First week of school and some other ridiculousness

Since I've pretty much abandoned my personal blog, I didn't want to completely get rid of a first day of school post!  Also, it has a big impact on my training too.

Here is my big 2nd Grader!

Poor Soren was so sad that she went to school without him.  He has one more year!  I love our time together, but I bet next year is going to be life changing having them both in school on the same schedule.  Until then, I plan to enjoy the one on one time I have with him.

Since it was the first week of school, I felt like a zombie the whole week.  I think it was rougher on me than the kids.  Keira was up and dressed well in advance of her 7:02am bus pick up every day this week, and Soren was hit or miss on getting up by then.  Since I usually take them to work by 8:00am twice a week, we were used to be up and out of the house somewhat early, but I felt like it was definitely harder for me than them to get up.  I'm amazed we made it through this first week, especially when you factor in some crazy things we did this week.  Also, I am not sure if it is crazy that I am NOT considering my 11 mile treadmill run to be one of these crazy things.  Its pretty normal for me in the summer to have to do that with the kids both out of school.  I will move on to 3 of the things that I think are a bit on the crazy side.

The Kentucky Derby Festival Mini/Marathon recently opened their registration for the 2014 race.  It is April 19th.  I am completely distraught by this date.  If you notice, this date is the same weekend as the Boston Marathon on my birthday, April 21st.  I have completed the KDF race (either for myself or borrowing a bib) every year that I have lived here, and it has been a cool tradition.  With it this weekend, it makes is pretty much impossible for me to do both races.  Theoretically, I could do both if I had flight out on Saturday afternoon, but really, who wants to do 13.1 miles right before the Boston Marathon?  Not me!  If it was the Saturday after, I would consider doing an extremely painful mini, but Boston is hard enough.  I'm not going to make it harder.  Also, traveling to Boston costs and arm and a leg, and if I go, I will need to drive and not fly, which means it is completely not happening.  Ryan doesn't want to go back, I do, and I also have no clue if my time is even fast enough.  Its been one of those things bothering me in the back of mind on what to do.  I feel like the decision will be made for me almost, if that makes sense.  Like, I will get into Boston and go, or not get in and do Derby.  So, The KDF people have been doing these secret locations for 3 weeks where they give  you clues and you have to show up at a specific time interval and you might win a free registration, or have the chance to spin a wheel for other free stuff.  I need new shoes really badly (maybe a gift card from one of the shoe stores would be a prize?), and if I had a free registration to the KDF race it would certainly help in the decision process.  The past two weeks I completely forgot about it by the time it came to the day where I was supposed to show up (although I figured out the location each time), and this week, I remembered and knew where I was supposed to go when.  The kids were excited because they LOVE spinning wheels at the race expos.  We arrived exactly on time, and they had already given out the 5 free registrations to the first 5 people there, and getting them lined up to spin the wheel.  I was the 7th person to spin the wheel, and the lady in front of me got a $10 SWAGs shoes coupon.  I got two t shirts of my choice from what they had in my size, and the kids each got a water bottle, and a $5 off registration code good for a week, but the price went up so it needed to be used that day for the lowest possible price.  It was a bit disappointing; we got a bunch of stuff that we already have a ton of.  I really don't need another tech shirt or water bottle, but I'm sure we will use them.  Here is what we got.  The blue shirt is the mini marathon shirt from last year.  I already had the yellow marathon one.  I figure it is OK to wear the mini marathon shirt since I did the full, right?  I mean, I ran practically all of the mini course doing the full.  It will look really nice with my white skirt too, which I will review shortly.  At any rate, my gut feeling is telling me that I should NOT sign up for this race yet.  I should still hold out an see what happens with Boston.  Also, if I don't get into Boston, I will need to run another full next year (crud) and qualify again because a ton of my friends are working on Boston 2015 at this point, but that won't be on my birthday.

Second crazy thing we did was for Soren.  While Keira was at school on Friday, Soren and I went to the BMX track at Tom Sawyer park to check it out.  Soren played soccer the last several sessions and enjoys it, but doesn't have a passion for it.  He is a good little cyclist for the age of 4.  There BMX club here that he can join called Derby City, and I just wanted to try it out with him before committing to anything.  The track appears to be open as long as an event isn't in progress or it is wet.  He was a bit afraid at first but quickly overcame it. 

I also had a good time riding and it helped me a little with my bike handling on the dirt.  With Iceman looming in the distance, I am starting to freak out about it.  My bike, which looks so tiny at a mountain bike race with its 26in wheels and S frame, looked ginormous compared to the adult BMX bikes with their 20in wheels.  My full suspension bike was a squishy tank going over those whoopties, but it was a blast.  I can't wait to take him again.  We might even sign him up because he will be able to go to practices on Wed night with some instruction and use a full face helmet instead of the regular kids helmet.

The final bit of craziness was my workout today.  I rode on 1694 (the out and back section of the IM course) on my mountain bike as Iceman training.  I must have looked entirely deranged out there today.  I put on my IM kit so that people would know that I knew what I was doing (and was just that stupid, I guess).  That ride kicked my butt!  I had been all pumped up to try to get Ryan to want to do Leadville 100 next year and he had said no way, and doing this ride, I can't even imagine how sucky that must be.  At least I was on smooth roads, and I was dying!  My legs were hurting after the first couple miles.  I know my nutrition wasn't the best before the ride because I missed lunch (Ryan got back from his ride around 11:30, and I left right after that just eating bars after my breakfast), but still, its been a long time since I have been this worked over on the bike.  I had previously been limited by my arms hurting me, but I think I've backed off the bike enough that my legs screamed at me, pretty much the whole time.  Check out my Garmin connect stats.


I had over 800ft of elevation on this (the tree farm relay had 100ft).  It was so tough!  The good news is that it will just keep getting easier.  I have two more weeks until Soren starts preschool, and then I can ride my bike on Tuesdays and run on Thursdays while he is there.  Hopefully that will be enough time to prepare me for Iceman and have me ready for my half marathons in the fall two.  I'll be ready somehow I am sure.