Kathleen's Adventures

Take that you stupid scale!! I have finally broken 125 for the first time since IMAZ! Of course I'm not even trying nearly as hard to lose weight now and it is coming off. I try for 5 months and nothing. Then, after my marathon, when I'm not doing much at all, it starts to slowly go away. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, but gees. I just wish I had a little more control over these things! I should have taken a picture of that # on the scale because I might not see it again for a while after our trip this weekend. I see lots of food and not lots of exercise invovled!

I spent most of the last weekend on the sidelines and loved it. I'll be doing more of the same this weekend at Ironman Florida. Maybe I'm better at being a cheerleader than a competitor. Saturday morning Shellie, LaErica , and I ran 8 miles and ended up at the start/finish line downtown of the Pumpkin Run 5k. It was fun to watch and there were quite a few people in costumes. Most memorable was the guy dressed as Mark Spitz wearing a wig, mustache, medals, a speedo , and flip flops. Augie, Jon, and Jen all had an awesome race too. Augie won her age group, Jon got second in his, and Jen got a PR. The only downside to running to watch a race means you get pretty cold before it is all said and done. I was blue for about an hour, but soy hot chocolate at Onion Creek afterwards took care of that. Saturday afternoon, Shellie and I visited the sidelines of Lisa's house...or more like we dove straight into the war zone! Sarah and Jessica have grown a lot since I saw them last and ...

This is what I did at work today: And this is what my co-workers did: Yes, we are having a pumpkin coloring contest at work. We used to decorate and trick-or-treat my department, but this year we are in a "cost savings mode" so we are scaling down the operations a bit. Good thing my department keeps a good amount of glitter on hand at all times.

I know some of you have questioned it, but I really do have a good heart, as confirmed by a cardiologist this morning. EKG and stress test showed nothing abnormal. BUT, I'm so NOT impressed with my treadmill stress test. I was hoping I would at least find out my true max heart rate through all of this so I would at least have a reference point of some sort. The lady got me all hooked up and showed me where my HR was on the screen and said "now, you are at 60-something right now, you can stop whenever you want, but we'd really like to see that HR get to at least 164." I told her that surely wouldn't be a problem. So I start walking. Whopee . Every 3 minutes the incline and speed increases. I asked her after a few minutes if I would get to find out my true max HR. She said "your 100% max? Well, that is 193. Because it is 220 minus your age." GREAT. She knows nothing. I tell her that I could easily get over 193 and that my high heart rate when exercising wa...

I had a bit of a reality check Saturday afternoon when I was minding my own business and came across a post on Facebook with a link to a MSNBC online story. I began to watch the story and already saw that it was called "The Tip of the Spear" - talking about our troops in Afghanistan. Then I realize the commander of the troop (I'm sure that isn't the proper classification of any of this - shows my complete ignorance to anything military) was someone who I went to middle and high school with - someone who is just 2 years older than me and has the lives of so many in his hands. I sit here and complain about my little piddly problems like I need to lose a few lbs, or that I didn't run as fast as I wanted to at a few races, and then I see this. Wow. Jimmy and the rest of our troops are halfway around the world getting shot at on a daily basis, literally risking their lives almost every minute of the day, so we can sit here and worry about our very insignificant...

The good news is that I ran again this morning without any major pain in my foot. I went to the podiatrist after that and I am good at diagnosing myself - I definitely have posterior tibial tendinitis, but he doesn't think there are any tears in the tendon or anything to really be worried about. I have a 6 day steroid dose pack and will be high as a kite for the next few days, but hopefully my foot is on its way back to ok . The bad news is I ran a whopping 3 miles this morning at 11:00 min/mile pace with Augie and had to stop and walk twice because my heart rate was over 190. I also thought at first we were running ~9 something pace, so it was even more disturbing 1.5 miles in when I had to stop and walk and then looked down to not only see 190+ on my garmin , but I also saw 15:50 for the 1.52 miles we had run. Now I am afraid that is just the way I am and that no cardiologist is going to give me any meaningful insight into all of this - basically I'm just stuck. We will see, ...

Ahhhh . Finally. A good kind of pain. I went to abs/back class at TOTR last night and got my abs/butt kicked. I can't laugh and I can't sit down, but it hurts so good! I had let the whole strength training thing go by the wayside during the last ~2 months of marathon training and I need it back. Also, Dr. Doug (Dad's best friend, member of Team W ) told me I felt SOFT the other night!! What?? Mom said I was wearing a big jacket so he couldn't really feel my back (the part of me he way saying felt soft). Well, soft my a$$. No more! See if he ever calls me SOFT again! By the way, I wore my hot pants to class last night and there are mirrors all around and as against sounding over confident as I am, I must say my legs are anything but soft, even after 2 weeks of pretty much no activity. The only downside to my quest to end all softness is that my foot is still mad at me. I'm beginning to think I should have gone straight into the boot when I got home from St. George...