of pace, calories, etc, etc. It appeals to my inner nerd who likes keeping track of that kind of thing. And then it posts it on my Facebook wall, which appeals to my inner narcissist.
So that’s that. Not terribly exciting, but I just wanted to share. Oooh, and next week we’re going to start running a bit. The other ladies are planning on doing the Mardi Gras half marathon in February, so I reckon I’ll end up doing it again too.
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My friend Lani (also a triplet mom) is doing a half marathon in January to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. You know I’m a big supporter of LLS ever since I did a marathon with them, and so I strongly encourage you all to go to her blog, where you can win great prizes AND help a great cause.
Here’s how it works. Go donate some money. Say, $20. Then go check out her giveaways. Enter your name to win the prizes you want, and then you have twenty “bonus” entries, one for every dollar you donated. (Donate $50 and you get fifty entries. Donate $100 and you get a HUNDRED entries. Get it?) The more you donate, the more chances you have to win. It’s like a raffle, only, um, more fun.
Look at some of these great prizes…
A 16″x24″ photo canvas (I want one of these soooo bad!)
A $50 gift certificate to buy jewelry from Gretchen Leigh designs (pretty!)
A $120 gift certificate to CSN stores (so much you can get with that!)
And check out the grand prize – a $300 prize package of swoon-worthy accessories.
This ring is part of the package. I want!
That’s not all, not by a mile! There are twenty-one giveaways in all.
So go donate and enter!
Dang. I just happened to notice that I have posted 1499 posts on this blog. Not bad, eh? The first post was on April 1, 2002, so I’ve been keeping this blog for over 8 years now! (Actually, if I’m going to be 100% honest, I don’t think that was my very first post. But kind of. I kept a blog before that, while I was training for the London Marathon, but it wasn’t in a real blog, so those posts never transferred over. I should find them and post them. But that’s off the subject. This is my 1500th official blog post.
Woo!
Back when I wrote that post, I was 27 years old. Single. Smoked a pack a day. Overweight.
Now I’m married with three kids. Haven’t smoked in over 6 years. Still overweight, but mostly because of the married-with-three-kids thing I mentioned earlier.
Since we’re on a nostalgia kick here, let’s look at some old pictures…
Seven years ago. Look, it’s my boyfriend, George!
And my NEW car!
Five years ago, it’s my most favorite picture of me ever!
Four years ago, we had “prom” at the pub:
Three years ago, I got knocked up, times three:
Two years ago, I had (almost) six month olds!
One year ago…holy crap, look how tiny they were!
Well, that was a fun trip down memory lane!
Here’s to 1500 more posts!
For the past several years, I’ve been on a search for a scanner that I could use to easily scan the hundreds of photos that I have from the pre-digital days. I was very excited to find one on Amazon for a reasonable price and with decent reviews, so I ordered it. I got it yesterday and started scanning away. (While watching TV, which is the best part about this scanner, it doesn’t even need to be hooked up to a computer!)
So now of course I want to share some random old pictures…
My dad! From a cruise we took as a family in 1998, just a couple of months before he died. He hardly ever drank, but c’mon, when in Mexico…ya gotta have a margarita! (And he was just being silly here with the fake scowl.)
Here I am in the middle of marathon #2, the 2003 Marine Corps Marathon. I ran it and raised money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
A truly horrific photo of myself, circa probably 2001ish? And my friend Chris. This picture is what I consider to be an “inspiration pic” for WW. As in, let me get inspired to NEVER look like that again.
This is from The Most Perfect Day, Ever. (Pre-babies and marriage, of course.) This was in London, circa 2001, I think.
And here’s a random picture of me from a music festival in Englad in the summer of 1997.
Oooh, best Halloween costumes ever. We were bags of tea!
And we decorated Kristina’s car like a box of tea. This was 1998.
Okay, I’ll stop now.
Not my favorite picture of me, but it’s so rare to get a picture with all three boys! This was at the race expo for the Mardi Gras half-marathon tomorrow.
And yes, there are binkies here. The boys have been, shall we say, a little grumpy lately. Whatever it takes, man.
I signed up to do another half-marathon.
At the end of the month.
(I am absolutely not going back to my entries in early November to see how much pain I was in after the last one.)
Guess I should hit the gym after work today, eh?
This is definitely going to have to be broken up into several posts, if only to not send everyone into a post-induced stupor of boredom. (I’m so self-deprecating, see?)
Let’s start with Friday. Friday was exciting because Oprah gave everyone half-off shoes at Payless! Yay Oprah! I don’t watch your show, but I appreciate your power! I got the boys six pairs of shoes, a pair for me, and a new purse. Sweet!
Lookie at the cute shoes that the boys will be wearing for the forseeable future:
In between the trips to Payless we dropped the boys off at my ILs so they could watch them while I…
…rawked 13.1 miles! (That’s the word Kristina and I coined. Run + walk = rawk.)
(Yes, you only get a small version of that picture. It’s really bad.)
I am pleased to say I was not last. I was 1314th, but that was out of 1,379 people. And that may not sound great, but considering for the first few miles, I (and a few other women I met up with) were last, that’s not bad. (But a 75 year old man did best my time by an hour. Hmmm.)
We started out walking, but that was actually very painful. I started to develop blisters on the bottom of my heels, so I had to run, just to take the pressure off. So we walked a block, ran a block, walked a block, ran a block. Before we knew it, we weren’t last anymore. Whew!
At about mile 9, I needed to run more (for my heel) so I left the other ladies in my dust. Ha ha, only kidding! But I did take off so I could run a little more. I pulled out my iPod to listen to the music I’d thoughtfully picked out (and purchased) for the race, only to discover that I didn’t sync the *%$#@ thing, so the only music on it was horrific German progressive rock from the ’70s. (George had gotten a hold of my iPod, you see.) So as it turned out, I carried around the stupid thing for 13 miles for nothing. I’m sure if I hadn’t had that extra three ounces, I would have gotten a better time.
Ha.
Anyway. I finished in 3:06, five minutes slower than my previous slowest time, but I was fine with that. Remember, I really didn’t train for it. I am quite pleased that for the last five miles, my pace was in the 12 minute/mile range, which is really good for me.
So now, what’s next? I want to do a 2 mile race in City Park next month, and then I’m thinking of trying again with the Mardi Gras Half Marathon in February.
Woo!
Last night, we only had to get up once, for Oliver. Of course, I’d prefer we didn’t have to get up at all, but you can’t win ‘em all. I feel like a new woman today! It didn’t hurt that Oliver was being v cute and talkative while we were giving him his breathing treatment. And that he went back to sleep with no problems afterwards.
Am v excited because this weekend, we’re having pictures taken. I think I timed the pictures right, for the day after the half-marathon. Surely I’ll lose 50 lbs on the course, and therefore will look awesome for the pictures. Failing that, I plan to hit the mall to find a black shirt that makes me look decent. (Or, as Kristina and I called it, a “magic shirt”.)
The boys will look cute no matter what. I ordered some long-sleeved white t-shirts with tie appliques from Etsy, that I think they’ll wear with jeans.
And now, I’ll close this post out with some random pictures from the weekend, taken on the ferry.
Miles:
Oliver:
Linus, giving Daddy a kiss. (When you say “give me a kiss”, most of the time, they just tilt the top of their head toward you, as if to allow you the honor of bestowing a kiss upon their head.)
I know I signed up for this half-marathon a while back, but it only really occurred to me the other day that I was going to have to walk (and run a little bit, just so I don’t get left behind and someone will get to see the back of my shirt) thirteen (point one) miles in just a few days. Hmm.
Thirteen miles is actually kind of far. Especially since I started thinking about the route. It goes all the way up St. Charles Avenue to Audubon Park, around Audubon Park, and then back up St. Charles. And that’s not the whole thing! St. Charles is a long road, people. But at least it’s very scenic. There is that.
And even though it’s not advised, I’m bringing an iPod and planning on filling it with good stuff to listen to (not very loudly, of course. So I can hear the cars honking behind me to go faster!) Some music, some podcasts. I’d really really love to listen to a Bill Bryson book, (he’s my favorite author) but I don’t think that really has enough “oomph” to keep me going. I think Beyonce might be better.
Any suggestions on what I should listen to, musicwise? That will keep me motivated?
My name is Pam, and I live in New Orleans with my husband George and my identical triplet boys Linus, Oliver, and Miles. They were born on December 4, 2007. I love photography, and have taken a photo and posted it every day since January 1, 2010.
