Three Things Thursday - The Sappy Love Edition

December 2009

Happy Thursday, Folks!  In honor of my two year anniversary with my wonderful boyfriend, Mike, today's three things are completely non-running related.

1. Yesterday, November 17th, was actually our anniversary.  Unfortunately, our schedules are kinda crazy right now, so we couldn't really celebrate.  We will be doing something this evening to make up for it.  Thursday is basically our only free evening all week.  I work full time, and he is a full time student.  He is also a bartender, so he works on the weekends.  It is difficult at times with our conflicting schedules, but he's worth it.  Seriously, look how handsome he is...  Besides, I'm very proud of him for going back to school and working as hard as he does.  I know that it won't be like this forever, so I can handle it.

2.  Mike and I met at the bar where he works, 3 Monkeys.  He was working the door that night, and I instantly had a small crush.  I kept an eye on him all night, but I figured that would be it and I may or may not ever see him again.  I am usually quite reserved, so going out of my way to pick up a guy is out of the question, but for some reason I got up the nerve to hit on him that night.  I guess it was fate, because we went out on our first date the following week and I've been smitten ever since.

3.  We started dating in November '08, moved in together in October '09, got a puppy together in January '10, and we are now celebrating two years.  These are just a few of the major milestones in our relationship, but there has been a lot of amazing little adventures along the way as well.  I look forward to seeing what happens next, and I hope to have many, many more adventures and milestones in the future.  I will leave you with a few more pictures to tell our story...

New Year's Eve

Hanging out on the James

Busch Gardens

A Friend's Wedding

Halloween - Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Our First Place

Mike's First Time Flying

A Little Beach Time (no swim suits--it was cold!)

I hope you enjoyed seeing some of our memories as much as I did putting them together.  I can't wait to see what the future holds...

Starting from Scratch

I think the time has come to finally get back at it.  I haven't done much of anything, except long walks with the dog, since I seriously hurt myself in the Army Ten Miler on October 24th.  I have felt so unbelievably lazy for the past few weeks, but I couldn't really do anything about it.  For the longest time, even the walks with the pup were unbearably painful, but I knew that I would have a crazed monster on my hands if I didn't get rid of some puppy energy.  Those walks, and all of my daily activities, are now pain free.  This has been the case for about a week now, but I was so afraid of the pain coming back, so I continued to be obscenely lazy take it easy.  I am now going out of my mind; I NEED to exercise.

I plan to start slow, and build back up.  I know that I can't just jump back into it like nothing happened.  I might not even run for a while longer and just stick with weights and other forms of cardio.  I would really LOVE to do some swimming, but the damn Gold's Gym is taking forever and a day to get the new pool ready.  I called up to the gym this weekend to ask about the pool and was told it should be ready by mid-December.  I won't hold my breath.  (Sorry about that random temper tantrum.)  In the meantime, I will just stick to the bike and elliptical and gradually work running back into the mix.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that all of this down time and the numerous dates with my new best friend, the chiropractor, has been worth it.

Three Things Thursday

The weekend is almost here!  If I can just make it through one and a half days of work first....

1.  This Saturday is the SunTrust Richmond Marathon, McDonald's Half Marathon, and the HCA VA 8k.  I'm not running any of the races due to my injury, but I'm still VERY excited about it!  I live in the Museum District and will be just be a short walk from all three courses.  One of my best friends, Allison, will be running in the 8k this year so I'm looking forward to cheering her on to an awesome time!  (And she's in this picture from last year's half - the girl wearing a long sleeve black shirt)  I know of quite a few other people who will be running the races...some of them from the blog world (TMB, misszippy, momof3, David H.) and a few local friends (Heather, Michael, Maria).  I already have the three routes printed and my game plan mapped out.  Yay for spectating!

Not gonna lie...this freaks me out every time!

2.  I have another chiropractor appointment tonight...my third this week.  I am finishing up my second week of treatment, and I can already see some improvement.  I'm not loving the amount of money I have to spend for this, but I believe it will be worth it in the end.  I went to a chiropractor 4 or 5 years ago when I was having so much pain after all of my back surgeries and it was amazing.  I am confident that chiropractic care is what got me off of all the pain medicine back then.  I'm hoping I have the same experience this time around.  I'll go into more detail about all of this in a future post.

He said I could use any pic, but he might kill me for this one

3.  Last, but not least....and a perfect subject on Veteran's Day...  I'm very excited because I have plans lined up to spend Friday evening with my good friend, Sean.  He is in the Army and will be deployed back to the Middle East early next year.  We don't get to hang out nearly enough, but I'm going to do my best to change that leading up to his deployment.  He'll be gone for a year and at that point we will only get to be pen pals.  He has already told me how much he will appreciate it, and I just think that is the least I can do for someone who is sacrificing so much so the rest of us can be free and safe.  Sean is definitely a hero in my book!  ...and to make amends for posting his cheesy picture, I will post one more to show his tough side...

This one looks Army Strong!

Ok folks, that's all for now.  In case I don't post tomorrow...I want to send good luck to all runners on Saturday.  I'll be on the lookout for folks I know.  Look out for me.  8k folks...I'll be at Grace and Robinson, just after you make the turn to head back downtown.  For those running the half and full, I'll try to be at Monument and the Boulevard for a bit and then head down to Grace and Lombardy.  Yay!

Long Time, No Post...And a Quick Army Ten Miler Recap

Hello everyone!  I hope this post is the start of my return to the blog world.  I have been MIA for a few weeks now, and I apologize.  In addition to being quite busy, I have to admit that I have also been staying away because of a small case of running depression.  Let me fill you in...
 
I have been having a lot of pain in my lower back recently, so I took a little time off to let it heal.  All seemed to be going well, so I did two short (about 3 miles each) runs during the week leading up to the Army Ten Miler on October 24th.  Both runs were great...no pain during or after...so I thought I was good to go.  My PT also agreed that whatever was causing the pain, most likely my degenerative discs, had calmed down and I was back to normal.  This made me so happy because I had been looking forward to this race for months.  My lovely friend, Megan, asked me if I would like to take her husband's bib.  He is in the Army, and they knew when they registered that there would be a chance that he wouldn't be around on race weekend.  That turned out to be the case, so I was lucky enough to get the chance to transfer in to the sold out race. 

Eek!  The excitement! (I'm WAY in the back!)

Race day comes and I'm feeling great.  Megan and I set out at a decent pace and we were passing folks right and left for the first 4 miles.  And then it happened...a small twinge of pain in my lower back.  It was just a passing pain, so I had high hopes that it wouldn't come back and we could keep it up.  By mile 5, I knew this wasn't the case.  It had come back a few more times over that mile and I just knew it was going to keep getting worse.  At mile 5, I told Megan to go on without me and I was going to stop and walk for bit to access the situation.  I walked for just a minute or two and the pain was gone, so I tried to pick it up again.  I made it to the 6 mile mark and decided to stop again and walk through the water stop.  By this point, I knew that running the rest of the race was not going to happen.  The only way I could finish was if I added in the walking breaks to give my back a rest.  At first I hoped I could run a mile, and then walk for a minute or two...that seemed like it would work, but it only lasted one cycle.  It was then, run half a mile and walk a bit.  This worked until I hit mile 9.  At this point, I was hurting A LOT.  The walking only gave me a slight break in the pain.  I probably did more walking than running for that last mile.  I'm sure the pain was evident on my face; it took everything I had not to just stop and cry. (Pathetic, I know.)  Then I heard someone say, "The finish like is just around the curve."  I refused to walk across the finish line, so I just told myself to suck it up and give it everything I had to run across the finish line.

So, I did complete the Army Ten Miler.  I finished in 1:56:17.  Definitely not a great time, but considering all the time I had to take off leading up to the race and the insane pain I was feeling during the race, I'm ok with it.  Despite all the pain and discomfort, I really enjoyed this race.  My mom was there to support me, I got to spend time with one of my best friends, the race atmosphere was incredible, and I was wearing a super cute camo skirt (Sorry, I don't have any photos...security was tight, so I didn't mess with taking a camera).  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can fix whatever it is that seems to be broken with me and run this race again next year.

I think that is enough for now.  I will wait until the next post to give you the low down on what has happened since the race.  I'll give you a small hint...there hasn't been any running...thus my depression.  Ugh.