What a Week

Last week was unbelievable. I thought I'd give a little narrative of the week of an animal rescue person/mother/triathlete. It was one of "those weeks". To help sort out training stress and life stress, I'll put training notes in italics.

Sunday, Feb. 27:
Clinic Day. Exhausting as always. We safely fixed 83 cats and it went really well. More on the clinics later, hopefully, but for now you can visit www.tri-valleyfixourferals.org.

Monday, Feb. 28:
Up at 5am, stretched and hit the pool. I'm on the third of three "on" weeks and am aiming to do what any trainer or coach in their right mind would say not to do: I'm going to make up 7 hours of training I missed last week before the clinic in addition to my planned 15.5 hours for this week. I know it's stupid, but I've done it before, and it works for me. Not the preferred plan, but it works.
I was scheduled to work in Sporty Spice's kindergarten class for the morning. I enjoyed it as always, but was there longer than I had planned and missed my Pilates class.
Related to training, I went home and did some cooking of some basic good foods, squash, quinuoa, to eat all week to stay on track.

Tuesday, March 1:
Rode, a 50 mile Palomares loop with a half hour transition run. Then hit the gym for weights.

My neighbor does dog rescue. She asked us to do an emergency foster for an 8 month old chihuahua corgi cross. Sounded easy enough. So she brings the dog down that night, and I'm quickly figuring out she may have had a "bit" of wine before coming over. The puppy is as cute as can be and is frolicking with Sporty and our dog...it was beautiful....for about 15 minutes until the dog went full-Cujo. And never turned back. So there we were at about 9:30 pm, with an inebriated rescue woman, a vicious chihuahua and a screaming six year old in my house. We finally coralled the dog and said rescue woman took her back home (at last report the dog is actually shaping up well with a lot of work with a trainer).

Wednesday, March 2:
Swam--speed workout.
Dropped off one cat at the vet for an ekg.
Hit the gym for an hour on treadmill and weights.
Picked up Sporty and got him to swim lesson.
Emailing back and forth with rescue group regarding three feral cats I saw near our mountain house and a plan for trapping and fixing them.

Thursday, March 3:
Wake up and start making Sporty's lunch and checking his book bag, where I find a letter from the school. This one I'm going to have to save for his scrapbook because I'm sure some day we'll laugh at it. He has been recommended for "The Rainbow Room", a "special place for kids going through stressful times" (like a divorce or big move...huh? animal rescue? ironman training?) where they will give him a "special friend"...who just happens to have a PhD at the end of their name.
Swam (drills)
Weights
made up Pilates class
Rode trainer one hour with tempo work
Half hour transition run
Picked up my "new cat" (hooray, I didn't have enough cats!) . Sporty's kindergarten teacher is moving and cannot take her 12 year old cat who has been having some medical problems. Welcome Princess Nephretite! Set her up in a cage for now and was up until 9pm doing animal chores.

Friday, March 4: (thank goodness)
Got up at 5, stretched, and did my long swim--2600 yards.
Came home and after animal chores, rode my bike allll the way to the tippy top of Mt. Diablo (including the last grade to the top parking lot--oh, yes, indeedy.) Very proud, as this is the first time since breaking my leg.
Picked up Sporty, grabbed a urine sample from one of the cats, and boxed up Princess Nephretite for a vet checkup. She turned up hyperthyroid. Translation: medications and then considering radioactive iodine therapy (I'll cross that bridge in a few weeks). On the way home, I go to the bank to make the clinic deposit and come to find out the bank has cancelled my clinic credit card as they have a new policy and I need a business-card. Hmmm. I get back to the car and my cell phone is ringing and it is the phonescreener team telling me the phoneline has already been shut down. (It got resolved, but not until Monday.) Raced to Target to get a birthday party present for a six year old.

Saturday, March 5:
Brushed out one of the bunnies, trying to be responsible, and put a hole in him, from which he is now recovering nicely.
Rode out Calaveras Rd. for a total of about 50 miles round trip; did a 10 minute transition run.

Sunday, March 6:
Had planned to do a 3 hour trail run but it was raining, I was tired, and I had a ton of loose ends from last weekend's clinic to wrap up--did the run the following day.

Bring on the rest week!

Last Christmas Crafts....I swear!

But first, my one Valentine's Day craft that actually got finished. I got these chipboard heart albums on a craft store clearance aisle last year..for 39 cents a piece. Score. I made several of them, a couple for teachers' gifts and a couple more for a friend and myself.

I just couldn't let go of my Christmas crafts I had planned. These little clay-snowman boxes had been on my to-do list for a couple of years, ever since I saw them during the annual Jolie Paquet (http://jolie-paquet.blogspot.com/) holiday web craft-fest.

And speaking of Jolie Paquet, my wonderful friend Amy (http://lifebycandlelight.blogspot.com/) gifted me with this wonderful scrapbook kit at Christmas on our first meeting this past holiday. It too was from Jolie Paquet. I had such fun putting it together.

And lastly, my "sock-snowmen"! Copied from an idea I saw in an old Mary Englebreit magazine from years ago. Until next year...Happy Holidays!

On Flexibility in One's Training Schedule

(I have my grownup computer back! Hooray!)

This might possibly be the happiest dog on the planet. His training remains the same despite weather issues. Mine does not. THIS picture is of the road in front of our house in the mountains where we were this weekend, and where I had planned to go for a long run one day and possibly a ride or ski the other. NOT. But I am proud of my tenacity and creativity with last week's training nonetheless.

We were home during the work week and the weather was unsettled, bringing us our first real rain in weeks. I let the Mister take Sporty Spice to school early on Tuesday and headed up Mt. Diablo in attempt to beat the rain, which I DID. I have a goal of seeing the top of the mountain before Wildflower, and it will be the first time since the broken leg. Today there is snow on top of even this low-lying mountain.

Thursday it rained again and after scrapping plan A of riding, and plan B of running outside (it was pouring! and cold!) I did something never before done by me...I ran on the treadmill at the gym for 2 hours. Yes, 2 hours. The only way this was possible was with the help of those little personal tv consoles on the treadmills there.

The weekend brought the flexibility of training-challenge to a new high. We had never before been to our mountain house on a day where there was that much snow and plows not keeping up. This meant arriving after dark Friday night and actually having to send the Mister down the road to shovel us a path inside; luckily we were able to get the car to the end of our road. But this meant we couldn't leave to go anywhere by car all day Saturday, not the store, or the ski trails, no where. So we strapped on our snow shoes and headed out--onto our own road! There had been some plowing before the last dumping and that was really good snowshoeing, just a foot or so of snow. Not feeling this was adventurous enough, we blazed our own trail over the usually "dirt road", snowshoeing through about 4 feet of powder. Now, if one wants a workout, THIS would be it. I managed to patch togfether 2 and a half hours of this and it was actually very very nice. And the dog was in dog-paradise! Which is so wonderful to see, as our boy has been battling lymphoma and having chemo treatments once a week. He had a perfect day, and it made the last 10 weeks worth it all.

The plow came...finally....at 1:30am on Sunday morning, which was one of the oddest experiences the Mister and I have ever had. We both woke up, sitting straight up in bed yelling--we were both totally sure it was an avalanche! It was so noisy and lit up the house!
My workout hopes were high---until I realized it was 20 degrees outside and the road completely iced over. I had to tippy toe my bike down to the main road, but had had the smarts to bring my mountain bike and managed to get in a 3 and a half hour ride down the mountain to Murphys and back on the road. It kicked my butt.

I did manage to get some other things done on my to do list this weekend!! I finally watched, in it's entirety, my new Swim Smooth Master Catch Class DVD--very very informative and I can't wait to try out my new drills.

I finished the Charles Dickens novels I've been reading for Oprah's book club! Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. I feel so smart!

I planned my garden for the year and made lists from all my seed catalogs.

And I finished all my training totals from 2010! Ready?
In 2010 I swam 256, 350 yards.
I rode 3,851 miles.
And I ran 997 miles (and if you know me, you would know that if I had known this was the number earlier, I would have been out at 11:30 pm on Dec. 31st to get in the last 3 to make 1000.)
Adding weight training, I spent 814 hours of 2010 training and racing.

On Pushing Your Kids Into Obscure Sports

Sorry. I realize these pictures were just hanging out there with no explanation for a few days. My laptop (the one that wasn't stolen) went over the rainbow bridge last week and I am using Sporty-Spice's itty bitty Nickelodeon computer to communicate with the outside world. I believe it has an actual picture of a Rugrat character on the front. Very grown up.

So, back to our adventure of 2 weekends ago. Cross-Country Ski Orienteering! Orienteering is a very fun sport the mister and I did several years ago when preparing for adventure racing. Basically, you get a map and a compass and have to find checkpoints and it's timed. They have em where you run, where you ski, and even where you ride a mountain bike or horseback ride. We had done this same ski-O and I'd always thought it would be a fun sport to do as a family. Sporty loved it! He especially loved the little finger tip "dibber" you put in the checkpoints--a digital indicator you were there and found it. It took him 147 minutes to complete the course, which in 6 year old time must be like 12 dog-years, and he stuck with it. That surprised me. I am on a quest to introduce my kid to obscure sports in leiu of organized team sports like (shudder...)soccer teams because a)I have my own stuff to train for on weekends and am selfish, b)that would preclude our going to our "happy place" in the mountains many weekends and c) did I mention I'm selfish? Check out orienteering at www.baoc.org/.

Since I can't post any more pictures until I get my other computer back, I will have to forgo illustrating my craftiness of late (I'll catch up later) and talk about training.

It seems like most years, getting started with the "real training" in the late winter/early spring, for me, is like watching a baby bird try and take flight, only to keep falling out of the nest and bashing it's head upon the ground...over and over.....until it finally gets liftoff. I'm still in a bit of the nest falling phase, and hoping for liftoff soon. And I can't even so much blame the weather, which has been great, or health during cold and flu season. I think I'm just adjusting to the idea of moderation and training for halfs. Just an adjustment in thinking, somewhere. I've pretty much put in the training I planned to for base, and it is fine. It's just a little bit of low-enthusiasm factor just yet, not-great focus, and some horrible eating choices during the holidays I'm paying for now. On the upside, I've enjoyed some great mountain biking the last few weeks and a couple of trail runs! I hadn't realized just how little trail running I'd been able to do since my injury and how much I missed it. This is rest week after the last base phase, so tomorrow is the offcial start of Build 1--11 weeks to Wildflower!!

I am taking a very cool online class through Brave Girls Club, called Soul Restoration (http://soul-restoration.com). We are restoring our "soul-houses" through collage and journaling. I'm pretty sure my soul house is in foreclosure, but we'll see.

I can't stop making Christmas crafts

And on the moderate craft front, I can't quite seem to abandon my list of Christmas crafts I had wanted to make and didn't get time for in December.

I made this adorable little paper village (a kit I got for like, 4 bucks on a clearance rack somewhere) while watching tv. And these Christmas ornaments came out so cute! They are made from some thrift store tart tins and Christmas odds and ends I scored (it was a major score) at a rummage sale a couple of years ago.

My plan, to implement the Moderation-theme in my crafting this year is to try really, really hard, not to buy a single craft supply unless it is a very specific item needed for a very specific project. I am totally serious. My craft supply hoarding is completely out of control and I am afraid they are going to do a whole special episode on that Hoarders tv show about me and my craft stuff. I could craft until kingdom come solely with the supplies I already possess.

Moderation

I've been trying to come up with a word that I would want to focus on in this new year. The word Balance is always on the tip of my tongue, but perhaps it is too easy while being too ambiguous. How does one get to "balance"? For me, my missing it by a mile or more seems to occur when I don't practice moderation. Moderation does not come easy to me. If I'm in for a penny, I'm in for a pound, so to speak. Just workout? Just do some triathlons? oh no...it's gotta be an Ironman. Go out and rescue a cat? Just one? Why not thirty or forty? Fix a few cats? Certainly starting an energy-sucking non-profit that consumes my life but fixes a lot of feral cats would make more sense.....you get the idea. Thank goodness I never got the urge to start foster care/adoption for children or I'm sure I'd be putting Mia Farrow to shame.



There has GOT to be some middle of the road here. And I'm gonna try to find it.



In terms of triathlon this year, I am definitely looking forward to.....HALVES! Yea, beautiful, manageable yet challenging half-Ironman races. I'm signed up for Wildflower (okay, so I had to pick the hardest one) in late April and Vineman in July. This year I would also like to see some....VARIETY! I am desperate for a change of pace. Cross-country skiing...bring it on. Some shorter, fun races...I'm there. I'm even looking at some entirely different things....I have a bug in my bonnet to try this "Tough Mudder" (http://toughmudder.com/) and possibly reprise my not-so extensive adventure racing career. Anything interesting that does not involve mind-numbingly long workouts for weeks on end.

Any other suggestions? The weirder the better.

As long as it is weird in moderation.

The Grinch is Driving My Volvo

If you see him, let me know.

Shalom, I am converting to Judaism after this past holiday week. Our little family went North for just 2 days to spend Christmas with my in-laws. We came home Sunday night to find our house robbed and ransacked. All that really matters, at the end of this story, is that all of our animals are safe and accounted for. I am all too aware of how differently that could have been. Secondly, our bikes were left untouched. In our world, that is big. The rest of the stuff, big screen tv, laptop computer, camera, jewelry, m
oney and our safe containing birth certificates, passports and credit cards...and my car... can be replaced (sadly, our wedding video cannot). Just unbelievable.

It's going to take awhile to come back from this and feel secure again.

The holidays were busy, and overall, prior to this, they were good.These little snowflake ornaments and bird-and-tree-spools are about the sum of my craftiness however.