Moving

I decided it was time to start fresh. There’s a lot of history here that I need to move on from. I’m hoping that by leaving it behind I can actually move forward with running and writing again. So if you care to follow my journey you can now find me here …

Running Trail Tails

i’m ready to wake up

so my first race since the 100 attempt is next weekend. just a sprint tri. it hasn’t been the most stellar of training cycles but i’ve been getting it done. i’ve done a few bricks. including a long of 30 on the bike followed by four on the run. definite overkill for a sprint but short distance has never appealed to me. i also did a long ride of 40. during which i got stung by a bee … on my crotch! seriously. damn. painful!

last weekend a small group of us drove up to torreya. we’ve done the trip a few times but usually a tad bit later in the year for cooler temps. it wasn’t the most comfortable of camping experiences given the heat but it was fun nonetheless. the elevation up there is brutal! so different than the florida flat we know. longest run i did was 10 which given the heat and the hills i wasn’t too disappointed with.

i’m also trying to mix it up a bit. last night i did orangetheory for the first time. it was different but kind of cool. i’m not a fan of being stuck inside for a workout but it really wasn’t bad. not sure yet if i’ll sign up but i know i need some sort of strength training as a constant and maybe that’s a good start.

overall i’m excited about next weekend. i need that energy again. the camaraderie and competition of race day. i’m hoping it awakens something in me that’s been laying dormant for far too long.

blah

trying to come back from a mental “blah” is harder than from a physical injury! i’m seriously trying to find a rhythm but it ain’t easy. two weeks ago i managed to get in only two runs. of only four miles each. and one ride of 18. but i also had a last minute visit from the bunny which of course meant patron. lots of it. and the once or twice a year i get to see her makes the over drinking, over eating and under exercising worth it.

this past week was a little bit better. only two runs again but this time four and eight, a 20 mile ride and a first dip back in the pool. i have to admit i kind of missed the water. especially in the hell heat of summer we’ve been enduring. i had hoped to manage somewhere around 800 meters comfortably. but ended up making it a full 1600! barely. at 1,550 i heard the lifeguard whistle and knew the storm i was racing was about to beat me but she let me finish my down lap to complete the mile.

the goals this coming week. (yes goals. i think setting measurable markers again will help) are:

swim: two times 1600m each
bike: two times with a 25 mile long
run: three times with a 10 mile long

with at least one bike to run brick. the only problem i foresee facing is this …

we are, literally supposed to have solid rain for the next three days. i guess it’s the treadmill and bike trainer for me. blah.

 

accountability

it’s time to come back. to here and to the run. and since the two have always gone hand-in-hand, it’s my last ditch effort on accountability before i admit defeat. i have forgotten that i am an athlete. sure, i run. sometimes. a few miles here. 15 miles there. it’s inconsistent at best and i’m no longer ok with it.

back in january. good god it’s been that long since i’ve written. i ran the croom zoom 100 miler. correction, i attempted to run the croom zoom 100. i try not to call that day a failure. i made it further than the body had ever allowed. 62 miles. but i didn’t make it the 100 i had set out for and in my mind, the means i failed.

my knee was shot. i mean SHOT. and after a few weeks down i did the obligatory X-ray that found arthritis. bone on bone. minor but enough that i had to consider options. after months of insurance company battles that option ended up being a series of injections of a joint lubricant. since then i’ve struggled. physically i’ve been ok. not 100 percent but good enough. but mentally i’ve yet to regain what i lost.

but i’m ready. not sure exactly what for yet. i toy with the idea that i still want to do a full iron man. but i hate that i have yet to check the 100 off my bucket list. then there’s still that pesky sub-4 marathon. do i dare leave the comfort and security of the woods and hit the road again in quest of speed?

but i’ve waffled over the debate for too long. so a few days ago i made a commitment. a small one. just a sprint tri in october. but a commitment nonetheless. yesterday i got back on the bike for the first ride in more than a year. and this week comes the water. i’m also on the waiting list for AO. a 100 mile race in december. that one is a “we’ll see” at best. it’s a free race and i can say no at any time so no skin off my back to stay wait listed as long as i need to decide.

hopefully i can commit to things. the races and the words. i miss both.

price adjustment

we didn’t get the house. three bidders and we lost due to the need for contingency on the sale of mine. but but but … we got an even better house! that i LOVE! the location is unbelievable. two miles from mini-me’s school, half a mile from the bay run and a quick ride across the bridge to the weedon trails. the french doors out to the half-screened, half-open patio with a beautiful old tree in the middle and built-in benches are begging to be open in the cooler weather while the dogs romp in the huge back yard. and the character of a 1950’s bungalow fits us far better than the cookie cutter stucco of florida suburbia hell. i was so worried about losing this one i made an offer before mini and the trainer even stepped inside. thankfully, a few days later when they finally did, they loved it as much as i did.

now the juggle begins. our lives packed in PODS this weekend. mini to her dad’s and the trainer and i to denver on tuesday for a week. and we come back homeless. a temporary sarasota stay until we close on the new house on the 23rd. thanksgiving week. i figured the holiday would buy me a few days of unpacking and unwinding.

to say i’m a disaster right now is an understatement. chaos doesn’t suit me well. and the fact that we just did this a few months ago feels like really bad deja vu. but this time i’m excited about the destination. this time i feel like i’m going home.

homeless

after a mere nine days on the market, i accepted an offer on my house yesterday morning. for exactly what we expected.  incredible … yes! scary … hell yes! mostly because we now find ourselves in quite the predicament. the guy who bought mine wants to move quickly. as in end-of-the-month-close quickly. realistically, the realtor, who is unofficially helping me on the sell side, has filled us in on new laws that make a close that quick unlikely. but regardless, they want to push through as fast as possible.

so, we went to make an offer on the house we’ve had our eye on for the last couple of weeks. and lo and behold it already had an offer on it. but they hadn’t accepted yet and agreed to keep the table open for ours … and the third person who suddenly expressed interest as well. so now we find ourselves in a bidding war with a final decision supposed to made tomorrow evening.

best case, we win. but even then the chance of us closing as quickly as my buyer is slim to none. worst case, we lose. either way, we’ll be homeless. be it for a couple weeks or a couple months. we’ll make it work. stuff will go in storage. mini-me can stay with her dad. and i’ll commute up from the training house down south. an hour drive each way which won’t be fun but a temporary nuisance for a longterm solution!

I’m excited. i’m nervous. i’m totally freaking out. but i also trust it will all work out the way it’s supposed to. but cross your fingers for me just in case it helps!

wanna’ buy a house?

we’re moving … again!

it’s only been about four months since we moved back into the house i own in the ‘burbs. mini-me and i lived there for about six years before i rented it out and moved to get her into a better school district for middle and high school. but after she opted to go to a not-so-restricted-by-district high school our options opened up and we moved back to have more room for the addition of the trainer and his dogs. but we’ve very quickly come to hate it. cookie cutter subdivision living and suburbia mentality. bitchy neighbors and HOA bullshit. it’s not us. at all. and we want out.

last week for shits and giggles we decided to explore and just see if we could find something we liked, in the hood we want, in our price range. and go figure the first house we saw, we loved. but of course making an offer is contingent on getting an offer on mine since i need the equity in it for the down payment on something new.

we are going to start by listing for sale by owner to try and save on commission so that means cleaning, organizing, staging and photo shooting on my own. add that on top of a high-demand job that currently includes after-hours work in an online harvard certification course, 100 mile race training, teenage parenting and four dogs! and due to some staff changes in the trainer’s company he’s been mostly living and working hands-on back at the facility an hour south so it’s all on me! um yeah. if i’m not insane already i’m sure bound to be there soon!

then this morning they dropped the price on the house we want. i knew they would at some point. their realtor told ours they knew it was priced high which we hoped would buy us some time but looks like time is running out! hopefully we’ll be listed by tomorrow and with any luck we’ll get an offer quickly. current average time on market in my hood is 20 days so we’ve got a chance at making this work. cross your fingers for us!

crossing paths

i absolutely love that mini-me is running cross country again this year. she’ll never be fast and she’ll never love it but she’s found a comfort and enjoys the team. but i do not understand the logistics behind her meets. last weekend they ran in north port, an hour south, and this weekend new port richey, an hour northwest. i know we are somewhat limited on immediate vicinity trails but there are options. i let her dad take her last weekend. i had to get in a good long run. which i did. but tomorrow i have to go. which is fine. i want to go. but the question is how to get in my miles around hers. i’ve done it already. two weeks ago. explored new trails while waiting for her event but i only managed to get in 10 miles of a mile here and a mile there and as my training runs increase i’m not sure how to make it work.

tomorrow’s scheduled training run isn’t long. only 14 miles. so my hope is to get in at least seven before mini runs then piece together the rest between the others and the awards ceremony. i have never run this park and i have no idea what the trails are like but i’m looking forward to the exploration.

dog-ma

i have no idea why i’ve never really written about this but there is a facet of my life that sometimes adds a little crazy. for the past nine years mini-me and i have had a dog. a sweet, uncharacteristically calm border collie named kiva. we often thought about getting her a friend but really one dog seemed enough given our schedules.

My girl Kiva

but a couple years back we helped rescue a pit bull that some asshole tied up and abandoned outside the ice rink where mini skates. we couldn’t bring him home given the uncertainty of his behavior but we started visiting him at the county shelter where he was taken until we found a rescue group to pull him. we named him vinny, after vinny lecavalier of the tampa bay lightning (hockey. ice rink. get it?) and a month or so later he was adopted and off on a new life!

Vinny!

after that we kept visiting the shelter. it was after all right across from the ice rink. and though it was heart breaking to see hundreds of dogs in tiny kennels, many of who we knew wouldn’t ever get out alive, we figured that even the little bit of love we could bring them was more than many had ever seen. i still wasn’t sure about another full-time dog, but i started considering fostering and a few months later i was suckered by a huge pair of pleading eyes that begged to be saved.

Baylor

baylor, as we named him, was an emaciated boxer mix who was so scared he had to be carried out of his kennel the day we took him home. he was with us for about three months before a couple in town visiting saw us at an adoption event and today he’s an absolutely gorgeous specimen of a dog living the life in new jersey with his daddy.

next came dana. a sweet blue pit who was brought into the shelter without the litter of puppies she had obviously recently had. a shelter volunteer said she cried for them every night and she was unlikely to get adopted due to patches of demodex mange. she was still with us when i started dating the trainer who came with two dogs of his own and though i was close to foster failing, i knew that IF (and at that

Dana

point it was a big if) i ever wanted to foster again, i had to find her a home of her own so we would have room. it wasn’t long before the trainer was basically living with us and three permanent dogs in a small house was enough! the trainer posted her on his company Facebook page ~ it helps when your boyfriend owns a dog training company! ~ and a couple weeks later she found a new mommy, daddy and two little boys who adore her!

Hendrix and Ellie ~ the trainer’s dogs

suddenly i got the label of dog rescuer among my friends and a couple months later i got a text from a running buddy about a stray living in the parking lot of her office. the security guard who worked there was interested in keeping her but he was going out of town for a few weeks and she wouldn’t come close enough for him to catch her anyway. enter me and a bag full of wendy’s cheeseburgers. and that afternoon luna came home with us. a planned temporary stay until her new family was back in town.

Luna

This rescue brought to you by Wendy’s cheeseburgers

not long after luna left us, i got a text from a total stranger! a business acquaintance of luna’s daddy. she needed help with a seemingly aggressive pit behind her office building. again, armed with cheeseburgers i found myself in a situation that i feared would not have a fairy tale ending. but my apparent dog whispering charms calmed the fearful beast and that afternoon cali joined our pack. she ended up getting adopted by the newest employee at the trainer’s company. and suddenly we were back to three. phew. relax.

Cali

but i was addicted to watching a shelter facebook page. and one day i found myself keeping tabs on a pretty little tripod named dixie. i even went to visit her and was charmed in spite of her very distant demeanor. i didn’t take her home that day. i figured the allure of a good story would entice someone to adopt a three-legged dog, but everything changed when an assessor decided to label her “rescue only” (meaning she had to be pulled by a rescue and not adopted by an individual) citing no aggression but simply “areas of concern” as the reason.

Dixie

and then two days later she was #1 on the euthanasia list. PISSED. ME. OFF! i knew in my heart that dog was not aggressive. and a couple messages to a rescue i had some ties with allowed me to pull her with them as my backer. i literally had to stop mid trail run and call from the woods to ensure they didn’t put her down. and hours later she was on the way home with me.

as expected dixie was not aggressive at all. she loved our pack. she didn’t really give a crap about us humans though so we actively sought to find her a new home that had at least one other dog and it seemed we had found perfection when a young couple with another tripod took her home.

three days later, and with the 100 percent desire to give ourselves a little break, i was driving out of our subdivision when a puppy jumped out in front of my jeep. i was able to stop before hitting her and when i got out to check on her, she ran right to me. i looked around desperately for the owner who i was sure had to be running after her but hours later after knocking on multiple doors and putting up signs on every tree possible, charlie came into our lives. that one earned me the nickname the human dog bone from the trainer’s dad. so much for our break! we now had an eight month old puppy, that was not housebroken and had vicious diarrhea and a case of food aggression. it had been years since i’d had a puppy and the energy level, though adorable in so many ways, was exhausting!

Charlie

just as we were adjusting i got a call from dixie’s adopter. their other dog had attacked, unprovoked, and dixie was at the emergency clinic. thirteen stitches across her butt later, she was back with us as they knew they couldn’t risk her being hurt again.

so there we were. with five dogs. and when the trainer went out of town last week for a conference i seriously thought i was going to lose my mind. but this past saturday charlie got adopted by an amazing couple. and dixie … she’s suddenly become an absolute people lover who won’t let me walk past her without begging me to rub her belly or let her kiss me all over. we’re not certain what our plan is for her. we always come back to our previous decision that keeping a fourth means we limit our ability to ever foster or rescue again but damn that little tripod is growing on me! not to mention she kinda balances out my ocd 😉 …

the long way home

there’s only one way back here. i know that. i don’t write the happy. i’m too busy being happy. i don’t write the ordinary. there’s nothing exciting about that. but i write the run and maybe if i recommit to the miles, i can recommit to the words. or vice versa. i don’t care which. i just want both.

i had been contemplating another attempt at 100. not really seriously but that little nagging voice in the back of my brain starting asking “when” and i couldn’t shut the bitch up! so i started looking at races but seemed i had a reason an excuse for every possibility. too hilly. too far away. too soon. i knew it was all fear based. apprehension and self doubt that kept me from simply saying “why the hell not?”

then it happened. A2 made the announcement that, for the first time ever, croom zoom was approved to add a 100 mile option. and just like that i ran out of excuses. local. some of my favorite trails. early january. best race director. and multiple friends willing and able to pace and crew.

the race is jan. 2, 2016. that gives me a little more than 16 weeks to train. maybe not ideal for a 100 but given my long runs of late have been in the 20 mile range i’m not far behind what a training schedule should be.

but the obstacles are there. mini-me’s cross country meets are typical on saturday mornings diminishing my prime running hours. and a back and forth between here and there with the trainer takes me from the comfort of my home trails and puts me where i’m not familiar. but i have to do this. for the love of the run and the love of the written word.

i’m coming back … by way of a hundred mile journey.