Hair, hair, hair

One overriding theme of the 5 day trip home was my hair. 

As alarming as it is, I think my niece who is 8.5 wants to be a cosmetologist. 

Don't worry, I spent much of one car ride telling her a lot of fun details about my job.  Not that I want her to be a lawyer, but yikes, a cosmetologist?  Of course I want her to be happy, but I want her to aim high. 

I think I had my hair done at least a dozen times by her over the course of three days.  On Saturday afternoon, she actually decided she'd do my hair four times and take pictures of each one, then I could pick which style I wanted her to do for me to wear for the afternoon. 

So funny. 

So some hair options: 

And so after picking one and getting my hair done, both my nieces wanted me to do their hair. 

Somehow (likely a combination of a few younger brothers but no younger sisters, my general lack of interest in my appearance, and the fact that I never had any desire to be a cosmetologist), I have very poorly developed hair styling skills. 

So yeah, their hair was pretty much a mess after I did it, but you know, if they ever need me to assess their liability and damages exposure when they're facing a lawsuit, they'd know who to call! 

My youngest niece's hair after I did it -- total train wreck!! 

Fourth Double Fail

So my big 4 mile race on the Fourth did not work out as I hoped. 

I neither PRed nor ran with my niece, but I did attempt both.  But I will say that it was a fun day anyway, though of course I was kicking myself when I realized my time. 

One thing about staying with my folks is that they sometimes forget I'm an adult.  My brother and sister-in-law decided I should be at their house at 6:30 for an 8:00 race.  That meant leaving for their house at 6:15.  So my dad is knocking on the door at 5:30 asking me if I need to wake up, and I'm like, dad!  I'm an adult!  I can set an alarm!  I could have slept 20 more minutes!  Haha.  He did the same thing on Sunday to go to the airport (waking me up half an hour before my alarm), but yeah, that was a bit more embarrassing because in the end, I should have listened to him since I ended up running a bit late! 

So I got to my brother's house and they were getting organized.  My youngest niece did not want to get dressed but eventually came around.  We walked and ran together to the start, about a mile. 

My brother and his family, complete with youngest niece in the stroller after much debate about what she'd wear:

 

We got registered, and basically just hung out waiting for the race to start.  I went solo to warm up a little and it was lackluster.

 

While the temps were much cooler than I was used to, it was sunny and that was tough for me. 

 

I lined up by my sister-in-law and niece but they knew I was going to do my own thing.  Mile 1 was about 9 seconds too fast, mile 2 was 9 seconds too slow. 

 

And then I was ready to be done.  I tried holding on, but unfortunately, mile 3 lined up with mile 2.  The course was hillier than I expected, but I have yet to actually check the data on my garmin.  In reality, I don't think it was too bad.  And since it was a loop course, everything we ran up, we got to come back down. 

 

I tried to push hard for mile 4, but yikes, I was struggling.  And then as we got close to the end, I realized the last .1 or .2 was running on the grass, slightly uphill. 

 

I tried to hang on, but I was really fading.  I could see the finish line clock and it was just ticking past my PR time, but I held out a bit of hope since I'd started a few seconds back.  Imagine my crushing disappointment when I looked at my watch after finishing -- 6 seconds slower than I needed.  Argh!  Sooooo close! 

 

So much for having a "beatable" 4 mile PR -- it may be beatable, but not in my current physical condition!!! 

 

I grabbed and drank a water, then I doubled back on the course to see who was coming next behind me.  It was my brother and nephew, running with my youngest niece in the stroller.  So I u-turned and ran with them for a while.  But when they got the grass, my brother asked my nephew if he was ready to really run, he told my niece to hold on, and they took off.  I had no hope of keeping up, though I tried for a few seconds.  Then I u-turned again to try to find my sister-in-law and niece, but I never found them (turned out they were just a few minutes behind my brother). 

 

But it worked out in the end.  My nephew was in awe of the fact that I'd already finished and came back to run with him.  And my sister-in-law was so impressed by my finish time that she kept calling me "fast" and my niece was so excited. 

 

Perhaps the best part was the community pool was right in the park where we finished.  So beer for grandma and my brother, fruit for the rest of us, and then a dip in the pool.  My nieces and nephew asked if I'd go in with them, and I figured why not, as long as the pool didn't care if people got in wearing sweaty running clothes.  We checked and were given the go-ahead, so I took off my heart rate monitor, watch, shoes and socks, then went with the kids and jumped in.  They were so excited an adult in clothes was in the pool.  They thought it was hilarious.  Tons of splashing and fun, and it kind of felt like an ice bath for me! 

 

Yeah, water felt pretty cold.  At one point my youngest niece's teeth were chattering and she was holding on to me.  I kept trying to tell her we should get out and dry off with a towel and put on our dry race t-shirts, but she was having none of it.  Freezing, but having fun. 

 

The rest of the weekend was also so much fun.  Will have to post about that later, have to get moving for work! 

Travel Mile Suck

So this week, two posts have made me think about my yearly and weekly mileage numbers. 

First, Mike posted about his 1525 miles for the first six months of the year, and inspired me to look at my current YTD number (almost 800, which is not unusual when I don't have a spring marathon, but I'd have thought it would be higher to reflect that marathon training started about 6 weeks ago). 

And then second, Bella posted about her challenge to do 150 miles over the summer, and since she directly asked, I decided to tally up my exact miles from last week (45.7, but why that's not good below). 

A combination of those two posts and my responses, and I just realized in black and white why my summer miles aren't adding up as usual.

Week of June 8: trip to Philly for work for several days
Week of June 15: houseguest for the week
Week of June 22: trip to Pittsburgh for family wedding for 5 days
Week of June 29 (this week): trip to Milwaukee for family visit for 5 days
Week of July 6: trip to Baton Rouge for work for a couple days
Week of July 13: trip to Philly for work for several days

Not having a full 4 days in a row in the office makes it hard for me to do my running commute, and it's showing since I'm just not getting in my usual miles. My running commute usually adds 18 or so effortless miles to any basic running week.

Last week totaled up at 45.7. Which is fine. EXCEPT that included two "long" runs since I ran on Saturday instead of Sunday due to wedding fun. That means that my week would have otherwise been in the low 30s, which for me does not a marathon PR make.

Anyway, maybe I can ramp it up big time in August? Oh wait, I see work trips on the horizon then too. Boo.

I think I'm writing this so that I can attempt to convince myself to just buckle the f- down (that's for you Mike, similar to slow the f- down).  Even when I'm on the road, I need to start getting more miles in, and when I'm home, even if I can't get in my preferred 5 running commutes, I need to just do a single roundtrip day. 

Here's to a solid second half of the year, better late than never! 

Racing over the Fourth?

I definitely want to share some of my thoughts from our 5 days in Pittsburgh -- things like weather, elevation, marriage changes after 50 years (not for the better I don't think :( ), baseball, WWII, puzzles, new life plan, wedding festivities, revised vacation plans, etc.  And I will probably feel better if I get some work drama off my chest -- leadership change in progress rather unexpectedly, huge meeting to discuss today. 

But instead, I just have to write about something funny.  I'm making a solo trip home tomorrow for 5 days to see my family.  And one awesome thing about my family being filled with equally or more active people is that they just assumed I'd want to run over the 5 days, and one of my brothers chose a race and made sure I'm in for it.  Not sure who all will be participating, but definitely me, my next youngest brother, my nephew (who is 9.5), my niece (who is 8.5), and my niece (who is almost 5).  My youngest niece is going to be in a stroller that my brother pushes, possibly because he doesn't want to have me beat him without an excuse, but that's just my suspicion.  Anyway, for the race, I feel like I have two options:  go for a PR, or go with my niece.

In favor of going for a PR, are the facts that (1) it's an unusal distance so basically a single opportunity to run it every year here and that opportunity is in the summer, (2) the weather will be significantly cooler than my annual shot here, (3) I have a weak PR at the distance, (4) even out of shape, I ran 50 seconds off my PR in early June (and like I said, this will be at least 20 degrees cooler). 

In favor of running with my niece (who is 8.5) are the facts that (1) it would be fun, and (2) I'd have a hope of inspiring an early love of running in her.  I have no idea what her pace would be, but my running buddy has a daughter about the same age and he guesstimated it would be a 10-15 min pace. 

So today, I discussed both options with my running buddy.  He suggested (as I knew he would) that I go for the PR.  Guess we both know I'm not teed up for many this year....  But he also suggested I check the results from past years to see if a PR-ish run would get me an AG award, which he reasoned would be equally inspirational for my niece.

So I looked up past results this morning. 

Hahahahaha. 

My AG winner last year ran a 5:4x/mile pace. 

Hahahahaha!  Or, as they'd say in Italian, ahahahahaha! 

So, um, yeah, inspiring my niece while PRing by getting something AG is totally not an option.

Think I'll wait and see how I feel in the morning, but a large part of me wants to try to run hard since I seriously don't see another PR in the cards this year (of course hoping for a marathon PR in October, but the magic 8 ball demonstrated by the scale and recent runs suggests that's less than likely).  Anyway, just had to share how funny it was.  Humbling too since my 50 sec over PR run last month won my AG here (obvs a significantly smaller race and all).