Kathleen's Adventures

I love you sweet girl! -Aunt Kathleen

I was tagged a few days ago, but it has taken me a while to get this one up. 1. Zoe's Chocolate Cake 2. The giddy, can't stop talking 90 miles a minute, caffeine/adrenaline high I get sometimes from infinit / clif blocks after a long ride or long run. 3. Long runs with good friends. 4. My almost three year old niece Bennett falling asleep in my lap (she rarely comes to me or my mom if my sister or Molly is around, so it is a rare treat when she will even acknowledge me). 5. My niece Kate's cackle of a laugh. You cannot help but smile when you hear it. 6. My niece Molly's recent dedication to running. She ran her first cross country season in the fall, and is planning to run track in the spring. She took on her first 5k at Thanksgiving like it was nothing even though her longest run ever before that was 2 miles. (Sean in the orange, Molly in the light blue, and me in the white) 7. All things pink (surprise, surprise). 8. Flowers or notes from Jon. 9. Giving presents/...

Well, my race was not that bad, all things considering. But of course it was not what I wanted. I have to keep reminding myself to take a step back and look at what my last two months have looked like (sick and very little training), and what the last year looked like (awesome long-distance triathlon season - could not have asked for better quarter/olympic, half and full ironman races). I know I cannot have it all, and that I have to rest sometimes, whether I planned for it or not, but it is also hard to see some people transition from triathlons to running or vice versa seemingly effortlessly. Several who raced IMFL went on to pop out PR's in the half and full yesterday. I hobbled and gasped my way to a less than stellar race and am pretty bummed out about it. But I have to realize the last good run of any kind I have had was over a month ago, at the Jingle Bell run, and even there I had the beginnings of an asthma attack halfway through. I had run 11 miles total in the two weeks ...

Well rested? Check. Well dressed? Check. Well trained? Oops. If I had spent half as much time training as I have resting or picking out my race outfit, I might have had a chance to do pretty well. Not so much though. Having bronchitis as an asthmatic is just a whole load of joy. It lasts foreeevvvvvver . As in since Thanksgiving. Sunday I will most likely be running with 5 extra lbs of snot in both my head and chest - isn't that a lovely thought? But hey, after all the wardrobe prep, I'll at least look good while I'm out there, and I'll likely be out there much longer than originally planned. Oh well. Really though I am looking forward to Sunday, not for my prediction of a less than stellar performance, but for the day in general. The Houston Marathon is just awesome, and one of the best there is. You can feel the excitement in the air all around town leading up to the race, and it is always so fun to see sooo many familiar faces out there. This year I...

My story seems to be getting more entertaining by the day, but looks (hopes) to be pretty boring over the next few days (keeping my fingers crossed). Wednesday I went back to the toe doctor and it turns out my toes are in fact infected. I was surprised at how long they were taking to heal, so this makes sense. Now, a lesson for everyone who did not already know it: hydrogen peroxide isn't necessarily such a good thing. I'm sure many of you know this and are saying "duh!?", and I had heard a little about it, but for some reason did not think too much of it. I was given a saline wash to use each day on my toes but left it in San Antonio after Christmas so I just started using peroxide 1-2 times a day instead. FAIL. While peroxide is good at killing bad cells, it also kills the good ones. From my understanding, it is okay to use once, say the first time you clean a wound, but not on a regular basis after that. So, after learning that lesson for real, I walked out ...

Jon got a new mountain bike in November and has been having lots of fun playing on it. I used to have a mountain bike...in college. I still have that mountain bike, but apparently leaving it on my porch for 5 years is not good for it so it is not exactly safe. We took it in last week but the repairs were more than it cost, so it is getting taken to an awesome place soon - Workshop Houston . I've just browsed their website but I am super impressed. They provide a do-it-yourself workshop for youth in the Third Ward where they learn how to fix bikes. They can work towards building their own bike from donated parts that were at one time unusable (such as my mountain bike), but not before they help build a bike to donate to a local charity. Anyway, we had tried several weekends to rent a mountain bike for me from West End, but they won't rent bikes if the trails at Memorial Park are closed (from rain/wet/muddy conditions) even if we have no plans to go there. Saturday was to be ou...

Geeeeeeeeees - I'm going back and forth between crying and laughing at myself. $1,100 out of my empty pocket in the last 8 days for 1 tooth. Well, actually $1,000 for one tooth, $100 for another. More on that detail below. I had another dentist appointment this morning to finish the build up for the crown on my root canal tooth. I wasn't sure what this would entail, but it was supposed to be a "short 1 hour" appointment. Um, not-so-much. It started with - you guessed it - more shots! I am glad they numbed it once I knew the kind of work they would be doing there, but still, ugh. Once they took the temporary crown out, the dentist said the filling on the tooth next to it did not look great. She said she'd go ahead and fix it, "on the house" while she was there and I was already numb. Great. Another fix on a tooth that had already had a filling. WTH is going on? Anyway, they fix that then start working on the tooth for the crown. I could tel...