the tale of the shrew and the suitcase

I have begun "the purge" on my apartment. I am sick of all the clutter and since I hope to move in a couple of months, the less stuff I have, the better. I am getting rid of crap that I don't need or use.

Yesterday, I recycled almost $15 worth of cans. Soda cans mostly. I can't help it. I have an addiction.

One thing that I cannot bring myself to get rid of are books. I have a lot of books - some here, some at my parents. I have more books than can fit on my bookshelf. In order to fight my losing battle with available shelf space, I have asked my parents Santa for a Kindle for Christmas. We shall see what happens..


this  little guy got recaptured so many times,
we named him Curly!





I have also asked my parents Santa for a suitcase and a ridiculous pair of Zoot recovery compression tights.

Why a suitcase? Shouldn't an almost-27 year old girl own a suitcase?

Well, I USED to have a nice suitcase. Then, a few summers ago, my then-graduate advisor told me he wanted me to take a week-long course in the Adirondacks called "Ecology of Adirondack Mammals." So I packed necessary stuff - hiking boots, raincoat, outdoors clothes, running clothes and left for a week in the mountains. During this week, we spent a lot of time in the field, setting and checking Sherman traps (live traps) in order to catch, tag, and release small animals. We caught mice, chipmunks, a squirrel, and a TON of shrews. (We also caught some little brown bats by mist netting).




this is me (4 years ago) holding a dead masked shrew



 There are a bunch of different types of shrews in the Adirondacks, and they all smell. They smell even worse when they are wet. And guess when they are wet? When they are stuck in a trap at 6:30 in the morning. Even if you handled them while wearing gloves, the stink still got all over you. So a whole bunch of my clothes smelled AWFUL because of those stupid shrews. And then I put all of the dirty clothes in my suitcase and drove the 6 hours home to Pennsylvania. And the suitcase was never the same. We febreezed it, we left it outside for days - didn't matter. That was the demise of that suitcase.

Fast forward 4 years later, it's time to get another suitcase because I have to bring a ton of crap with me to Idaho for IMCDA in June!

So hopefully on Christmas morning I will be lounging around in my overpriced Zoot compression tights, reading a book on my Kindle, and packing things in my new suitcase. :) In reality I will be trying to keep the dog out of everyone's way while my family opens presents and whining because after we open presents, there is absolutely nothing to do on Christmas. My goal this year is to watch, in its entirety, "The Christmas Story" because I have NEVER seen it the whole way through! Lofty, I know. Especially since it plays for 24 hours straight.

I am not asking for anything strictly triathlon related, but 2 of the 3 things are going to be quite useful for my 2 destination Ironmans in 2011! And since I can't ask for anything too ridiculous (say, a million bucks or a supermodel boyfriend) I figured these things would be useful items to own. What do you want for Christmas?

happy Thanksgiving!

I had a good, fairly busy Thanksgiving weekend!

I drove home on Thursday morning. Even though they let us out of work 2 hours early on Wed. (I love it when they do that!) I had a chiropractor appointment and a bunch of stuff to do. Plus I hate driving home late. I opted to not bring my bike and trainer home and ended up skipping my bike ride on Friday and just moving it to Sunday.

So.. brace yourselves..

I DID ALL OF MY WORKOUTS THIS WEEK! No skipping and only that ONE moved workout!

While I was home I ate Thanksgiving dinner with my parents, went shopping on Friday with my friend Kerry (but not crazy early morning Black Friday shopping - I don't do that), watched some TV, went to bed really early, played with the dog, etc. It was good! But it's always good to be back in Rochester with my cat! I miss her when I have to leave her here, and she rewarded my return home by sleeping with me all night last night! Ugh.. I am like 1 year away from being a fully committed cat lady!

While on the subject of my apartment here in Rochester, I have officially decided that I am moving when my lease is up in March. My apartment is a dump. It's small, drafty, there is some kind of animal living in the walls, the people downstairs party all the time and smoke in the foyer, people's cars get broken into in the parking lot, and we can't forget that my mountain bike got stolen out of the freaking basement! I get scared to leave my apartment for the weekend because I worry that it's going to get broken into. It doesn't help when other people in the house leave the doors unlocked and the only thing stopping some crazy robber is the fact that my apartment is on the 3rd floor. So, I am out of here! I freaking HATE IT and NEED TO MOVE!!

On an unrelated note, when I was at home I found a scarf that I bought when I went to Ireland in 2003. The scarf still had the tags on it an everything! So now I have a nice scarf! Score. Also, I have been reading a LOT lately - I started reading "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" and it's SUPER good. :)

So anyways, things are good, unfortunately it's back to work tomorrow. :(

HTFU

It is officially time to get back into it. (For real this time!). Some things have happened this past week that have put a damper on my attitude towards training. Time to get over it!

Lack of overall motivation. It was hard to get motivated for several reasons last week. I am not running, I was on overnights, I was having trouble sleeping, I had like 6 hours of scheduled workouts, and I was bummed out. I skipped a few workouts. I got the OK from Mary to do so (sometimes you just have a bad week where you need to sleep) but I can't be doing that anymore. I felt really guilty taking days off during such an easy week. Solution? This week I enter "Base 1" of my training.. so my hours were upped from 6 to 9! I am going to focus on getting quality workouts in every day. Everything else that has been going on is getting moved to the back of my brain because it does not do any good to dwell on things that I cannot change. Regardless of how bad I am feeling, I need to HTFU and get my workouts done!

I am cutting out all alcohol products that contain liquor. It's not like I drink a lot, but I do NOT need to be doing shots of tequila during Ironman training. Girls night out was fun. Dressing up was fun. Drunken singing and dancing to Billy Idol was fun. The hangover the next day was not.

However, watching Chrissie Wellington completely DOMINATE at IM Arizona yesterday was ridiculous. There is just not another female pro in the same league as her. 1st female pro, 8th OVERALL pro, came in less than 30 minutes after the first male pro and almost 30 minutes before the next female pro. She broke the world record for fastest female Ironman (Ironman brand) time. Absolutely disgusting. Anytime I watch Chrissie, I feel the need to go exercise for 4 hours and not eat for the rest of the day in hopes that it will make me fast like her!

Also, I have been discovering the many dimensions of Coach Mary. So far she has been a coach, a friend, a pimp (haha), and a therapist life guru. It's really good to know that she doesn't expect me (or any of her athletes) to be a triathlon robot who isn't affected by things that happen in daily life. I can come to her with problems, whether it be an injury, being stressed, lack of sleep from overnights, or a combination of them and she takes it in stride and has a solution, and never freaks out.

She knows that I'm already worried about Coeur D'Alene even though it's 7 months away. I'm worried that I am not running yet. I'm worried because I am so incredibly out of shape right now. I never got this out of shape between 2009 and 2010. But I know she won't send me to an IM unprepared!

So I guess that's that! I have a 4 day weekend coming up! I get to go to my parents' house, play with the dog, watch cable TV, eat lots of good homecooked food, and relax for a few days!

I wish triathletes rode brooms

So, I might be the world's biggest Harry Potter fan. OK, maybe not quite. But I am a HUGE Harry Potter fan. I go to sleep every night under a giant blanket with Harry playing quidditch on it. I wake up every morning with a Deathly Hallows tattoo on my wrist. I have read all the books over, and over, and over again. I have been to 2 midnight IMAX movie showings and I went to the midnight release party at Barnes and Noble for the 7th book.

(I have never dressed up as a character. I know where to draw the line).

I would freaking SCHOOL anyone in Harry Potter book trivia.

I own the first 6 movies. Now while I am fond of all of them just because they are Harry Potter movies, some of them annoy me by leaving out giant plotlines, adding in things that didn't happen, or making changes to what did happen. While I understand that a movie cannot encompass everything in a book - some of the movies are better than others.

That being said. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I was phenomenal. It's been a while since I read the book (probably a year) but since I've probably read it 10 times already, I'm pretty familiar with it. :) The movie really nailed it! It was funny, scary (just ask Matt who was sitting next to me every time I leaped out of my seat in fright), emotional, and freaking spot-on with the book. Some minor things were left out.. but not much!

See, I am not all about bikes and running and whining about bikes and running!

I have other interests! Harry Potter! horses! and.. uh.. boys?

bad decisions, bad week

Hello, my name is Alexa, and I make bad decisions. For example. I ran for an hour on Sunday. Running for an hour totally messed up my hamstring that WAS getting better. Would I have done this if I was left to my own devices? No. But when someone asked me to run, I went. I am blaming no one but myself. I could have said "no I can't run because I am trying to fix this problem" OR "yes I can run but only for 20 mins." But I suppressed these thoughts and ran anyway, hoping the run wouldn't do any real harm. I rarely run with anyone else so I was excited for the opportunity to have company. Halfway through the run when my quads were burning, my hamstring felt tight, and my heart rate hit 181 (not kidding) I knew that I had made a stupid decision.

Stupid, stupid girl.

I have not been writing much as of late. Mainly because I am still not doing much, I am depressed that I am not running, and I'm worried that I am not going to get my running fitness back to where it needs to be for next year. I am also kind of emotional and while it helps me to write things down, the entirety of the internet does not need to read about my angst. I have a whole bunch of unpublished blog posts written that serve as a catharsis without letting too much of my personal life out on the internet.

I am entirely too sensitive. I wish I had the ability to let things roll off me without affecting me. Instead, I take everything personally, I CONSTANTLY over-analyze situations, and I get myself worked up - usually over nothing.

Working out is my outlet, however since that is not going so well at the moment, I need an outlet for my outlet.

Work has not been going well for me this week either. I am on a week of overnights, which I hate, but normally I can cope with them ok. This week is different. Monday and Tuesday I experienced what I can only describe as severe anxiety after waking up in the afternoon and thinking about having to go to work all night. Monday I dealt with it by crying, skipping my workout, and immediately going back to bed for 4 more hours before work. Yesterday I cried, forced myself to do my workout, watched Glee, and then went into work. Every day this week I have been nauseous and the smell of food disgusts me, which has led to barely eating anything. Because of this, I have dropped a few pounds. Now while I am thrilled at any weight loss, losing weight due to being so stressed out and nerve wracked that I can't physically eat is not my ideal way to do it. I will take sanity and a couple extra lbs of chub ANY DAY!

I shall probably regain all of that weight back on Friday as I binge eat candy in the movie theatre when I go see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I!!!

At least there is the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

lazy blog list

I think I am going to follow suit with what my friend Amelia did in her blog. Yes I am copying her, but I am really tired, forced to stay awake, and I can't think right now. Basically, she made lists of the highs and the lows of her week. I am pretty much doing the same except mine is more.. current/upcoming things. Let's face it, I am exhausted and being lazy. I don't even have the energy to type out any more complete sentences! I can't wait to go home and pass out. (I may have already napped sitting upright in my computer chair at work - that's definitely a first).

Things that are bumming me out:

• I am still on C-shift at work
• the daunting task of cleaning my apartment
• my cat might have a cavity which means she may have to have a tooth pulled
• I will not get to see Ultra Adam for a long time.. like a month!
• having no vacation time for the rest of the year
• I have a freakish amount of bills to pay this month
• I ran for too long on Sunday and now my hamstring and my quads hurt

Things that make me smile:

• the new Harry Potter movie comes out this week
• I am all caught up with episodes of Glee
• the thought of going to bed immediately when I get home
• I got to go to Chuck's on Sunday (my favorite bar from when I lived in Syracuse)
• I also got to see a Syracuse Orange basketball game!
• the weather is SO NICE for November
• it's almost that time of year ---- CHRISTMAS!

give me a "P"!

The word of the day is: priority.

I can thank Kim for this topic, as we have had numerous discussions about it lately.

Prioritizing is something that every person, ever, has to deal with. Regardless of whether you are an endurance athlete, a couch potato, single, married with kids, unemployed, or a CEO, guess what you have.. priorities! Even if you're 5 and the #1 thing on your list is finding some toy you lost - it still counts!

Obviously, lots of people share a lot of similar priorities - family/friends, career, money. But then these things can branch out in so many directions.. it is amazing to me that someone will stand in line for hours to buy the new Call of Duty, but that same person probably is amazed that I stood in line for over 6 hours to register for an Ironman. My dad prefers watching PSU football games. I think my brother's #1 priority is drinking as many PBRs as humanly possible. :)

It's pretty easy for me to determine what should become a priority in my life. Simply - if it's something that I love, if it's something that makes me happy, or if it's something that helps me attain either of the first two things (AKA my job) - that's all it takes.

My current priorities include: friends/family, triathlon, my cat and horse, my job, and "me" time. I think that last one is really, really important. There are a lot of people out there that try to cram too much crap into their day and neglect to take time for themselves. And how much of that stuff that they are doing is REALLY something that is important to them? I understand that people have obligations, but seriously, sometimes you just have to say no. You have to be your #1 obligation! Perhaps that is why I spend so much time in my apartment with my pants off?

Everything in life is dynamic. At one point, triathlon did not even exist in my lifestyle. Five years ago, school took precedence. Time spent riding my horse has been reduced. New people have entered my life. Shit changes. You have to be able to adapt to things coming into and leaving your life. People always tell me that they would never have the time to train for an Ironman. That is bullshit. The time is available. That's what 5 am is for. I don't get up at 5 am to train because I don't have to, but if it was necessary, I would. I will move my workouts around in order to visit my family or see friends. Because Ironman is important to me but so are the people in my life.

It's all about balance. But I'm probably preaching to the choir here.

If you want something, or it makes you happy, then make it happen. If not, then move on.