Week 3, Day 2

Well it wasn't "easy" but I ran every second I was supposed to and survived! Yay! Now that it's over, I feel great. During the longer intervals I kept saying, "I can do anything for 3 minutes, I can do anything for 3 minutes" over and over, all Brenna-style. That helped. My awesome playlist helped too. The PERFECT running weather, of course, was awesome.

My legs are sore from yesterday's workout, but that didn't seem to bother me. It's still taking me a long time to warm up, and I got a stitch in my side and my neck again (though it got better after a little while). I dripped sweat into my eyeballs, even though the weather was great. But that's pretty much all I can say bad about it.

I'm working hard setting up my classroom.... will post pics and whatnot when I'm done.

Au Revoir,
Kirsten

Week 2, Day 3

The time has come for me to invest a little more in my workouts, and I mean that literally. I needed some better running shoes and some good workout pants. I took a little trip to Lululemon at Park Meadows and found some great pants. Then I went to the Boulder Running Company for shoes. It was kind of fun... the guy would have me put on a pair of shoes, then go run on the treadmill and he'd show me how my foot was crooked, repeat until they found the right shoes. Finally he found a pair that was just the right combination of squishy and supportive, made my feet straight, and were very comfortable. Yay! He also tried to get me interested in a 5k in October. He said he thought I'd be ready to run it by then, and apparently there's a fun Halloween-themed 5k at Wash Park. We'll see. If today's run is any indication, I'll NEVER be able to run 5k!

Oh and BTW, my right foot is like some sort of superfoot and was perfect in every pair of shoes I tried. My left foot, however, has some, uh "special needs." Interesting. It also happens to be the foot that is hurt.

This afternoon, Cookie and I got to the park just as the rain let up. All the signs were saying that it was going to be a great run... Hardly another human or animal in sight, beautiful cool weather, the bugs were hiding, and I added some more music to my playlist. Sadly, everything went wrong.

The intervals seemed way too long, for one thing. I just felt like I was running and running and running, and I couldn't figure out why it was so bad. I got cramps in my shoulders and sides. My calves hurt. There weren't a ton of intervals, but I couldn't make it through the last one. I guess some running days are good and some, just, aren't. :(

I started thinking about where to go from here. Should I do 3.1 on Tuesday and see how it goes? But if I could barely make it through 2.3, how on earth would I make it through 3.1?? Maybe I should repeat 2.3?

I got to the car (right as it started raining again) and tried to figure out what to do. I looked at the 5K app on my phone so I could end 2.3. When I looked down, it said, "3.1 COMPLETED 7/25/09". Um. What?!!! I looked at 2.3. It said "READY"..... I looked at 2.2 and it had the date I completed it, as did 2.1. Yeppers, I totally skipped 2.3 and did 3.1 today. Shit.

I couldn't possibly be any blonder if my name was Elle Woods.

Week 2, Day 2

Starting today, I'll just title these running update posts according to what week and day I'm on. Each weekly workout is done 3 days with a rest day in between (HA! Two of the rest days are for CrossFit), and the next week you go on to the next week's workout. You can repeat a day as necessary if you feel like you aren't ready to move on yet.

The good: I survived, I went a lot farther than ever before, and for the first few intervals I had a ton of energy and ran so much faster than W2D1! Cookie was happy as could be. Decent weather.

The bad: I should have gone earlier because it got rather dark; technical difficulties at first (my iphone was set to vibrate, which caused problems, which I eventually figured out); felt like dying near the end.

The ugly: The mosquitos stayed away from my arms and legs because of the deet, but decided instead to attack my face. The worst was when one attempted to fly up my nose.

Tomorrow I might really take a day off... and take a nap... and might possibly wear my pajamas all day.

Re-Purposing 80s Style Art

In an effort to reduce, reuse, recycle, and try new things, I decided that instead of donating a framed print that hung in my room when I was a kid, I should attempt to re-use it. It had nice lines, I just didn't care for the style. Here's what it looked like before. I took all the pics with my cell phone so they aren't great.



I took out the glass and the print, then painted the frame with semi-gloss white paint. I went to Home Depot, and had them cut a piece of thin wood in the dimensions of the frame (26x30). Here's what it looked like:

I painted the wood with 3 coats of magnetic paint, and then 3 coats of chalkboard paint. The magnetic paint was rather expensive, I think $20 a quart, but I have most of it left and I plan on using it to make some magnetic chalk boards for my class (so they can use magnets to make sentences, write poems, etc). Then I popped it into the frame! Here's the final product:


I put it in the dining room for now, but the husband isn't crazy about it there so I might move it. Here's what it looks like in there:

I could either put some photos on it using cute magnets, or write a quote on it. I was thinking of using this quote by Jane Austen: "There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort." I LOVE Jane Austen and I LOVE being cozy at home, but I think that quote might be better in the living room. BTW, for the pictures in the dining room, I got the frames for about $2 each at Goodwill, painted them white, and then put some pictures in that I had printed at Costco. Here's what the dining room looks like with the white mirror (it used to be gold, but I painted it too):


I might post again tonight about my curtain fiasco, but at the moment I'm too traumatized.

Modern Elegance

Yesterday I took a quiz about what your decorating style is. My result was Modern Elegance. I was ever so impressed with myself, and the description of that style did indeed describe the style that I like. But then I started thinking about the term more. I LIKE Modern Elegance, but creating that is a whole different story. And BEING Modernly Elegant, well, that's something I certainly am not. I wondered about The Modernly Elegant Woman. She must be quite a spectacular lady! I'm betting she not only does her house have perfect Modern Elegance, but she must also look and act Modernly Elegant.

Sadly, I realized that I have absolutely nothing in common with The Modernly Elegant Woman for the following reasons:

• I talk, and sing, to my dog. Sometimes, if I try to sing too high, it's so bad that she howls at me.
• On occasion, I have committed such fashion sins such as wearing pajama pants in public.
• I will fight to the death over whose turn it is to unload the dishwasher rather than just doing it myself.
• After I do a load of laundry, I keep the clean clothes in the laundry basket. Then I live out of the laundry basket, and throw my dirty clothes on the floor. Once all the clean clothes are now dirty and on the floor, I load them back in and repeat the process. I'm pretty sure The Modernly Elegant Woman puts her clothes away.
• I watch Daisy of Love.
  
• One of my bookshelves is almost entirely filled with Young Adult books, all of which were purchased in the last couple years, even though I'm 31.
• I spent 20 minutes of tutoring time talking about the Harry Potter movie and how it compared to the book rather than reading Romeo and Juliet and going over vocabulary words.
• There are about 10 water glasses on my bedside table that I haven't bothered to bring down yet.

I could go on, but you get the idea. I am SO NOT The Modernly Elegant Woman, and never could be. In the spirit of this blog, I will now attempt to become more Modernly Elegant.

But I'm not going to stop watching Daisy of Love.

Running

I'm not sure of many things, but I've always been 100% positive that one thing I absolutely, positively CAN NOT DO is run. But what the hell, I decided to start trying anyway. We had been running a little in the CrossFit workouts and I hadn't died or anything. So when The Mistress of CrossFit assigned us a homework assignment of moving 5k, my buddy Erin was kind enough to take me through it. We did intervals of 1 minute run, 2 minute walk, repeat, and guess what? I did it! I didn't die! YAY!

Sadly, that morning I had twisted my foot, but it's getting better every day and hasn't gotten in the way.

Last week I decided to start using the Couch to 5k program to become more disciplined in my running intervals. I thought I needed that extra push to make me improve. It starts you off walking more than running, and you do the same intervals three times in a week. The next week, it gets hard, and in 9 weeks you slowly build up your running ability until you are able to run 5k. I've heard girls raving about this program, so I thought I'd try it. The first week is a 5 minute warm-up followed by 8 rounds of one minute running and 90 seconds walking, then a 5 minute cool-off. Even though I thought I had done fine the previous week on the 5k, Day 1 was bad (jumping over the snake was traumatizing and I couldn't run through all the intervals), and Day 2 was worse. It was way too hot on Day 2 and I shouldn't have waited until the sun went down. Cookie got overheated about 3/4 of the way through and laid down in a nice shady, grassy area to cool off. but Day 3 was absolutely fine, except for a couple dozen mosquito bites.

Today was Week 2, Day 1. This week the intervals are running for 90 seconds and walking for 2 minutes. All the stars seemed to be in alignment today! The weather was perfect, my foot felt a lot better, the mosquito spray worked brilliantly, my music mix was perfect, and I was able to run (albeit slowly) throughout all the intervals without stopping. I feel successful and am looking forward to a good week!

Tomorrow morning is CrossFit. I'm still sore from yesterday's torture festival so we'll see how it goes.

Au Revoir,
Kirsten

My Vewy First Bwog!!

Hello whoever ends up reading this! I decided to make a blog about all the many, many things that I'm sure I absolutely CAN'T do. But I'm going to do them anyway and just see what happens. It could be about physical fitness, cooking, home decorating, whatever really.

A few months ago, I went to my first CrossFit workout saying a lot of "I can't do that!"'s, but the funny thing is that when I actually tried, I found I could do a lot more than I thought.... which made me think, "What else might I be able to do that I'm sure I can't do?" I've started trying to do several of these things, and will blog about the results, whether they be good or disastrous.

Wish me luck!