BRRRR!

Hey guys! Two more days until my birthday! I love having a birthday on a Saturday this year, I would hate to be at work right now for my birthday! I still don't know what Brent has planned for my big day, he's been pretty undercover with it and that's fine with me.

I woke up to a VERY cold morning today! On the news they had said a cool front was coming through and that the high would be in the mid 70's today, but they didn't say that would be at 1 am! I walked out with Pippin for our 5:30 am walk and it was SO windy. It knocked us both back instantly and we shared that look of 'Wow! Do we really want to do this??' I think the rain had just ended, but there was still a light mist. The last few days have been perfect, nice and cool with a great breeze. We've been enjoying it as much as possible, which basically means we get to sit outside for a quick lunch and then I stare out the windows during hella long budget meetings. However, I was NOT enjoying the weather this morning! We made our first lap and met one of our neighbors heading out for her morning dog walk who was even more surprised by the chill in the air than I was. I've been wearing a light jacket every morning since the daylight has turned to pitch black, but she was in shorts and a T-shirt! I wished I had my heavy jacket though. This is probably crazy to those of you in the north - the temp was around 55 but that's friggin cold around here. The 'perfect' weather earlier this week was low 80's which is a huge change from the high 90's we've had all summer. Anyway, we ate outside today at lunch and even though I sat in the sun and was wearing a light sweater I had chill bumps the whole time. (It was prob high 60's, but the breeze was cool.)

So, I knew when we headed out for our run at 8 tonight it would be pretty cool. I think the temperature was probably around 60. I drug my running tights out of the back of the closet and off we went. It's so funny because I know nights like this back in March or Feb would have caused me to pull my running tanks and shorts out of the back of the closet! We had decided on a nice, slow tempo 5 mile ton tonight. We stayed together the whole way, averaging around 10 minute miles, chatting about our days and just life in general. It was a perfect run - good company, nice, even pace, and great weather. The weekend is supposed to be perfect as well. Brent seems VERY interested in what Saturday's weather forecast was. He SAID that was because we're planning to go to Dog Day on Saturday afternoon if there's time in-between our activities. All I know is that we have 3 reservations/appointments and that one is very early in the morning. I'm so excited!!

That's about it from here! Good luck to everyone on their races and long runs this weekend, and a SPECIAL good luck to 'the other' Brent who is running his first marathon this weekend up in beautiful MN! He's going to do GREAT!!

Rachel

Exercise -

Wed - 1 mile am walk with Pippin, 40 minutes elliptical trainer, 20 minutes toning/stretching
Thurs - 1 mile am walk with Pippin, 5.3 mile run, 20 minutes yoga/toning

Autumn Bliss

Whew! It was a gorgeous day here in TN. Work was HECTIC but I managed to get in and out in just under 10 hours. I squeezed in a quick 20 minute lunch break around 1:30 and sat outside on the picnic tables (aka smokers hangout. Where are the non-smokers supposed to go to enjoy the outdoors without getting 2nd hand lung cancer??) It was beautiful! A strong breeze and nice cool temps made it the perfect day to NOT be at work!! Tonight we had some baked salmon and steamed veggies for dinner, it (the salmon) smelled a lot better than it tasted. After dinner settled we geared up for an 8 pm run. It felt GREAT! The first mile or so was actually a little chilly and I started thinking about all the great fall running clothes I haven't worn in months! I had a great pace tonight - I ended up doing 5.5 miles in right around 47 minutes - I knocked a little over half a minute off my fastest time at this distance. Two miles (mile one and three) were slightly over 9 minutes - Mile 1 was 9:08 (warm-up) and Mile 3 was 9:01. It would've been under 9 but Brent yelled out for me to stop so he could let me know he was headed back to the house b/c his stomach was a little under the weather. Mile 4 and 5 were at 8:22! The last half mile was at a 7:53 pace!! It felt great! I love the days when you just feel like you could fly and all is well with the world.

That's it for today!

Rachel

Tues - 2/3 mile am walk with Pippin (cut short so I could get to work early), 5.5 mile evening run, 2/3 mile pm walk with Pippin, 20 minutes yoga/toning (focus:upper body)

Rita Rita!

Hey guys! Hope your weeks have all started off well. Outside of the race, the rest of our weekend was pretty vanilla. Sat afternoon we got a LOT done around the house. Working for a book distributor we've accumulated a LOT of books. I love reading, but there is a limit to how many books you can have! We've given a ton away to the library, and have more to sort through. We had also accumulated a ton of magazines as well. Sure, we could probably sell some of them on Ebay for $30 bucks but I'd much rather just get them out of the house. So, we took them to the recycle bin and really made a showing at getting rid of some of the CRAP we have accumulated.

Sat night we went out with P & S. We ate dinner at House of Kabob over in a very ethnic, international part of town. The food was very good. It's a pretty small place, and one of those nice, off-the-beaten path places that isn't crowded, loud or commercialized to death. Afterwards S decided she was in the mood for some Krispy Kreme's so we detoured there. The "Hot, Fresh" sign was on, and someone had told me Friday that mans you get a free one. In my bigger days I have been there MANY times when that sign is on and they never gave me one. Oddly enough, Sat night the VERY friendly waitress gave us all free ones. If you remember my post from Friday, JUST the day before, I had vowed that I really didn't want to eat doughnuts ever again. I held STRONG and didn't eat my free one. Brent ate it later. =) Especially after watching them roll down the hot oil and massive sugar fountain line I really didn't want that gross, inflated feeling. So, I was proud of me! =) Afterwards we went to a mini-golf place and played a game. I am terrible at stuff like this (Pippin could beat me at bowling, I'm sure!), so I came in last, P was first, and Brent was second. It was fun, and I don't get overly competitive at stuff like this. (Running, on the other hand....)

On Sunday's post I mentioned the strong winds we were having. Rita (or what was left of her) was coming through. Rita is not a name you can say just once, it sounds so much better in the duplicate - Rita Rita!! Anyway, we were under a tornado watch all day, and had lots of gusty winds. Right when it started sprinkling I decided to head out for a 4 miler. I told Brent to come and get me if the rains picked up or it started really storming. Anyway, once I got out there the rain slacked off and the wind felt great. It's VERY rare to be able to go out for a run at 2 in the afternoon around here and not melt in the heat! Sometimes the wind would really knock you in the gut and I'd have to hold on to my hat so it wouldn't fly into traffic - but it was great! I was in the mood for a slower run, so the wind helped me keep that goal! I ended up running 4.8 miles in 42 minutes, which was actually faster than I thought I was going. I'm not sure if my Garmin got the distance totally right since the GPS kept falling out due to the stormy weather. When I got back we took Pippin for a walk, but the rains picked back up so we cut it short. He's not crazy about wind so he was running around a little spastic (on his leash). The rains really picked up around 6 and it was still pouring when we went to bed. Pippin HATES the rain and when he saw me put on my raincoat to take him out he ran away from me and hopped in his bed. He's getting so smart!

Today was another long day at stupid work. My boss had asked me to come in earlier, so I skipped the morning walk with Pippin and promised him an evening walk instead. After a little over 10 hours at work I decided I really didn't give a flip anymore and that what I really wanted to do was play racquetball. If you can't get your job done in 10 hours obviously expectations are set all wrong. So, we came home, had some dinner and headed back out to the company gym. I spent a little time on the elliptical while Brent lifted weights and we headed down to the court. I'm new to actually playing the game, and it's been over a MONTH since we've gotten to go to the gym due to stupid work. After warming up we started an official game. It was neck and neck for a while, then I pulled ahead 7-3. I held him off for a while, then it was 10-7, my favor. Brent made a big surge (usually he hits it to the corner, or whacks it super hard - which freaks me out) and he was up 14-12. We remained scoreless for a little while, then he finally beat me 15-13. It was a good game, lots of fun and a good way to cross train! When we got home we took Pips for his promised walk and he even got to play with his fave lab, Abby.

I still don't know what all Brent's got planned for my b-day on Saturday. He's told me everything from pink elephants to a mariachi band. I told him all I need is a good cake (which is SO true!)

That's enough for today!

Rachel

Exercise Log-
Sun - 4.8 mile run, 2/3 mile walk with Pippin, 20 minutes yoga/toning (focus:thighs)
Mon - 11 minutes elliptical, 30 minutes racquetball, 1 mile pm walk with Brent and Pippin, 20 minutes toning (focus:abs)

Lucky #27

Hey guys! I hope you've all had a great weekend so far, and luckily it's not quite over yet. It looks like we're going to get some nasty weather this afternoon (thanks to the remnants of Rita) but hopefully it'll stay west of us. It's very windy this afternoon and we're under a tornado watch. It actually feels great (right now) and I was hoping to go for a 4-5 mile run this afternoon (weather permitting). Brent just said 'It looks like a great afternoon for a run' and I perked up and said 'Yeah, I was planning to go after we eat lunch' and he started laughing and said he was just kidding because the weather is so unpredictable right now. Oh well, we'll see! My fave movie is the Wizard of Oz so it looks like I could easily get swept up this afternoon and be a part of the sequel!

Ok, on to yesterday's 15K. If you've read my posts from this week and Brent's posts you'd know we weren't mentally prepared, and from all the junk I've had this week I wasn't feeling physically prepared either. The race started at 7:30 am down at Shelby Park, right in downtown Nashville on the Cumberland River. I always love to race there - this is where we did our very first 5K in 2004, and also where I won my very first divisional award this past summer. It's also where we bring Pippin to the dog park. It's in a great urban area, and it reminds me so much of where I grew up in Memphis. There are always big family cookouts taking place there and lots of real people just hanging out and enjoying the park. (Unlike the ritzier parts of town full of BMWs and bratty kids on bikes that probably cost more than anything we own. That's just not me.) This race was being hosted by the Nashville Striders, our local running club, and they always do an amazing job with races. If they're hosting it you know it's going to go off without a hitch. So, we got up at 5:45, had our bagel with PB, and headed out at 6:45. (BTW, I've found that Thomas Bagels now makes these little mini-bagels that end up being the same size as a half a bagel. They are great!!) When we got to Shelby Park we were pretty surprised at how many people were there, they were having a 15K and 5K (which started 30 minutes later). We had to walk a 1/4 mile up from where we parked to get our numbers and then drop off our swag bags and T-shirt back at the car and walk back up to the start! All of that walking ended up with us arriving back at the start line right as we were called to the start line. We got in the mid-back of the start. I didn't want to get in with a crowd starting out too fast since this would be a much longer race than a 5K and it was Chip timed anyway. We had found a course map on the Striders page the night before, so we knew what to expect. The run started out with a big loop around the lake, then back down and into the woods. The 5Ks we've done there go out into the woods for just a brief spot, but this run would go all the way down to a big circular turn around and then back and up to end right below an elevated train track. The trail runs right next to the Cumberland river, but you can only see it every once in a while because they've left the trees and vegetation. So, for about 8 of the 10 miles we ran on a course with grass and vegetation on both sides - which was pretty boring. About 4 miles in I caught up with someone else right around my same pace and we went back and forth for a while until I passed a race walker. He was pretty annoying - he'd speed up when I got close and then slow back down. At this point the race leaders were starting to meet us on their way back in to finish, so it was getting tougher to pass people. I finally just sped up and passed him. I hate to do stuff like that and break my pace, burning extra energy, but he was driving me nuts. For the first 4 miles I held my pace around 9:30. Around mile 5 I started to speed up, and took my pace down to between 8:45-9:30 for the remaining 4.3 miles. I started picking people off one by one on the return race in. It was a really hot, bright day and a lot of people were starting to bonk. I was so glad I had my Fuel Belt. I had mixed one bottle with gel, so I had some of that around mile 5 and then again around mile 8 and that really helped the old legs. I felt really good, and kept picking up more speed as I knew we were getting close to the end. No one passed me after mile 4 and I was REALLY proud of that!! This race had a tricky end - from reading the maps I knew once we came out of the woods it would be a very short distance to the finish. There was a guy who had walked back out and yelled out 'You're almost there!'. Sometimes I need a legend on how close 'almost' is for these people - 1/2 mile, 1/4 mile?? Anyway, I kicked it up a notch and just as I did so here came the girl I had gone back and forth with around mile 4! Where did she come from??? I think she had tailed me the whole time, and then saw this as her big chance! Another guy was hot on her heels so the three of us sprinted like it was a 5K to the finish line. She beat me, but I beat him. When I stopped I felt like I was either going to puke, pass out, or maybe even both. I think a combo of the heat and the stupid sprint to the finish after the long race did me in a bit. At that same time, another girl who had just finished collapsed on the ground and they started shouting for doctors and people with cell phones. I've seen more people collapse at the races this summer!! They ended up calling 911 and took her off in a stretcher. There weren't a lot of water stops on the race, and the sun was really beating down so I think she probably got a little dehydrated and overheated. I finished in 1:25.46! I am very proud of that! My overall pace ended up at 9:14. My goal was to come in under 1:30 and a pace around 9:30 so I'm really pleased. I wandered around lost and hot and found a bottle of water and a banana and procured a bench in the shade to watch for Brent. His projected finish was going to be 1:40, so I started making my way over to the finish line around that time. I looked back at the clock - 1:39, then looked back to where the runners path was and here he came!! I tried to take a pic with my camera phone but this lady walked right in front of me as he came around the bend! Grrrr! Anyway, he had a great race and will have his post up about it later today. No prizes for us, there were a lot of great runners out there!! The winning pace was 5:24!!!

About the title - my race number was #27! I think that's pretty cool because this was my last race as a 27 yr old! My 28th birthday is this Saturday, and I can't wait!! I'm not sure what Brent has planned - he's being very mysterious. I've guessed everything from swimming with dolphins to shopping for new hats but he's just not letting me in on the secrets. All I know is he said I have to get up early and he has a full day planned. For his birthday back in May I took him for massages and manicures and then had a surprise party for him at the local indoor rock climbing place. I'd love a good massage!!!

Well, I think I may head out for a run!

Rachel

Exercise -
Sat - 15K run

One long week

Man, it feels like forever since I've posted. This has been one long week short on sleep and running, and long on work. I think I've mentioned before this is my 'budget season', but I swear the stupid budget is the only thing I've worked on since I started this retarded job in May. I hate budgets and numbers and I really don't want to do anything work related anymore. So, all this to say most days this week I worked 10-13 hour days and that doesn't leave a lot of time for anything else, does it??? I did fit in a 5 mile run Tues night. I didn't get out 'til late, and Brent was still not up to running with his injuries. I gave Brent my path plan and an estimated finish time so he'd know when to start the rescue mission if I never showed back up. It was a really tough 5-miler, I was a full two minutes slower than my time on last Tuesday. With all the stress I just didn't have the energy to give the pavement a proper spanking, I was just glad to be moving and not sitting on my rear staring at a computer screen. There weren't very many people out that late, but an albino frog did cross my path! After the snake incident from Sunday's run it nearly gave me a heart attack!!! That's the only run I've had this week, and I haven't had a chance to do any other exercise outside of my morning walks with Pippin.

We have a 15K tomorrow, so I didn't want to log a lot of miles this week, but I would have liked a 4-miler yesterday and some other light aerobics/yoga to keep me stretched out and stress free. When I work like this I also don't eat right, so I don't think tomorrow's run will be anything for the record books. I tried to plan accordingly (since I knew this week would be hell) so several days I brought left-overs in so we'd have something semi-healthy to shove down during a quick lunch break. I really haven't been too bad until today, when there were a lot of sweets brought in for someone's birthday. The damage ended up at one small piece of cake, 3 or 4 cookies, and a brownie. Back in the day I would have had quite a few additional cookies. And I had two cookies last night. Oh yeah, and a doughnut this morning. It just didn't do anything for me, I don't think I'll eat them again. I used to eat like 6 of them, and the one I ate this morning felt like it weighed 100 pounds in my stomach. I love how that stuff really grosses me out now!!

Well, time to get some rest (finally) and eat something healthy for tomorrow morning's run. Wish us luck!!

Rachel

Exercise log-
Tues - 1 mile am walk with Pippin & Brent, 5 mile run, 20 minutes yoga/pilates (focus:spine)
Wed - 1 mile am walk with Pippin
Thurs - 1 mile am walk with Pippin & Brent
Fri - 1 mile am walk with Pippin

Please help!

Has anyone had any trouble syncing up their Forerunner with their computer? I got it to work one time and ever since my computer can't seem to find it. I've tried it on 3 different computers and none of them can sync with it now!! How could I have possibly screwed it up so fast???

The Weekly Rundown!

Hey everyone and welcome to my very first attempt at the Rundown. First of all, thanks to Derek for giving me the opportunity to host the Rundown. I love reading your blogs, where else can you get such great product advice, running tips and advice for overcoming your injuries? Recently David posted about how his life has changed as a result of running, and how in some instances that's made him an outsider in some of his usual circles. He's proposed a Runner's Anonymous club that I think we all should sign up to be charter members of!

Summer is coming to an end and a common theme is emerging among the bloggers - intense marathon training and the beginning of the taper for many. October is a huge month for upcoming marathons - Chicago, Hartford, Minneapolis, San Fran, and the list goes on an on. Dianna and April Anne rocked their 20-miler on Saturday, with the cooperation of the weather. They had a great run and managed to neither break an ankle or be run over by traffic. DGC ran over 50 miles last week as she prepares for the Chicago Marathon, and she feels great! Jon mastered the 18 miler and was able to avoid the jerk deer that plagued him earlier in the week. However, he was not able to avoid some jerk pains in his legs and shins and is need of your always fabulous advice. Personally, I was spooked by some freak animals and creepy darkness myself this week. We're all trying to figure out how to deal with the impending lack of daylight, and Susan was lucky enough to find some new friends to run with in the wee hours this fall. She also completed her first 9-miler and has a graphic to prove it! In this post Susan also expresses the appreciation I think we all feel about the support we receive from our fellow RBF-ers. Also joining the '9-mile club' is Kiran, who escaped her running funk (but unfortunately wasn't able to escape the remnants of Hurricane O) this past weekend.

Cassie returned to racing (following her first marathon earlier this year) and had a great time participating in a relay. She's been battling some injuries since her marathon so that makes the comeback even sweeter! Hutch rocked an 8K (despite intense Southern heat), and was even able to win a prize in his division!! He's headed to DC in a few weeks for the Army 10-miler and is looking for any fellow RBF-ers to meet up with. Jennifer has had several notable runs lately as she trains for a 50K but my personal favorite is this one which has to be right up there as possibly one of the toughest and most dramatic runs ever!

While a lot of runners are gearing up and maxing out their mileage, several of our fellow runners are beginning the dreaded taper. After months and months of posting big long-run digits, it's pretty tough to roll those numbers backwards as excitement is building about your big day. Brent posted his last double digit run until M-day, and following her recent 20-miler A Maria confessed she hasn't been as motivated recently to put in all her training runs.

Across the giant pond, our international RBF-er's have been tearing up the pavement as well. CJ recently completed the Sydney Marathon, with a personal best (as they call it!!), despite the less than perfect weather. Plods completed a race around the Eiffel Tower! How amazing would that be? Jack completed the Baden Marathon, in Germany, and set a PR despite the chilly weather. So how many RBF-er's want to go overseas with me and run these amazing races next year???

As always, Shore Turtle is offering up new links to make all our blogging and running endeavors as technologically advanced as possible. (I swear he is THE master of the google pedometer maps.) This week he filled us in on the new Google translator which translates treadmill as "wheel of squirrel" in Spanish, "traveling carpet" in German and "mobile footrest" in French. Think about that the next time you're stuck on what you thought was just a boring treadmill. He's also the only person I know who runs multiple states on his lunch break, that's multi-tasking!

My favorite blogger, my husband Brent, shared lots of great links with us this week, as well as McDonalds sad attempt at promoting exercise. Krista shared with us the same frustration we all feel about trying to get some exercise without being mauled by cars and/or loose dogs. (One of the most valuable things I've taken away from the RBF is the great recommendation of the Dazer. I don't leave home without it!)

Hopefully I've been able to find a few new blogs for each of you, and if not maybe I've saved you a few minutes of reading time you can add onto your next run! Drop by and visit these great bloggers and make sure they know how much you appreciate their posts. With all the marathons, races, and long runs coming up you never know how much a word of encouragement and support may mean to someone.

Happy Running!
Rachel

Groundhog Day

Happy Sunday! It was another beautiful day here in TN with nice cool temps and breezes, and a little more sun than yesterday. We got a few things done around the house and headed out for our long run a bit earlier than usual so we wouldn't end up lost in the dark. Since it was cooler starting out in mid afternoon was a really nice option to have. I guess as it turns to winter we'll move our long runs to Sat mornings or really early in the afternoon on Sunday. Anyway, the plan was to do either 12 or 13. 12 was actually what was on my plan for today, but since we accidentally did 11.5 last week Brent wanted to push it to 13. We started out over by the Airport trailhead and then headed towards the Sharp Springs Park. About a mile into the run a freakin' groundhog ran across the trail. I don't know much about groundhogs, except for some bizarre reason we let them predict the end of winter each year. I think they look a lot like beavers, but they seem like they would really bite so I don't want to get too close to one. About a mile later we saw another groundhog running across a field. Weird, but I know they don't have the same issues skunks have so I happily traded last week's skunk sighting for the two groundhogs. We also saw deer in the exact same spot we see them every week. Freaky. They seem to be pretty predictable deer, and I'm guessing the only thing that keep them from being shot and eaten around here is the big fence keeping them away from the street. So, we headed into Sharp Springs Park. The trail takes you through a subdivision and then into a couple of miles of heavily treed trail before you're in the main hub of the park where all the ball fields and pavilions are. Brent was having a really tough run today, but I'll let him share what he wants to about all that on his blog. We stick together for the majority of these long runs, at least until close to the end. Sometimes this does mean I run at a much slower pace than I would like to, but that's not necessarily a bad thing because I know I will need to conserve energy during the marathon. Today I was really having to slow it down, a lot. His pace kept getting slower, and slower, and I would try to slow down so he'd catch up but he seemed to slow down even more. So, I'd jog in place for a few seconds and let him catch up. During one of these 'in place' jogs I turned back to look at him and he yelled 'GO GO GO NOW' very loudly as he pointed at the ground next to my feet. Now we do go back and forth on runs like this where he'll tell me to go on and run my own pace, but he's never been THAT angry about it. So, fearing danger, I highstepped it and bolted up a few feet and looked back to where I was just a few seconds earlier. WTF & OMG. There was a freaky looking snake, curled up in strike position, aimed at where I just was. I **HATE** Snakes. Ask anyone who really knows me and snakes and birds are my two least favorite things in the world. (Birds are just gross and they **will** peck your eyes out. Don't say I didn't warn you). I don't know what kind of snake it was, I think it may have been one of these but I'm not for sure. It was black with thin, yellow stripes. I would have looked through more pictures of snakes online but I don't even like looking at pictures of them. So, we continued on and I'm telling you my eyes never left the pavement again. The rest of the way through the park I was thinking about the fact I'd have to go back through there, all by myself (Brent had decided to cut it short and so I was alone now). Luckily he had moved on to terrorize other people and I actually didn't see any unusual animals the rest of the way. I did see one of my coworkers as I was crossing a 3-way stop over by the Smyrna Town Center. (She was in her car stopped at the stop sign.) It took her a while to recognize me, which kind of cracked me up on the rest of my run. I'm sure I look pretty rough and crazed around 10.5 miles, I doubt I would recognize myself!! Smyrna Rec Park was pretty crowded today, prob because we were quite a bit earlier and it was such a pretty day. All in all it was a pretty decent run. Some of my splits were really fast, and then some of the first miles were pretty slow as I was trying to stay with Brent. I finished the 12 miler in 1 hr 59 minutes, which is pretty good considering the slow start. Most of my later miles were between 9 - 9:30 minutes. My 1/2 marathon time from April was 2:15:01, so I would have beaten that time for sure tonight.

We're signed up to do a 15K Saturday morning at Shelby Park. Shelby Park is one of my favorites, it runs right along the Cumberland River next to downtown Nashville and has several miles of greenways. (Greenways are long trails/paths they're building around here to connect various parts of town. At some point in the future, years and years from now, the goal is to connect downtown Nashville all the way out here (20 miles from downtown) and then 15 more miles from here to Murfreesboro. That would be very cool!)

That's about it for tonight! Just a few more days until Friday.........

Rachel

Exercise Log:
Sunday - 12 mile run

Beautiful Saturday

It was a beautiful day here in TN today. Well, beautiful if you running and not trying to plan a pool party or get a tan. Most of the day was overcast and cool. Brent woke up before me this morning (which is beyond rare), and cooked some turkey bacon, eggs, and biscuits. Not exactly a great pre-run meal, but very yummy and much appreciated. We let our breakfast settle for a while and then headed out for a run around 11 am. Normally my late morning Sat runs are hot, muggy, and miserable - but not today! At 11 the temp was 67 degrees! CRAZY!! Most of my evening runs all summer have been considerably warmer than that, usually in the upper 80s and 90s. There was even a nice breeze to go along with the cool temps and big clouds. Perfect! Brent suggested we do some hill work so we headed out of the subdivision, up the road towards the park we normally run to but then we took a left and up into a VERY hilly subdivision appropriately called The Highlands. To get up to these houses you have to run up a really steep hill. The last time we had a real snow, back in January 2003, most of the home owners in this subdivision couldn't even get up their homes! We had a grand time watching them slide down the hill. So we headed up that hill, and continued up a series of several more hills until we reached the top of the subdivision. We'd seen a new water tower they're building off in the distance from our house, but we never knew where it was until today. We actually ran right up to the base of it. From there we headed back down out of the subdivision (dazing one dog in the process) and down to the park. We changed up the return route a bit and ran up a side street and then down a main street. We've seen several runners on it before and we thought it had a pretty good shoulder. Not so much, really. Maybe this winter it will be a little better, the grass was so tall you really couldn't run through it so you had to run in the road, which I'm not a big fan of doing. From there we headed down the side street towards our house but continued on to the hospital and then back home. All in all it ended up at 6.4 miles, which was great. We weren't sure what the distance would end up at, and my initial goal was 6 miles.

The rest of today we spent around the house getting small projects accomplished. Right after our run we spent some time outside trimming some shrubs and doing some light yard work that desperately needed to be done. While we ate lunch we watched Tuesday night's The Biggest Loser. I **LOVE** that show. So far I'm rooting for Matt and Suzy. It always amazes me how much weight they lose that first week. I know most of it is water and the shock of actually doing some exercise, and that it will slow down, but wow! It's also pretty surprising to me how shocked they are - you'd think you lost 18-28 pounds you'd know! I know I would, but I'm also not 400 pounds. This season there's not a person on there under 200 pounds. I think the lightest person was about 225 - that's double my weight!! One lady was also 5 ft 3 and she weighs about 270. I can't imagine carrying that much weight on my frame. At my heaviest I was a little north of 150, I can't imagine being 270. They also had them wear shirts with their goal on it - various things like 'to be healthy', 'to be a role model', 'to be there for my kids', and even a 'to be a princess'. I can't say I get that one, but Brent asked me what I would want on my shirt. I really don't know, I'll have to think about that one. I know when I started losing weight I wanted to have a strong body I could feel proud of. I hit rock bottom with a peanut butter pie on the beach in Florida in April 2004. I had had enough of gorging myself with gross fatty, fried foods. I was also sick of seeing pictures of myself and not really recognizing the person in them. One of my friends, A, had take up some light running so when we got back I called her and headed out for a 3-miler with her. Ha! I couldn't run the whole way, or even half the way, and once we were done I couldn't sit down for about 4 or 5 days. From there I mostly ran on my own, and worked my way up to running the whole 3 and then started working on my time. I cut out soda - I used to drink about a 2 liter of Dr Pepper a day. Now I can't stand the taste of Dr Pepper and stick with water and milk, and the occasional soda as a treat. The rest of 2004 I ran most days and even ran in a few 5Ks, but I only went 3 or 4 miles. In January I decided to run my first half marathon (the CMM in April) and the rest is history.

That's about it for today, tomorrow we're going to do a 12 or 13 miler, hopefully the weather will be as nice as it was today!!

Rachel

Exercise-
Fri - 1.5 mile evening walk with Pippin and Brent
Sat - 6.4 mile am run, 20 minutes yoga/pilates (focus:abs)

A case of the blahs

Happy Friday! I can't believe we all made it through this terrible week. Ugh. Brent and I have both had a case of the blahs and it's carried over some into our exercise. We've been working to late to really get over to the gym before it closes, and it's just not as much fun to start out when it's so dark. He's looked into getting us little headlamps, but I feel a little weird about that. The only dangerous spot is getting into and out of our subdivision (and crossing some streets). Earlier this week a fire truck, moving EXTREMELY fast, nearly mowed me down. It did not have its light or siren on, but it was going wayyyy faster than the 30 mph speed limit. We've gotten where we also like to mix it up and run some of the park trails, and they have no lighting what-so-ever so we're limited to running on the sidewalks outside our neighborhood.

Anyway, it was raining and all-in-all gross around here last night - not the nice cooling summer rain that's fun to run in but more like the heavy, humid rain mixed with thunder and lightning. Afterwards it was just steamy and humid, so I stuck with my elliptical again and watched some Celebrity Poker on Bravo while I was working out. It was OK, not very motivating but I burned some calories. It was lightning again this morning so Pippin and I didn't get to walk but we're about to go now. He seemed pretty confused about it this morning which I find to be hilarious. There are so many words we can't say in front of him now because he knows what they mean and will get a reaction out of him - ball, treat, ride, walk, daddy and even poop. Brent likes to hide in various places and jump out and scare me when we come back inside, so I've taught Pippin "Where's Daddy?" so he'll go and find him for me before he gets a chance to scare the living daylights out of me.

I'm not totally sure what we're doing this weekend. We both brought work home, and we plan on doing a long run of 12 or 13 miles sometime. We also have some projects around the house we need to finish. It seems like nothing ever gets finished around here, so I'm trying to relax and let go, and tackle small, manageable projects and not worry about the rest.

Well, it's time to take Pippin for a walk. Good luck on all your long runs and races this weekend!

Rachel

Exercise Log-
Thursday - 1 mile am walk with Pippin AND Brent, 40 minutes elliptical, 20 minutes toning/flex (abs)

For Susie

Hey! It was another Long, Monotonous & Unrewarding day at work. Ugh. So long and painful in fact that we didn't leave work early enough to make it to the gym tonight, which totally sucks. We had planned on working out there and playing some racquetball. With the way work has totally sucked lately it's been two weeks since we made it to the gym. So, I worked out on the elliptical as I watched Susie get totally robbed on Rock Star INXS. I really thought Mig would get the boot, he's been a bit dull in my opinion lately and the other have really bumped it up a notch lately. Oh well, I'll be really excited to see what all they have to do next week on the finale.

Since I don't have much workout news to post about today I thought I'd share with you my latest stupid moment. My company has a subsidiary over in England, outside of London. I had to call the Controller over there today as he had some questions about his budget template. As much as I don't like discussing work stuff I do always enjoy calling over there because I find their accents to be absolutely fabulous. So, after we talked about work stuff we ended up talking about the cheap price of computers these days (it did actually stem from talking about budgeting for addtl computer purchases). To which I replied " I don't know about over there, but here the day after Thanksgiving we have huge sales where you can get computers for like $400 if you get up at 4 in the morning and fight the crowds". From there I went on to talk about what a blast the sales are and he said he'd love to come over for them sometime. The sad part is I didn't even REALIZE what I had said until I was telling Brent about it over lunch and he started laughing at me and saying 'Of course they don't have day after Thanksgiving sales, THEY DON'T CELEBRATE THANKSGIVING, do you think the Indians and Pilgrims headed over there after the settled our country???'. Hmmm, I'm sure I gave the UK a great afternoon chuckle. Oh well, I know I'm a very smart girl and I admit I have minimal common sense! At least I'm smart enough to realize it...... It gave me a good laugh on a pretty sucky day, too!

The weekly rundown is over at http://runnyc.blogspot.com/2005/09/carnival-at-my-door.html. Guess where's it going to be next week??? Right here baby!!! Let me know if you have any special requests and I'll be sure to hook you up!

Gotta run, we have some Lost DVDs to return to Blockbuster. Hopefully we've got the rest of the season on our TiVo or we'll be heading back soon!!

Rachel

Exercise - 1 mile walk with Pippin (which I timed with my trusty Forerunner), 40 minutes on the elliptical

Running from the monster

Hey everyone! Tonight was a great night for a run. We took off for a 5-miler around 7:30 (actually it's 5.2 miles according to my Forerunner). Of course it was already dark, and there's just something spooky about running in the dark. I'm not sure why, since the same people are usually walking their dogs and there's plenty of people driving by. We've been watching a lot of Lost lately, and if you know anything about Lost it can be pretty spooky. Lots of crazy things are out in that jungle, so there's always people running and things jumping out of the bushes, etc. I didn't think I'd really want a fast run tonight but for some reason my feet just started moving once I got warmed up and Brent and I separated into our own paces. The first two miles went pretty fast, around mile 3 I slowed down a bit and then at the 4 mile turn around I picked the pace back up. I finished in 46 minutes, which is really fast for me for this run. I usually finish this same run in 48-49 minutes so I was pretty happy with my time and I know I could have improved on mile 3.

I forgot to mention during Sunday's run we tried out a couple of new energy gel flavors. I had Clif's Cola Buzz. It was SO good. It's by far my favorite flavor of energy gel so far. It tasted a bit like a coke float. Very good! Brent tried Gu's new Espresso flavor. It was pretty good, and ties with Clif's Mocha Mocha flavor for me. Both of them were better than the vanilla bean I tried a few weeks ago. As much as I love vanilla everything it was just too sweet for me during a hot run.

Well, it's time for me to watch our TiVo'd Rock Star Inxs!! We TiVo'd Biggest Loser so hopefully we'll get to watch it later this week.

See ya!
Rachel

Exercise:
Tues - 1 mile am walk with Pippin, 5 mile evening run, 20 minutes yoga/toning (focus: upper body)

When it's cool to be a loser

Hey! I forgot to mention last night that the Biggest Loser premiere is tonight at 7 pm CST on NBC. I promise every episode will make you cry!

The watch can only do so much....

Hey! If you're reading this you've survived another Monday, so there's a major plus. The rest of our weekend went great. We got a lot of rest and watched a ton of episodes of Lost. That's a great show!! We're still only about halfway through the season, so we have a lot of episodes to watch so don't spoil it for me!

Our 11-miler on Sunday went great. We started out about halfway between the two parks. That way we could stop at our car on the way back from the first park and exchange our empty Fuel Belt bottles for some full ones. Since it gets so dark on us we'd also be doing the darker, more tree dense part of the course first. Sometimes we are actually pretty smart! So, we ran from the Trailhead off Weakley Lane first, then through Sharp Springs park and back out to the car. The same spot we saw 2 deer last week we saw 2 deer again! We also saw several more deer within Sharp Springs park, near the soybean fields. As nice as it is to have these greenways they're all out and back courses, no loops, so everything you see once you see again. Once we were back at our car the Forerunner told me we were barely north of 6 miles, the Nike CV10 was only .1 miles behind the Forerunner so we were pretty happy about that. We each checked our mileage and decided we would have to turn around at 8.7 miles to complete the 11. Once we ran through the outer portion of Smyrna Rec Park we headed toward the main portion. There's a trail that juts out just before the main entrance we'd never run before so we decided to try it out. It was pretty dark by then, so it was a bit hard to see. Unfortunately smell doesn't go hand in hand with sight. Ugh, I forgot someone had told us this path goes right past the water treatment plant. I have a weak running stomach to begin with, and that smell didn't help. I could probably suck it up around 3-4 miles, but at 8 it's a tough smell. Funny thing is, Brent didn't smell it at all! Go figure. The truly terrible thing was that I knew we'd have to turn around at some point and smell it again. Anyway, once we did turn around I picked up my pace a bit. I wanted to stay with Brent, so that meant doing more of a 10:30 mile versus the 9:30 I prob would have done on my own. Once we were near the end I picked up my pace because I knew he would make it just fine on his own. In Mile 10 I even managed a sub 8 minute mile! Crazy! The main reasons I started booking it were a) it was dark b) I was tired of running c) I was hungry d) I was sick of clearing the park of spiderwebs with my sweaty body and e) seeing the skunk helped. Yup, a skunk citing. My county is way up there on the listing of places where skunks are plentiful, especially rabid ones. Last summer we had a skunk sighting EVERY night we ran. Seriously. But we haven't seen one all summer until yesterday, we've smelled a few but haven't had a single sighting. At this point I was running on my own, and it was right to the left of the trail as you headed into the last really treed, very dark, portion of the trail. At first I just thought it was a possum (yeah, we have those, too). Then I realized it was way too furry for a possum. So, out of the reasons for my kicking 10th mile time #e rated pretty high. Anyway, right past the skunk I heard my fab watch beep for the 11th mile. WTF?? I still had the rest of the loop around the rehab center and the sidewalk back to the car??? In the end we ended up doing 11.5 miles. It's totally our fault because we didn't exactly figure the turnaround point from our car, we apparently didn't start doing the math until .25 mile from our water stop. Go figure, you can buy a girl a GPS watch but if she's not smart enough to figure out how to use it it's her own fault!!

Well, it's time for me to get some sleep!!

Rachel

Exercise-
Sunday - 11 mile run
Monday 1 mile am walk with Pippin, (I had a hair appointment tonight so no exercise! Everyone needs a rest day sometimes....)

Hide and Seek

Happy Saturday everyone! Hope all your races and long runs went well. We've had a great weekend so far and are getting rested for an 11-miler tomorrow afternoon.

Last night we went out with our friends P & S. We went to OmiKashi, a Japanese hibachi grill/sushi bar in the Cool Springs/Brentwood area. It was really good, and SO much better than the sad hibachi grill in Opry Mills. (Our hibachi experience at OM involved a chef who dropped everything and even hit a person with a misthrown spatula!!). Anyway, the food was good and so was the company. Afterwards he thought about watching a movie but decided we're just too old for the 10 o'clock movie. On our way back to P's house we saw 2 sets of spotlights circling the Nashville sky. When Batman didn't appear we decided to track down the source of the lights. We headed back towards Brentwood, towards the first set of lights. We had seen signs for a Greek festival, so we were hoping to end up there and enjoy some yummy baklava and Greek festivities. After some cat & mouse we found one set of lights - they were at Brentwood high school where they were having a telethon to benefit Hurricane Katrina victims. (Ok, we couldn't figure out why you would have spotlights for a TELethon either, so we were pretty disappointed.) The second set of lights was near, but proved to be more elusive. We circled the Brentwood area for a while and once we got close to the lights we decided they were probably coming from the other end of the Brentwood High campus. Bummer. So, we decided to try to find the Greek Festival. After driving around for a while looking for the signs we were hot on its trail. Success! We found it around 9:30, the festival ended at 9. But we did get to see the really cool, very Greek, church hosting the festival and the empty tents. It looked like it would have been a lot of fun. So, we headed back to P’s house and hung out for a while before heading home.

Last week was a really long week (work-wise) so we were both zonked and slept like rocks. I had no intentions of getting up early for a run, but I did plan to run 5 miles this morning. Brent decided to join me on my weekly Sat "a.m." run that I like to refer to as Rachel's Inferno. As hot as these runs are I do think running in the heat has helped me in some of the hotter 5Ks. I love my new Forerunner! I downloaded some software for it tonight and imported this morning's run and Thurs night's run. It has all the cool graphs and things I've seen on so many people's blogs. Very cool. I need to come up with a snappy name for it, like Athena or something. Anyway, it was hot as hell and it was a hard run. The first 3miless weren't so bad, the last two were pretty tough. I was really glad I was smart enough to wear my hat this time, that really helped keep me cool. I also ended up with a nice runner's tan, with a cute T-back impression on my back! Oh well, I guess it's better than a farmer's tan! Brent wore my old Nike watch and the heart rate monitor. Around 3 miles his HR spiked to 179!! That was also when he slowed it down a bit!

Afterwards we had lunch at Blue Coast Burrito, one of our favorite places to eat. It's like a Chipotle's, Moe's, Baja Fresh, etc etc. Basically you build your own California style burrito. After a good run it's a toss-up between Blue Coast and pizza for us. It's gotta be pizza after a good long run, and on Saturday's it's usually burritos! They're actually building a BCB about 2 miles from our house right now, so we're pretty excited about that. After playing with puppies at the pet store we came home and have been vegging. OurTiVoo messed up an episode of Lost, so we borrowed a friend's DVD to finish watching the season. I think we may be the only people who didn't watch it this past year!! I'm pretty excited about the new shows starting soon, especially the Biggest Loser (which starts in just a couple of days!) That show is so inspirational and the guy trainer (Bob) is from Nashville!

Anyway, that's about it for today. We're watching Saturday Night Live right now and it's the episode where Ashlee Simpson screwed up and had the wrong track play and she ended up doing the hoe-down. Hilarious!!! That one's going to be a classic..... About the only episode of SNL worth seeing from last season! I miss the days when Mike Myers, Adam Sandler, and other people who were remotely funny were on there!

Cya!

Rachel

Exercise:
Thurs - 1 mile am walk with Pippin, 20 minutes stretching/toning (focus:butt), 3.5 mile run
Fri - 1 mile am walk with Pippin
Sat - 5 mile run

Christmas in September

Yippee! It’s Christmas in September because my brand new Forerunner 201 came in yesterday’s mail! FINALLY! I won’t even go into the battle I went through with the guy on Ebay to get it here because none of that even matters now. Waiting for it to charge last night almost killed me. We kept checking on it about every 5 minutes. I had a Nike CV10 but it really drove me nuts. You’re only supposed to need to calibrate it when the battery on the watch dies, but it really didn’t work like that. It wasn’t flexible enough to change when my pace changed, and it always underestimated my mileage. A 3 mile run was coming out at about 2.75. That’s a huge difference when you start packing some miles on! Since Brent gets all my running hand-me-downs the CV10 is now his. We drove over to the hospital (it’s only 1.1 miles-we normally run there but it was a little later and darker so we decided to drive instead) to test the Forerunner out and re-calibrate the CV10 to his stride. After some confusion we finally got everything situated and I LOVE the new Forerunner! It’s going to be so much easier keeping the Nike in sync using the two of them together. We ran the track 3 times and at the end Brent’s watch said 3.1? to my 3. That’s not bad, and as he pointed out to me he ran on the outside of the track. I haven’t totally figured out all the features, but it was pretty cool having my pace, distance and time in large print for the blind on my wrist. We downloaded the software onto our computer but didn’t have a chance to really hook the watch up and download all the stats and stuff from the run. But you better believe we will this weekend!

Well, I’m at work so I guess (in theory) I should get back at it. I’ll blog more later…. No races this weekend but we do plan to run 11 miles on Sunday (the 11th!) Isn’t it weird that Sunday is September 11th? With all of the relief efforts and news stories on Katrina I haven’t heard anyone mention this weekend being the anniversary of September 11th. It seems like that was a million years ago……
Good luck to everyone on their long runs and races this weekend!

God loves short work weeks

Hey guys! I don't think there are enough short work weeks in the world. In my boring world as an accountant this is budget season. If you asked me the date I'd probably tell you it's 2006 right now since that's the only year I'm typing in. It absolutely sucks, and I am SO sick of numbers, spreadsheets, and looking at the crazy ass things non-financial people try to put together as their department budgets. If we actually put in what they asked for there's no way we'd be able to make a profit, but then again some of them order a $600 chair for their big asses. For $600 that chair had better have a heated seat, do my work for me, massage my back AND tell me I'm the prettiest chick in the office. But no, it kind of looks like a lawn chair, and not in a cool modern way because that's totally my style. Anyway, enough of that trash talk!!

Today was a long work day so instead of running or going to the gym I worked out here at home while a chicken lasagna was in the oven and Rock Star INXS was on TV. After last night's run my left arch was really hurting me. It didn't hurt while I ran but was really tender immediately after. It was still really sore this morning so I was a good girl and did not wear the really cute pink Candies stilletos I have that go perfectly with the pink shirt I wore today. I wore sensible, low heel boots and stayed off my feet (which isn't exactly difficult when you're a bean counter). I thought about not working out tonight, but I have a piece of peanut butter pie in the fridge I'm dying for and I knew I would be too guilty to eat it if I didn't burn some calories (or butter as Denise Austin calls it). So, I did 20 minutes of yoga and 40 minutes on my elliptical trainer. The yoga stretching helped my arch, and I just got off the elliptical and it's feeling even better. Maybe it just needed to be stretched a little more??

Anyway, it's pie time! Tonight's Rock Star wasn't really that surprising, as much as I love Jordis she's just not right for the band. AND I think Marty deserved the encore. 'Trees' rocked, we downloaded it and I've been singing it ALL day!

Rachel

Exercise: 1 mile am walk with Pippin, 20 minutes yoga (focus:abs), 40 minutes elliptical trainer

Too many blogs to read, too little time!

Hey guys! Just a short post tonight, I've spent all my allotted 'blogging time' reading all the great posts up about the New Haven 20K. How cool is it to meet other great runners over the 'net and then find a race several of you can meet up at? I can't wait to make an RBF meet-up. I know SO FEW runners around here that I absolutely feed off of all your blogs for inspiration. (TN is the 5th fattest state after all!!)

Anyway, tonight we headed out for a 4 mile run. It's dark in the mornings when I walk Pippin now, and it's also dark when I head out for my evening runs. As semi-depressing as that is, the temps have been awesome. It's actually chilly enough at 5:30 every morning that I've been wearing my little reflective running Nike jacket that I adore. Tonight there was a nice, cool breeze but I never found my stride until around mile 3. For some reason once I get past the first 3 miles of a run I can just go and go.... What's up with that? Brent wasn't feeling so hot so he changed his route up and ran 3 instead.

In more exciting news we did manage to fix our runny toilet tonight. We've tried a plethora of fixes and tonight Brent just replaced all widgets and junk inside the tank. The stupid thing has been running for about 3 weeks now while we've tried various fixes to avoid replacing all the widgets. Now if we could just find the remote for the TV in our bedroom, it's been MIA for 3 weeks and 2 days now! We have NO clue where the silly thing could be and we've looked under, behind, and on top of all the furniture!!!

Have a great Wednesday!

Rachel

Exercise Log:
Friday - 1 mile am walk with Pippin, 2 mile evening walk with Brent and Pippin (it was TOO pretty not to get out)
Sat - 5 mile am run
Sun - 9 mile pm run, 1 mile evening walk with Brent and Pippin to cool down
Mon - 2-3 miles walking around at the Park, 20 minutes toning (focus: upper body)
Tues - 1 mile am walk with Pippin, 4 mile run, 20 minutes toning (focus: abs)

Happy Belated Labor Day!

Hey guys! I hope you all had a great labor day weekend! I can't believe it's already coming to an end and going to work tomorrow is the LAST thing I want to do.

Before I start rambling on about my weekend I've had a few people ask me about how I know how people find my website. I've got a site tracker through Extreme Tracking. It's the little planet shaped icon towards the bottom. It's free and it tells you how many hits you get each day, what country they're coming from and how they got there - if it's a search on yahoo, google, a referring website, etc. It's very interesting stuff and it's pretty crazy to see some of the odd things people are searching for that will make them end up at your site! If you want the web-html to add it to your template just let me know and I can email it to you.

Ok, on to the weekend. We've had an awesome weekend and I wish it wouldn't end. Here's the highlights: We saw two movies, Duke of Hazzard and Mr & Mrs Smith. I thought I would hate DOH but it was actually pretty funny. Jessica Simpson had a pretty small part so I think that helped. I'd recommend it if you're in the mood for something light and funny. Mr & Mrs Smith was OK, I LOVE Brad Pitt, so nothing can be wrong with a movie he's in! It was OK, there were some funny parts but I don't think it's worth buying or really paying to go and see. Definitely a rental.

We did some shopping Saturday and swung by our local running store to get some new gear. I bought a few new gu flavors to try, some additional Fuel Belt bottles, and we both got a few new pairs of running socks and running clothes. I also picked up a copy of Trail Runner magazine which really has me wanting to go out and run some crazy 50K trail races!! We took Brent's grandparents out to dinner Sat night and then headed home.

As far as running goes, I got up and did a 5-miler Saturday morning. It was hot!! I didn't get started until 9 am which is just stupid on my part. I had had Starbucks around 9 the night before and couldn't fall asleep until about 3:30. I used to have caffeine (through soda) non-stop throughout the day, so even though I trashed that habit over a year ago I still forget that I'm no longer used to it!!! Sunday Brent and I ran a 9-miler. We had scoped out an additional 1 mile path to our local Smyrna Greenway. We thought it stopped at the entrance to a subdivision, which seemed a little strange. It also ended fairly close to another large park here, Sharp Springs Natural Area (SSNA), where we did a 5K a few weeks ago. We had talked about trying to run from the end of the first trail up to SSNA, but that would mean running on the very narrow shoulder of a pretty busy road. So, we decided to scope out SSNA and see how long the trails were there. There wasn't any sort of park map, so we had no clue how long the trails would be. We happened to see a guy loading his bike up, so we stopped and asked him. He was super friendly, and told us if we followed this certain path we would end up at in the subdivision where we thought the trail ended. We were SO excited! (How dorky is that???) This would link the two parks together and offer us some good long runs. Later that afternoon we headed back with all our running gear for our 9-miler. It's really a gorgeous trail, we ran past corn fields, soy bean fields, a lake, then through the subdivision and back over to Smyrna Rec Park. We didn't go all the way back to where we normally start from there, so we still have a lot of potential for doing some really long runs between the parks. Smyrna Rec Park is right across the street from our airport, which is actually pretty big for our suburban town of 40K people. Right as we were at our turn-around point an airplane came whizzing over the trees to land, very cool! We also saw 2 deer next to the path, which always freaks me out a bit. There was also a big group of Canadian geese sitting in the middle of a field, maybe this group prefers grass to water?? Anyway, we had a great run and made it back right at dark.

Today we headed out to the parks. I know I need to clean the house, and there's a million things I SHOULD have been doing, but it's a holiday!! The house will always need cleaning, but days like this are too pretty to be stuck inside dusting. First we headed over to Centennial Park. They were have a "Living among the Lakes" jazz festival. Several local artists and vendors had set up booths around the lake. We even saw the Nashville mayor there!! I'm telling you, if you want to pick up guys/girls get a dog!!! I can't tell you how many people came up to us to talk about Pippin. Even as we were trying to eat! Then there are the people who really just need to shut up and mind their own business. As I was trying to eat my hot dog this guy and his family come up to pet Pip. Then he goes into this long story about the B Terrier they had who had red mange and all these other health problems and died at 8 yrs old, etc etc. He talked for at least 10 minutes about all the health problems BTs can have, then he started talking about all the health problems cocker spaniels can have! Geez buddy, remind me not to invite you to a party! From us he moved on to a cute little rat terrier, and we had a good time making fun of all the stuff we were sure he was telling them!! There was also a rude lady who kept going on about Pippin's weight! And she was AT LEAST 30 pounds overweight!! She kept telling me how 'uncomfortable' he looked. OK, it's at least 90-something degrees out here, we've been walking around for a couple of hours and he's been playing with a bunch of other people and dogs! He's hot and tired, JUST LIKE ME! I really hate her. I should have told her SHE looked uncomfortable and needed to go on a diet. But I was nice and just informed her he's already on low fat food, we walk every morning at 5 freaking 30, and then walked off. From there we headed to Shelby Park so he could run around at the Dog Park. For some reason there were a ton of black labs there, it was kind of freaky. There were so many of them that all looked exactly the same that you were never actually sure if you were playing with the same one!! Pippin was so tired from the first park that we only stayed a little while and then headed home.

So, we've had a great weekend, had some fun runs and enjoyed the parks this weekend! Please don't make me go back to work tomorrow!!

There is no porn on my blog!!

Happy Thursday everyone! This week has gone by very quickly and I am SO ready for a long weekend. All the talk at work today was Hurricane Katrina and the price of gas. Most of the gas stations around here are at $3.29, we were 'lucky' and found one tonight (at Kroger) that was $2.99. Yesterday they ran completely out of gas (according to some coworkers) and today they only had 'the cheap stuff'. One guy was telling the attendant that he had been to some gas stations that only had the expense stuff. Crazy. I admit I don't totally understand why there is such a gas crisis. I know there are some refineries in the Gulf that can't operate now, but I thought we got most of our gas from the Middle East anyway?? Being the accountant that I am, I calculated what it costs me per mile, at the current gas prices, to go anywhere. With my whopping 12 miles per gallon it costs me .27 cents per mile. One of my coworkers just got a Prius and he's getting about 50 miles per gallon. His cost per mile? .07 cents. Yup, 20 cents per mile less!

Ok, someone ended up at my blog today using the search "Denise Austin's hot ass". Yeah. There are a lot of sickos out there. Why Denise Austin?? She is SO completely annoying. She's entirely too perky and chipper, who would have an obsession with her? Yesterday someone ended up on my blog doing a search for pictures of Denise Austin's feet. Creepy.

Tonight Brent and I played racquetball at the gym. It's a great outlet for burning out stress. Between work and all the terrible images in the media it was nice to whack the ball around for a while. He started teaching me how to play the actual game of racquetball tonight, too. I admit I still get freaked out by the fast moving ball, but I think I'm getting better.

To all the fabulous RBF-er's headed to New Haven this weekend for the races - Good luck!! You guys are going to do awesome and I wish I could be there!! Have a lot of fun and run hard!!!!

TTYL,

Rachel

Exercise-
Wed (post blog) - 20 minutes toning/stretching (focus:abs)
Thurs - 1 mile am walk with Pippin, 40 minutes racquetball, 20 minutes toning/stretching (focus:thighs)