Snowmageddon - Round 2

Kris: Yesterday Mother Nature decided we needed another foot or so of snow.  The sad part is that it was supposed to be done by Noon today but I think we're getting more fluffy stuff today than we did yesterday.  Argh!   Luckily, Saturday we got a bunch of required errands done.  Then on Sunday, got our daily cache early in the morning and spent the day working on house projects.   Mark worked on the main floor bathroom.  It hasn't been functional in years due to bad flooring that needed to be replaced.  So he got the new duct work in and the new subfloor :D Mark: I plan of writing a full blog with pictures from the very beginning to the end of the project after the bathroom is finished. Kris: I worked on a bunch of cleaning and focused on getting all the wallpaper off the walls in the kitchen.

Wallpaper was developed by devils....they thought it would be funny for the next guy to try and REMOVE from the walls.

I also enjoyed that I got to cook this evening.   I made the Thai Chili recipe from our new favorite magazine, Clean Eating Mark: For any guy reading this, please note if your signifigant other likes/loves to cook, Clean Eating is the greatest magazine that you can get a subscription too. Not only does Kris get excited about reading through all of the recipes and planning on what she is going to make next but we get to eat much healthier food which tastes really good. I have tried more different types of foods for the first time since we got Clean Eating. Celeriac, Squash, Turnips, Collard Greens and Rapini. A win-win for all involved.

And here's a picture that was finally posted from BonTon Designs of when we went to a mosaic art class back on the 12th:

This afternoon we ended up making a couple short videos so I'll use those to finish this post :)



Damn you Boston Athletic Association!

Kris: So I think the universe is trying to tell me I should quit worrying about Boston.  Here's the sequence of events over the past few months:

1. We decide "Hey, let's make a go at Boston.  Do it smart, take a couple seasons then make a run at qualifying."
2. Get a show-stopping injury while training for last marathon
3. Get to a point where I can "tolerate" my severly diminished training schedule for Boston to allow for proper rehab of my injury.
4. Finish my first week of training (2 runs)
5. THEN spend a week almost incapable of movement because I was severely laid up with the flu (Day 12.....still sniffling and coughing...)
6. Now that I'm back moving again, the BAA announces this crap.....

 http://www.baa.org/news-and-press/news-listing/2011/february/boston-athletic-association-announces-new-registration-process.aspx

If you want the highlights, it's basically that they changed the registration system to allow those that qualify by 20 minutes or more first opportunity to register, then those that qualify by 10 minute, then 5 minutes, then everyone else until the field is sold out.    AND....they removed the 59 second rule AND decreased all the qualifying times by 5 minutes.   Basically crushing our hopes of ever being able to qualify and if we do, we might not even be able to register before it fills up.

Crap.   Crap....crap....crap.....

Fitting photo of how I feel that I have in my work file :)

Mark: I am more then annoyed by the BAA. I can understand why they made the change to a seeded registration based on time, that make sense to me. Granted I can tell you right now what is going to happen, your average runners who barely make their qualification times will never be able to register for Boston because the registrations will fill up by then. What Boston should have done is placed a limit on the number of times that a runner can qualify/register for Boston. With their new system, the same runners will qualify and be able to register year after year and the average runner who's dream is to run in Boston who might be able to just qualify is basically screwed. Since they screwed the average runner, why not take it to the next step and make qualification times harder by an additional 5 minutes and 59 seconds. What a way to crush average runners dreams, thanks BAA you are a true shining light to the running community.

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On another angle of training, I am on my bike a bit more or in spin classes as an alternative to running.  That's been a nice burn but I'm still really feeling weighed down by my/our eating habits lately.  We've fallen into eating way too many calories a day so my weight is back up 3-4 from where I bottomed out. Mark: I hit 10 pounds since my low just before Las Vegas. Kris: It's kind of depressing me but I'm doing it to myself so I'm the only one to blame.  Hoping to tough love myself back into eating right again by considering going on a calorie counting stretch again.   Starting....sometime....maybe tomorrow.  I think what might be the added "push" is the fact that I turn 30 in a little less than 4 months and I want to look good and feel good.   Kind of like what we did before Mark's 40th last year.
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On another note we did have ridiculously beautiful weather this past week and were lucky to finally have a few opportunities to go after geocaches that were more than 10 ft from the car.    We even got Sugar out with us one day for a lunch time cache grab.

Mark: Interesting to note, we used this picture for our #Geocache365 pic of the day on Wednesday, Day 192. We thought it was cute to hang the cache container from Sugars collar and she did such a nice job of posing. If you just glance at the picture quickly you would never realize that was the cache container. Fast forward about 6 hours and I get a email notification that my "Found" log had been deleted, the cache owner did not want a picture of the cache container because as he put it "(the size, the shape, the color etc.) is an integral part of the hide" Excuse me? It is a bison tube pine tree hide, there are thousands of caches just like that around the world. Nothing unique or special about this cache whatsoever. In fact we commented to each other as we were walking up to the cache that we should be looking for a green bison container. The cache hider only has 160+ finds and just the one hide so I understand that he has might not understand that his cache is just a plain pine tree hide. I did try to point out to the cache owner that gallery pictures often include pictures of the cache containers, that is why Geocaching.com indicates that any pictures have the potential to be spoilers. I respected the cache owners wishes and re-posted my find without the link to the picture. Just very annoying and typical when dealing with caching newbies.

Laid up sick.

Kris: Yes folks I'm still alive.....barely....ok maybe I'm being dramatic but I have now been feeling some degree of miserable for 8 DAYS!  I haven't been sick this long since I had pneumonia in 6th grade.

It all started last Saturday right after a run around Calhoun, I started getting achy and tired.   Then we were scheduled to volunteer for the Loppet from 12-3:30.  Luckily I got to sit down for most of that shift but when we were done I was drained.   We ended up not being able to ski the luminary which we paid for weeks ago and rented skis for.  I was so disappointed.   Pretty much all day Sunday, Monday and most of Tuesday I was laid up, exhausted, achy, bleh!!!   My voice left sometime I think on Monday and it hasn't made it's way fully back yet.  Laringitis maybe? Who knows.   All I know is it's DAY 8 and I'm still feeling sick and coughing like crazy. 

I guess this post is me just bitching about how awful I've been feeling.   I'm depressed.   I am not fully accepting of my new training schedule.  I'm supposedly "in training" for Grandma's but rehab is only allowing me to run 2x per week and currently my runs are only 3.63 miles long.   So after only one week of that, I get laid up sick and can't run or cross-train at all.  Sludged out a run today and I can't stand that I'm sitting here feeling that stupid little twinge of pain behind my knee.  Will this rehab work?   I try so hard not to be mad but I just hate watching other people run without pain right now. 

Our new routine...every evening I need to do my exercises and stretch and roll and Mark....paints his toe nails.  He was chosen as a candidate for a drug trial for treating nail fungus so now every night for a year he needs to paint a clear coat on his toe nails.  I keep threatening to throw glitter fleck into the bottle :-P



Mark has been a saint and so wonderful in taking care of me.   I've been sick, sad, mad, emotional, you name it this week and he's done everything to make me feel better.   I just am glad I didn't get him sick too.  Well...he's got a bit of the sniffles that he's still battling but luckily that's it.

Tomorrow I need to go back to work.  Last week I worked from home as much as my body would let me.   At this rate I don't think my voice will be fully back tomorrow either but I'll do what I can.

Random cute cat photo.  My Maverick resting with me



Married for 2 months now!

This past weekend marked our 2 month anniversary (Feb 5th) AND our 2 year anniversary (Feb. 7th) and guess what we got each other? A cold/flu! On Saturday we volunteered for the City of Lakes Loppet and while we were volunteering Kris seemed to be getting weaker and weaker. And by 4pm she was gone, we even bypassed the Luminary Loppet that we signed up for and returned our skis early and she was in no condition to ski or be out in the cold for several hours. For the next couple of days Kris was basically bed ridden with no energy, sleeping when she could, so far I have been mostly lucky, I have avoided the severity that Kris has but I can tell that I have the cold/flu and it is making life a lot more difficult. Hopefully in a few days Kris will be better and I won't get any worse.

So as of this writing it is about 1 degree outside and I have had it with winter and cold and snow. So much so that I am really having a hard time motivating myself to even get things done around the house. My newest phrase is "I'll do it tomorrow" which is frustrating Kris, and I don't blame her, it is frustrating me but being stuck in the winter blahs sucks (The cold is not helping either). I am trying honey honestly.

We both are starting up our run training, Grandma's in now 19 weeks away. Last week (Week 20) I ran 21 miles and I was very happy with that and I want to be at a solid 30 miles per week before week 16. I am still desperately trying to get used to my Newtons, running around in the dome makes my left toes go numb, but as I discovered last night, basically the same this happens in my Mizuno Precision's so I will blame the solid concrete running surface and constant turning in one direction. On the plus side, last week was a bit warmer and I was able to get outside and run 4 days which felt amazing. I wore my Newtons and did not see to have the same problems as I am having in the dome. Hopefully getting outside more will help me adjust to the Newtons.

After an email request, Marathon Photos combined our official pictures from the Rock & Roll Marathon into one account and I purchased the lot including our finish line video. The raw video is basically the same time frame but from two different camera angels. For the first time I edited one of our videos and that was a blast. I shorted the beginning and ending and then sliced out some of the middle to have a fluid finish from one camera to the other. Here is my finished work. I think I could be nominated for a technical Oscar for editing. I hope you enjoy!



OK, That should gets us close to being caught up on the Blog front(for the moment). We do have a few new #Geocache365 vblogs that we hope to post in the next few days. So stay tuned!