Squirrels and Upgrades!

The squirrels were everywhere this morning. EVERYWHERE!!!









On my short 2.5 mile run, I saw somewhere between 10 - 15 squirrels...many dangerously crossing the road. Most were foraging in the grass and then hopping up to trees. I don't know if you can tell anything from what the winter is supposed to be like from the squirrels, but they were definitely active. I wonder if the squirrels that live in the nicer neighborhoods have nicer nuts. Gourmet nuts... that come already roasted.

And on a complete separate note, I FINALLY upgraded my design programs.

After much frustration on not being able to uninstall CS2 that~ eh hem~ came with the computer, I ended up talking to Adobe Customer Support for an hour as we cleaned out anything CS from my machine. Then low and behold, I was finally able to install CS3. And I've successfully opened Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign. We'll just see what bugs I come across tomorrow, all in time for a huge rush project for my infamous Client NoTimeline. Most importantly, begging agencies to save down their files again after I already asked and feeling like I'm a big pest is finally over. Right now the Adobe updater is running, and things like "Patch Device Central" drives keep mounting to my desktop then disappearing. I have faith in the Adobe gods. I'm already for CS4, whenever that one comes out. Bring it. Cha ching.

Lately

I've been running well and feeling stronger, post food poisoning. I know it sounds crazy, but I didn't just bounce back from that. Maybe 5 years ago I would have.

Last Friday I went to Deerfield Park to run the paved lap trail that is new. It's 1.5 miles so I was going to do just 2 laps and see how I felt. It was hot and muggy, so I thought maybe I'd try the trail in the woods instead. Greg and I used to mountain bike there, and I remember it being fun. I only spent a mile in the woods before I figured it wasn't a safe idea and was back out on the path to do a hot muggy loop. The trail in the woods is awesome though- very hilly and fun, always have to watch the ground. It took me back to the mountain biking days. I told Greg how fun it was and he said we'd both go in the spring. See, my goal is to be at a pace that Greg can run with by springtime. Still won't be his pace, but it won't be so painfully slow that he could WALK and keep up with me! :) At the end when I was walking to my car, I saw these HUGE bugs dead on the pavement.











By huge I mean at least 2 inches long. It was like a movie- they were huge and as I kept walking I saw more and more... Right about the time I thought I wouldn't want to meet one of those alive, I looked up and there were about 4 in the air. One flew at my head. I ran to the car and fumbled to unlock it so I could get in as the thing followed me. Turns out they are Cicada Killer Wasps, and supposedly are harmless to humans unless provoked (grabbed, stepped on etc) but I was too freaked out to find out.

I didn't run over the weekend, but we did some yard work. Last night I ran about 4 miles and felt pretty good. My GPS kept going in an out though, so I'm not sure what my pace was. I know that I felt really great the first 2 miles, then felt like it was difficult the second 2 to keep up the pace, but I did. I have found lately that I'm not liking out-and-backs. I have always preferred a loop and once I determined I could in fact do a loop of sorts from my house, now that's all I want to do. It's mental. This weekend I think I'll drive out to Miami Whitewater which has an 8 mile loop and do that. Though it is flat and I like to do the long runs on flat surfaces, I'm so tired of the bike trail. I'm also tired of not having a running partner. Maybe I should drag the chunky Dexter-dog outside once in a while!

Nothing to See Here

I've decided that my blog is a bit boring. So I'm going to try to take more pictures to liven it up...which will also get me taking more pictures (which is fun, though a photographer I do not claim to be).

I have nothing to say right now, but for the sake of having something to look at...
Here's a random pic of a baby Starling that was in our front boxwood one day when I came home.














And here's baby Dexter, a few weeks aftere we got him (taken by Dad at Thanksgiving). Aw, the memories...

Staycation is Over

Vacation week is over. Now it's back to work and routine.

Some highlights:

Bodies Exhibit was awesome. Very interesting. A must see. Kinda gross, but more fascinating than anything. Proof that a 3-D look at things makes a big impact.

Garage - is CLEAN! Yay!

"Basement"- is ORGANIZED! Yay again! The bike is all set up on the trainer and you can walk freely to everything in the room.

Food Poisoning - SUCKS! Had it Wednesday night. No yay for this one. Chicken Scampii at the Olive Garden wreaked havoc on the GI tract. Without sharing too many details: both ends, up all night, chills and hot flashes, headache, dehydration, severe stomach cramping and pain... I'd rather have the flu. Was finally feeling normal Saturday...3 days later.

Running - Due to the food poisoning, that didn't happen as planned. Really a bummer since the weather was in the cool 80's all week too. I ran Tuesday in the rain (storming) for 6 miles and that has been the last time. Will try to run tonight, taking it easy. I know I'm all recovered inside, but get tired quick still. And this is my first full day back to work, so I might need a nap!

Food poisoning aside, it was a great time off. Good to spend time with Greg and just relax with the dogs. I think they were a little upset this morning, after figuring out that I was leaving. They kept following me and would sit down, looking at me. (I think they conspire with these "sad puppy" looks they do.) I feel refreshed. Maybe I can do this again in another month! :)

Vacation!

...or should I say "staycation" – the overused term defining everyone staying home/local for vacation due to sucky gas prices.

Whatever you call it, Greg and I are enjoying some free time away from work to relax and catch up with friends and family. We will be traveling up to Perrysburg, which will cost apprx. $60 for my car at the recent prices. :) We'll be driving to Centerville at some point also, not nearly as far or tank-taxing (about 38 miles vs. 180). And one drive probably to the Bodies Exhibit down at Union Terminal (about 25 miles). Staycation here we come!

Other plans: yard work, seeing babies and visiting friends (and their babies), long bike ride(s), running, meeting with finance guy, celebrating 7 years of marriage!, finishing the Basement Project, fixing the scooter and perhaps getting temps, and somewhere in there just relaxing.

There are a million other things we could do also, but it's only a week. Yikes.

Week of 7/21 - 7/27

Monday: rest
Tuesday: 3.5 from studio on the trail, alternated 1:30 speedy and easy
Wednesday: 11.4 bike from house.
and then... the week fell apart....
Thursday: exhausted. walked 1.5 m with dogs
Friday: 0 - family came into town. I left work late and couldn't get a run (or just a moment to myself) in
Saturday: 0 - up early for the Sunglass Sale and then at King's Island all day. Hanging with family the rest of the evening. To bed before the fireworks went off!
Sunday: 0 - exhausted. Family left. Napped. Went back to studio for more work. Yippee.

So I suppose these kind of weeks just happen and it's OK that my training was completely derailed. There really wasn't much I could do about it. Here's to a better week this week! And then the week after this, I'm attempting vacation! Yay!!

Week of 7/13 - 7/19

Good week as far as sleeping and training goes.

Sunday: 14.5 hilly miles bike
Monday: walked 2 miles with the dogs
Tuesday: 3 mile run, fartlek
Wednesday: 0
Thursday: 30 minute run- walked a lot, it was HOT
Friday: 0
Saturday: 1 hour and 20 min run. I walked a few times so I wouldn't be so tired later. We have a lot to do today!

Sunday ride

Last Sunday Greg and I went to Loveland and then out the other side of it, heading east. I had gone exploring for food one day out this direction (there's not much in Loveland for lunch) and thought, "wouldn't this be a nice place to ride my bike?". After traveling a few moments from Loveland, you are suddenly in the country. AND, the road lines disappear! One theory I have concerning road bike safety is that cars are much more willing to pass you with a lot of room between you and them when they don't have those pesky lines trying to keep them on the right side of the road. Also means the road doesn't have as much traffic.

So we parked at a church and started riding. For some reason, the "country" is synonymous with "flat" to me – probably because of where I grew up. Quite wrong in this area. I don't think we ever traveled on any 0% grades. It was hills all the way. Some were even quite large hills with fun descents and some hard climbs. Would have been good to train out here for Caesar's Creek. I had wanted to do 19 miles (in honor of my 19 mile Ride-of-Error the previous weekend) but after all the hills, we ended with 14.5 and felt great.

The Loveland bike trail is awesome, but going flat and straight in the woods gets old. I'm happy to have found an alternative place to ride on roads. And we saw 6 other cyclists (3 pairs) while we were out! So hopefully that means people in the area are used to seeing bikes on the road.

We saw a lot of cool houses and it was a gorgeous, sunny day. A coyote ran out in front of us toward the end of the ride. Came out of nowhere (well, came out of the corn field) and skipped across the road, watching us warily as it headed through the next field. Look out, chickens!

Caesar's Creek Tri and Du race report

DNF
(did not finish)

A beautiful day does not necessarily make for a beautiful race.

The first 5K never felt right. I felt I was working way too hard for what it was. I was already a little peeved when I got to the first transition area. I started to gulp down my clif bloks and got on my bike. I don't know what my T1 time was because the results and timing (and overall organization) of this event was all messed up. People were taking the wrong chips, body marking was not consistent and due to a "malfunction" in the timing mats, we don't have T times...the only thing that halfway mattered to me when this was all said and done. Oh well.


















The bike starts up hill, and I was having a hard time eating my bloks and breathing up the hill. I waited to finish them after I got on Rte. 73, the first main road outside of the park. Then, I turned right.

I wasn't supposed to turn right.

After about 6 miles, I was 100% sure I took a wrong turn and was doing the Olympic distance course (25 miles) instead of the Sprint course (12 miles). The course wasn't familiar (I have done it before) and I only saw "OT" on people's legs (olympic triathlon). No S's for sprint. But at 6 miles, if I turned around, I'd be doing 12, then the 12 I was supposed to do? I didn't know what to do. I thought about just asking a cop at an intersection for the quickest way back, but I didn't want to ride roads not on the course that might not be bike friendly all by myself.

So I went back and forth between being highly highly upset at myself for ruining my race, and trying to just be happy to be out there and enjoy the weather and just do a long bike ride. But a HUGE hill was the final crusher of my spirit. At that point I was deep in thought about when-where-how I had taken a wrong turn. I wasn't paying attention and then all of a sudden there was a wall of asphalt in front of me. I wasn't in the right gear, wasn't prepared and almost fell trying to unclip before I fell over. Walking up a hill in bike shoes isn't fun. Plus so many riders passed me huffing and puffing and I felt like a loser. I'm not competitive enough to race, but now I wasn't even doing it at all. One girl asked me if I was OK and I said yes. She kept looking at me so I felt a need to explain and said I just couldn't make it. She said, YES YOU CAN! YOU'RE OUT HERE, AREN'T YOU! So I got encouraging reprimanding. At this point I figured I could get back on my bike, though the hill wasn't over. So I did. And then the back and forth being mad being sad continued.

Suddenly I was on Oregonia, which is the final road of the loop I should have been on. Not only did I miss a turn right in the beginning, taking me on the Olympic route instead of the Sprint route, now I (thankfully) missed the turn that would have kept me on the Olympic route. What was wrong with me today??!! It was a good mistake though. I only ended up doing 19 miles instead of 24. The Olympic and Sprint distances share part of the course. Apparently I did one of their extra loops, but missed the turn for the second one. So all the people that had passed me before...were passing me again. Kind of surreal. That's how I figured out I missed the 2nd offshoot loop.

Greg was worried I had wrecked and was all done by the time I rode into T2, head hanging low. I was so mad. I started the final run but decided there was no point since I was feeling like crap mentally and physically and my times would be SO off after having done 19 miles when I should have done 12. I stormed over to the race tent and handed in my chip. They still have me listed as just last place instead of DNF.

So, lesson here is to pay a lot more attention on the bike. I'm always worried about cars, but I should have been more concerned with following arrows I guess. I still don't know how I did it. I'm done with du's the rest of the season because I'm just not in good enough shape for them to be very fun. I'm just going to focus on running, and bike for fun/cross-training.

I should also mention that Greg did really well. I felt bad tainting the day with such a horrible experience while he did so well. It really sucks that their timing was so messed up and we can't see his splits correctly.

Runs with Cicadas

This is the year for the cicadas in our next of the woods.












They are everywhere in Loveland. I listen to their undulating loudness all day through my closed studio windows. I went for a run on the trail the other day and seriously considered turning around. Not because they were flying at me, but out of fear of damaging my hearing! It was so loud on some sections of the trail that I felt as if I was at a Cicada rock concert in the front row right by the speaker!!

The pictures are of one that sat patiently for a photoshoot on my hostas. Probably munching away. I think they are fascinating bugs. I don't mind them if I have control over their bumblingness, but if they come at me uninvited....kinda freaky. Here's the rundown of our cicada happenings so far:

1. Dexter LOVES cicadas. As in crunch crunch crunch. I remember when the cicadas were in the lower part of Cincinnati a few years ago, cicada recipes were shared on TV... so I guess I'm not worried about the dog popping them like m&m's. Makes for nasty doggy-gas though.
2. Driving with the windows down is not a great option. I was driving home from work when one ricocheted off my driver side mirror across my face and landed on my seat just below my headrest. Turning around to find a huge cicada by your neck while driving isn't fun. I flicked it into the back, where it buzzed the rest of the way home, caught in the back door's pocket. I got a stick and got it out when I got home. I can definitely see how people wreck because of these things.
3. They can hold on to a car perhaps up to 40 mph? Greg had to pull over before he got on the highway one morning to flick one off his sunroof. Otherwise, the chunk o' bug would have probably decided to hitch a ride inside after he opened his sunroof. It held on from our house to somewhere on Fields Ertle... good grip.
4. Tis the season to bike with your mouth shut. We went on a bike ride last weekend and didn't hit any. They seem to stay in the trees along the trail. I have swallowed a lot of bugs on the bike trail and can't imagine how badly a cicada would choke you! I did have a big bug go down my jersey on the ride, but it was a false alarm - just a typical along-the-trail flying bug.
5. Dead cicadas start to smell if there are enough of them. This we learned from our bug man. On our street, you can kind of smell an odor that reminded me of if you get a dead mouse in your wall: dead animal smell. Our bug man said it was all of the dead cicadas decomposing. That's gross. There are enough dead bugs to stink up the neighborhood? That's what I call a plague.
   

I don't know how much longer they will be around, but I've had my fill. And so has Dexter. I think he's gained some weight from his newfound snack.

If a Tree Falls in the Forest, Does Steph Hear It?

Yes, if she's out for a run in that forest.

Saturday a.m. was my "long" run – I'm starting at 1 hour since it's been quite awhile since I've ran over 6 miles. It was raining and cool, much better than Thursday's run. Exciting events worth mentioning: I saw another deer and heard a tree fall. The tree was loud – sounded like gun shot, and I wasn't sure what it was at first. It sounded like it was on the other side of the river. Today Greg and I went for a bike ride and there was a fallen tree across the trail. Seemed too far away for what I heard though. After our bike ride we had breakfast at Paxton's. It was very nice and relaxing.

6/2 - 6/8
Monday off
Tuesday 30 min run
Wednesday biked 30 min inside during a big storm
Thursday 45 min shuffle-run due to heat
Friday off
Saturday 1 hour run in the rain
Sunday biked 45 min- 13 miles- anywhere from 14 - 18 mph

Bam! Heat Wave

So yesterday I think it broke 90º... a little warm and very muggy for the beginning of June. A perfect day to do a tempo exercise, right? - cue annoying that-answer's-wrong buzzer sound -
And if this is any indication of how the summer is going to be... well... yikes.

I was just supposed to do a 45 min run with a 15 minute tempo pace in there. After warming up (and I do mean warming up) I tried to pick up the pace, but I could only hold it for 6 mintues. I was dying. So the tempo run turned into a modified speedish session? and I ran two more sets lasting 5 minutes at my pace, walking in between. Then I shuffled home for another 15 minutes. Grueling, even though most of it was in the shade.

I took a cold shower and then laid on the floor with an ice pack on my head. I felt fine, but the ice pack just felt so good! The heat really isn't a problem for me, once I'm used to it. But I'm obviously not used to it yet.

Tomorrow's run (thankfully just long and slow) will have to be done early while it's still somewhat cool. Summer is here, despite what the calendar says!

Tri for Joe - race pics!

A HUGE thanks to Daryl for taking all of these awesome photos from the Tri for Joe! When do you ever have such personal coverage during a race?!?! He seemed to be everywhere on the course snapping shots.

While Daryl took a lot of great pictures documenting the entire event, here are a few of each of us during the different parts of the event.
Without further ado...

Group shot when we got to the race. It had just finished raining, and it was cold.













Greg getting his race face on.













Paula at the Swim start. She swam while Greg and I did the first 5K.



















According to Dayrl who watched the swim start, the sound effect to go along with this picture was "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" because the water was only 64º. Oh and I went to high school with the girl in the bright yellow cap. Random.

























Greg ending the first 5K.





















Greg starting the bike.







































Paula during the bike.






























Me during the bike.














Paula doing her 5K.


















Finishing!

Sore.

The weather has warmed and there is so much to do... which equals Sore Weekends.

For one thing, I am hunkering down to train for duathlons this summer. With Greg's help and a good book I bought (appropriately named Training Plans for Multisport Athletes) I feel like I know what I'm doing. I'm giving it a shot at least.

And then there is the yard. On Saturday, I planted some flowers, then we mowed, cleared out the front beds of the dead daffodils and gigantic weeds, and we got our old landscaping stones from our neighbors who thought they wanted them but then didn't use them (and now we are going to use them). All of this in one day made my hamstrings scream.

No yard work today, but I did run. Loosened me up a bit. Trick for sore hamstrings: use a rolling pin to massage them. Looks ridiculous but really helps.

So this is what the week's training looked like:
Monday Bashful Ostrich 5K
Tuesday off
Wednesday 3 mile run
Thursday Tae Bo video (yeah. um. wanting some variety in the training. it is pretty hard.)
Friday 30 min on bike trainer
Saturday yard work galore
Sunday 30 minutes easy run

Harley in School

This was the 3rd week at Beginner Obedience for Harley. While she is doing pretty well, this most recent class session was chaos. Of course having gone through the class already with Dexter, my views are tainted a bit. But the instructor was getting very mad at the class, so I don't think it's just me.

Harley's worst subject is Staying Quiet. (This shouldn't be a surprise to any of you.) She's extremely excited for the first chunk of class, barking randomly as well as every time we switch directions while walking in the ring. She's eager to go go go! I had to give her the lime juice treatment in the beginning of class. I think lime juice worked better than the lemon juice– there were less mmmmmm this is tasty! licks following the squirt into her mouth. As for the barking at home progress, I think what we'll have to do is make Harley lay down when people come in and make sure she doesn't bark by pinning her and squirting lime juice in her mouth. It's a lot of work and is going to take a lot of practicing.

I kind of yelled at another dog...er...owner?...or at least in the direction of the owner via her dog? It was stressful. This woman wouldn't make her dog do anything, she didn't say boo to it the entire class, and it was being aggressive toward Harley during the sit-stay exercise. So a big NO DOG! came belting out of me. People proably think I'm a b!$*# but I just didn't want a fight.

Over all, Harley is having a good time. Greg comes and watches (and laughs at the chaos) and says she looks completely content and happy to be there.