Monthly Archives: April 2010

Racing with Friends

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This past Sunday was the Double Decker 5K race — the second 5K I did this month. I guess April is indeed the cruelest month. To my hamstrings anyway.

At the beginning of the month I had raced the Art Run 5K here in Auburn with my friend Brunbec, who has been training with the couch-to-5K plan (which I did last summer and I LOVED) and she absolutely rocked it. I set a PR that day, in spite of the fact that I felt like I was dying in the sweltering heat and about to wet myself at any moment. Oh, too much information there? Sorry!

So at the Double Decker 5K this weekend, I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to beat my time from the Art Run (30:40, which was pretty fast for me). I didn’t really care so much — I just wanted to run with my friends Clarabella and LitChick (who were also training with the couch-to-5K plan) and have a good time.

Clarabella and I had to get up at butt o’clock to get to the race start on time. They wanted everyone to pick up their timing chips by 7:15 at the latest. I was cursing myself for chooing a hobby that forces me to get up early on Saturdays and Sundays, but we got there on time. Unfortunately, LitChick was nowhere to be found! As we discovered later, she had set her alarm for the wrong time and missed the start! We teased her about it, but we were all pretty bummed. She’d been training and was ready to run. Next time, lady!

C. and I lined up at the back of the pack together but we separated soon after the start, each of us having our own pace and plan to follow. The race was pretty hilly with one big one at mile 1 and another smaller one at about mile 2.5. It was the second one that hurt the worst, though, let me tell you. After about 2.5 miles of race-pace running, a hill is, well, an unwelcome sight! I used my mantra from the half marathon (“I love hills. I love hills. I love hills” — don’t laugh; it works) and made it up. It wasn’t as bad as the Art Run had been w/r/t hills though. I don’t even want to talk about that.

Going up that second hill I saw the bright green shorts of a girl I recognized from the parking lot: a colleague of my friend C. who had snarked to her in the parking lot with a tone that said funny to see YOU here. Remebering her rudeness from before the race, I made it my mission to pass the chick. When she started walking up that hill and rubbing her side like she had a stitch, I had the chance and I did it. Who’s the smug one now? (It’s me. I’m the smug one now. Not a point of pride, I realize.)

As we neared the finish, the really fast men racing the 10K started to pass me. I saw how hard they were gunning it and then we all passed (their) mile marker 6 — the only mile marker I saw the whole time. I guess the 10K course had markers but ours didn’t, and the two courses only overlapped at certain points. I knew we were headed for the same finish line, which must be only 0.2 miles away, and I started gunning it too. I felt really strong at the finish and was really excited to learn that I had in fact beaten my previous PR and set a new one: 28:07. So close to being under 28:00. Well, next time, I say!

Clarabella had a great race, too, running significantly faster than her predicted time and finishing strong. I was proud of her! We were both really pleased with our runs.

After the race it was time for breakfast. Check out this plate of hashbrowns I housed:

Big Bad Breakfast

There is little I love to eat more than a fried potato product, I tell you. These are from Big Bad Breakfast in Oxford. They had plenty of vegetarian options and apparently their meat and dairy is all local and organic, so omnivores can feel like ethical superstars eating there, too. Recommended.

I have to say about these two races: it has been so fun to have my friends out there running with me. I have obviously fallen in love with the sport over the past year. There is nothing that makes me feel more competent and free and powerful. And now the people around me are catching the bug, too. Love it. I remember what a challenge it was to get started, how exciting it was to run my first race, and I know how exciting it is still to be out there and doing it. Now when do you wanna race?

After Hours

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I had a great time this weekend hanging out with my friend Clarabella at her place. We had registered to run a 5K on Saturday (her first one!), but the race was postponed to Sunday due to some crazy thunderstorms and tornadoes in the forecast. This left us on Friday night with no set plans and no reason to go to bed early, so what did we do? Well, what would you do?

[113/365]

We wound up at her tiny town’s watering hole watching a really good singer-songwriter perform. He’d been scheduled to play the festival but of course his plans had to change due to the weather, too. Lucky for us, we got to hear some great music in a smaller, more intimate setting — completely unexpected and fun.

Bwa ha ha ha!

As was the impromptu after-hours party at the musician’s house. Let me tell you; I felt like a young whippersnapper again doing something like that — after hours? party? at the home of a musician dude I had never met before? Totally a Vintage KO thing to do.

I will not bother you with recapping the entire night, but I will tell you that the following things may or may not have been involved: Maker’s Mark, sunglasses, dueling Nikons, a Stevie Wonder dance party closely followed by a Dolly Parton sing-along, and three thirty-something ladies making their escape at the end of the evening in their fly-ass minivan.

Here are photos from the night, presented (for reasons I probably don’t need to explain*) with minimal commentary. You can click through to flickr, however, for more details.

Crowded Kitchen Bar

Dueling Nikons

Over-the-Shoulder Shot

Ray Bans

Stevie Wonder Dance Party

More about that 5K and the rest of our great weekend coming up next!

* Fine, I mean because of google**

** Would you want to google yourself and find that some chick had posted photos of your messy kitchen counter on her blog? No, I think you would not. Likewise I do not need his twelve*** crazed fans over here.

***I don’t mean that to sound disparaging; he’s just not super famous or anything. I do not rub elbows with the super famous, let me assure you.

The Boogie

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This weekend was one of my favorite local events, the Old 280 Boogie. We’ve gone to this every year so far, and it’s always a good time. Bands, merchants, and food vendors gather in the tiny town of Waverly (a few miles north of Auburn); the weather is almost always magically perfect; picnic baskets and lawn chairs and dogs abound.

The typically hippyish crowd reminds me comfortingly of the people I spent time with in college and of the entire population of the city where I went to grad school. In Auburn, where khaki shorts and Topsiders are the local uniform, this sort of thing cheers me greatly.

Here are a few snaps of the day. The entire flickr set is here.

Accordionist w/ Faraway Look
The Pine Hill Haints, whom you have heard on my holiday mix if I sent you one. I love this band.

The Woody Pines
The Woody Pines and their pint-sized fiddler.

The Crowd
A view of the crowd.

People in Hats
People in hats. I wish I’d had a hat. It was ridiculously sunny!

Shopping
Shopping the Standard Deluxe wares – they do great graphic design and screen printing and always have a huge supply of cool shirts for sale.

[107/365] Standard Deluxe / Old 280 Boogie
Flags featuring the Standard Deluxe truck logo. I love the play on the traditional Tibetan flags.

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And now, I am off to grade more essays. I hope you all had a great weekend!

2010: The First Hundred (& Four) Days in Photos

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Gloriously, my beloved MacBook was returned to me today, overnighted from the Apple service center.  I was pleased to find out that not only had they fixed the display problem, but they had also tested the machine and found a few other problems and fixed them too, free of charge.  They replaced the display panel, logic board, speaker, heatpipe, inverter, clutch, and some “miscellaneous parts.”  I really can’t complain!

I was happy as a bird in springtime to be reunited with my computer, and to be able, finally, to edit and post my recent daily photos. I had had the idea some time last week to make a slideshow of the first 100 photographs, but at the time I had only gotten up to number ninety-seven. Of course, now that the computer is back I have gone over one hundred. So I give to you here, in slideshow form, the first one hundred four days of 2010:

If you’d rather view the photo set itself without waiting out the slideshow, just click here.

In which I am Awkward

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Good evening, people of the internet. I have a million things to tell you about, many of them hopefully thoughtful and interesting, but none of those things are within this post. Oh, no. See, the thoughtful and interesting things are waiting to be thought out, whereas this post is probably going to turn into a brain dump of random stuff and anecdotes. What do you think about THAT? (Don’t tell me.)

Thing the First: My MacBook is in the shop this week (again, for the same problem with the display), which means I can’t edit and post any of my daily photos until I get it back. I have no photo editing business on my little Windows netbook. I have been so used to working on my daily photos that I feel like I’m going through photography withdrawal!

Speaking of withdrawal, Thing the Second: I have been cutting back on sodas lately. I never drink the full sugar ones (& haven’t for at least ten years), but of course even the diet ones are bad for you. And, apparently, addictive! I don’t buy soda for the house any more but I let myself have one a day while at school. Well. The other day, I was at home doing various domestic nonsense when the craving for soda came over me and I had to leave, go to the GAS STATION, and buy not one but two diet sodas. It was like a flashback to when I used to smoke and I had to have a cigarette and would absolutely murder anyone who stood in my way (after which I would of course dry them out, crush them up, roll them in a 1.25 AND SMOKE THEM). Man. Freaking DIET SODA. Who knew. I need to get off the stuff.

And speaking of drugs again, how about Thing the Third: my muscle relaxers. I got those for my back injury and had a bunch left over. Which was lucky, I thought to myself, when I happened to hurt my neck last week in yoga class. (Not very zen of me at all.) WELL. I took one at 8:00 in the evening, thinking it would be worn off in 8 hours and I would be well and fully drug free for school the following morning. Not the case, y’all. I was HIGH as HELL all day long. Just STONED. Hiiiiigh. I was all, “CAN ANYONE TELL I AM HIGH BECAUSE I THINK I AM ACTING NORMAL AM I TALKING TOO LOUD? MAN AM I THIRSTY. DO YOU HAVE ANY STEVIE WONDER? OR CORN CHIPS?”

And in news totally unrelated to this, Thing the Fourth: the kind of news I am not even sure I should tell you because it is so embarrassing. There is a guy I kind of have a crush on.  That is embarrassing enough, because what am I, twelve years old, with my “crushes”? But that isn’t the bad part.  I ran into him today and I was all proud of myself for actually having on a cute outfit and happy that I had just come from the bathroom where I had of course checked my teeth for any post-lunch stowaways so I knew I did not have a big chunk of spinach right in my chompers or anything. Luck was on my side! And then what did I go and do? I was talking about my plans to go swim laps (bonus point for me with my healthy and wholesome after-work plans) when I somehow managed to throw the phrase “eye hickey” into the conversation. EYE HICKEY. No, I was not high at the time. It was SOMEWHAT relevant (swim goggles, etc.), but Jesus. Eye hickey. Mortifying.

And because I can’t possibly end on that note, let me add on Thing the Fifth: a cautionary tale about swimming without your contact lenses. So I was headed to the pool to work out and I had smartly packed my swim bag and everything, but I had worn my glasses to school (I’ll update soon about this but I got the most bitchin’ new glasses) and didn’t have my contacts with me. To save time, I just went straight on to swim, sans corrective lenses. Even though I am very blind, I managed to get through just fine. I even managed to have a pleasant conversation with the dude in the lane next to me about counting laps, and his upcoming scuba (oh, excuse me, SCUBA) diving trip, and whatnot. Pleasant, kind of portly, middle-aged dude. At some point toward the end of my swim, though, I began to suspect that he had finished his workout and a second kind of portly, middle-aged dude had taken over the lane. I am so, so blind without my glasses, see. I wouldn’t have even thought this, except that SCUBA guy had been knocking out pretty fast-paced laps, and as I was leaving the guy who was there was just slowly “aqua jogging” down the lane. Sloooowly. Was it the same guy? Just doing his cool down, maybe? Without my glasses, and looking through my water-flecked goggles, I just couldn’t tell. So I tried to look his way as I was leaving and tell him to have a nice trip, but he gave me a look like “why are you staring at me,” so I wound up mumbling something like “have a good workout” as I awkwardly left. Seriously, NO IDEA if it was the guy I had been talking to the whole time or not. I have really poor eyesight. And, if you do, too, then by all means do not leave your contacts at home. Awkwardness will ensue. Eye hickeys, on the other hand? Can happen to anyone.