Redirection....

I still blog, just not here. I still run, just not crazy distances. Life is too short right now to spend it all training, so if you do want to read about what we're up to you can see our daily adventures over at Lilli's blog.

We think she's pretty stinking cute and definitely worth a bookmark!

Shredding It

Hellloo! So, I never really intend to forget about this blog, but in the reality of all things considered in our crazy lives of work, and baby, and of course still renovating our house (3 years in now...we'll never be done. ever.) it just happens.

But when you have such a cutie-patootie playmate, can you blame me????
And can you believe she's already going to be six months old THIS WEEK???


I can't. And I birthed her.

But I do keep up her private blog quite well, and Facebook, so if you're not linked into me in either of those places shoot me your digits in the comments and we'll be friends and get you invited into the baby party.

Exercise stuffs - I am having a way hard time finding my mojo post-baby. I did great during the 3.5 months I had off, and then once I got back to the "real world" the total abscence of much free time had made it hard. I got back down to my pre-preg weight 19.5 weeks after she was born (which means I lost the 37 moo-cow pounds my body put on in 19.5 weeks. Not bad.) But it's just.not.the.same. I'm still about a pants size up from what I was, so there are all kinds of cute Express slacks just staring at me from a box in the corner of our bedroom, while I wear my fat pants day in and day out. And I am not technically 3 lbs less than pre-preg, but they still stare at me. And it's defeating.

I genuinely don't want to run insane distances right now. I want to nap and play and make fun memories, so that's what we do. Except the napping part, that's just a new mom pipe dream. But we do play and have loads and loads of fun, and I think those are the things that will matter most to me down the line. I work out most every day during lunch, as always. My running is getting faster and faster - yesterday I hit my 4-miler at an avg pace of 8:31, including warm-up cool down, so I'm getting closer to my pre-baby pace (that # should be closer to an 8.)

I finally had enough of this awful body image so after some tears on Sunday I'm getting refocused. Back to strict eating, not so many treats or conveince fatty foods (not that we're as bad as pretty much all of America on that, but we haven't been as strict on that stuff lately), and back to focusing on toning and strength. I started Jillian Michael's 30-Day Shred on Monday, so every night as soon as Lilli goes to sleep I do the 20-min workout. And while I admit I am nowhere near my best shape I thought I was decent - until I can barely walk yesterday and today! My upper body is so weak and I am really feeling it there and also in my legs, which seems so crazy! I wish I felt it more in the abs, so I may rotate out 2 nights a week to my strict ab workout and the other 5 to Jillian, we'll see.

And my next race is fast approching - The East Nashville Tomato Festival 5K on Aug 8th. If you live in Nashville come out and run it - it benefits the Y and all of its programs, so it's for a great cause! And you can run with Lilli and I! The Tomato Festival will be going on in our neighborhood that same day, so it's an awesome day to hang out on the East Side and eat, drink, run and be merry.

Anyway, that's the updates from here. Hopefully by refocusing myself to exercise I can refocus some energy on this site!

Take Care!!!
Rachel

5K for Fatherhood - 2009!

I guess technically this was not her first 5K. Technically her first 5K was this same race, just last year, when I was somewheres around 10 or 11 weeks pregnant. This race was the "race that started them all" for us. I first ran it back in 2004 on a whim. A friend who lived a couple of blocks over had just started running and we had started running in the evenings with her. We decided to put our two weeks of experience to the test and found this 5K at someplace called "Shelby Park". Little did I know on that June day that it would be the first of many races, and in a few years we would only live a half a mile away from Shelby Park.

I don't have any pics of us racing from 2004, we probably didn't even have a digital camera back then! Here I am - super skinny after my first year of running - in 2005. I had just finished my my first half marathon - CMM - a couple of months earlier and thought I was big stuff! I placed in my division for the first time - I think I was either 2nd or 3rd.
Here I am in 2006. Brent must've run it that year because there's only after race pics. I had just finished my first full marathon earlier that year, and this was the first time I'd ever placed first in my division. I tore it up that year - 3 full marathons and tons of age division awards at the shorter stuff! Far and away that was my fastest year of running!

Here I am in 2007. At that point Brent had retired from running and was back to picture taking! I held my ground that year, kept my first place division rank and was even the third female overall. Not bad!!!

Enter 2008! The year of the preggo!!! I took it slow and easy, so no hardware, no PRs, just another race for the recordbooks. And here's how long it's been since I pinned on a race number - late October! I think I was around 28-30 weeks pregnant? Something like that...


Want to make someone mad? Fly by them when you're enormously pregnant....or pushing a running stroller. I look so short here!


I think in years past the race has started at 7:30, but this year's start time was 7 am. Blah!!! Although we certainly don't even remember what it's like to sleep in we do try to keep little bit asleep until around 7 on Saturdays. Well, it would've been a fat chance today anyways. She started stirring around 3:30 am. Ugh. She must've been super excited about the race. In an effort for me to try to get a good night's sleep I put in earplugs and Brent said he got up with her about 4 times to replace her paci. I think this may be a fussiness from the teething situation that we're not a big fan of! Ironically enough, she fell back to a deep sleep right around alarm time at 6 am. We already had all our gear laid out the night before, so we got dressed, feed Lilli and headed down to the park. It was already wickedly muggy before the race even started. I wish the race was at a cooler time of year, but it's always right after Father's Day since it's a race to benefit inner city kids who don't have a father figure.

Lilli and I tried to start in what looked like a good spot in the pack, but I quickly found we had started way too far back. It's very frustrating when inexperienced runners don't know where to line up. If you don't know - GO TO THE BACK!!! It's so hard in the beginning to get around slow people, and stinking impossible with a running stroller. The first section is very narrow on the Greenway, so we passed when we could and twice I got so frustrated we jumped off the pavement and ran through the grass. Why have a top of the line runner if you never go off road?? Brent was exactly where he always is around the halfway point to cheer and take pics, and then off she and I went to finish via a lap around the lake and back to the start! All of the volunteer course monitors would cheer Go Baby Go! when we'd pass, and I had one sweet girl tell me she didn't know how I was going so fast in that heat with a stroller! I had several people ask if I could push them as well, and heard a couple of people tell each other they're way too slow if a baby is beating them! Ha!

Anyway, it was really hot and muggy this morning. The path is not very shaded, so it was just sticky and sunny. My first mile was around 9:30, which could've easily been a 9 if I wasn't stuck behind so many people. Mile 2 and 3 were each right around 10, and I crossed the finish line with a watch time of 30:03. Not bad, but I would've REALLY liked to be under 30. And it's a far, far cry from my usual low 24:00's. My overall pace ended up being 9:47 for the 3.1 miles.

Here we are heading around the final curve, heading for the finish:
Here's Lilli after the finish: She woke up really quickly once we weren't running anymore.
Last year and this year Vince Gill served as the celeb race chair. He pretty much says Go! and then stands at the finish line cheering. Last year I had my picture made with him (and told him I was pregnant, making him only about the 4th person to know at that point) so this year I wanted mine and Lilli's pic with him. Vince doesn't know a thing about running - and he really doesn't like touching sweaty people. I kept getting closer to him and he'd back away. Vince really needs to RUN it. But he might start with figuring out how long the race is - he made the comment that many people here can run the 5 miles faster than he can drive it. Buddy, a 5K is 3.1 miles, not 5. Regardless, Lilli was totally unphased by his celebrity status. Atta girl!
Just like last year, Vince performed a few songs before the awards ceremony. Last year he took requests, but considering none of the runners nor the inner city families knew any of his songs, it was a bit awkward when no one requested anything. This year he sang three songs, none of which we knew. We like his "Mountain" song about his brother's death, but he didn't do that one. It was still really good! (for Vince Gill and all!)


We didn't win an award today, I was only about 30 seconds off 3rd place in my division though. And I totally could've gotten first in my division if I had run solo. But, Lilli doesn't need no stinking medal - she had the best prize of all, her paci on a string:



Hanging with Daddy post-race, telling him how fast we were and how many people we passed!



I got a race number for her baby book (which I haven't touched in.....4 months....). I think she had fun!

I'm not sure what our next race together will be, probably Tomato Festival 5K in August. I won't run Oktoberfest with her, I'd like to PR there and it's a very crowded and hilly race so she'll just have to be my cheering section for that one!

Have a great night!

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day from Lilli & Pippin!

Weeks 3 -5

Yeah, so I haven't done so great in keeping my running blog updated! But you can you blame me when you have such a cute little face to keep you company all day??Running is going great. It hasn't been tough at all to get my 20 miles in each week for Wk 3 & 4. I don't have my stats right here with me, but I think I had 21.5 miles in Wk 3 and 21 miles last week. I've been able to do my toning on average 3-4 times per week, I wish I had more time for it but I work out my abs after Lilli goes to bed and sometimes I am just BEAT at that point! On the pretty afternoons we also walk a 2-mile path in the neighborhood, prob about 3 days a week since there has been a lot of rain lately! Last Saturday Brent and I ran 5 miles with her in the running stroller, and 3 mornings this week she and I were able to run outside. Man, talk about a workout - pushing a baby in a running stroller around some of the hills here will wear you out!!!! Today I had to run on the dreadmill because it's been POURING all day! UGH! Poor Pippin has been in bathroom limbo, just running outside long enough to let a little out!And so next week it all changes - hi ho, hi ho, back to work I go and off goes Lilli to daycare. I don't look forward to watches and alarm clocks and heels and slacks again!!! She sleeps great - from about 9/9:30 until 7:30 in the morning, so I get plenty of sleep these days! And she's been doing that for a while, so it's going to be a massive adjustment getting back up at o'crack of early since I'm going to start working 6:30-3:30. Yawn.My goal was to be back at pre-preg weight when I went back, but I'll be going back 3 pounds shy of that goal, which isn't bad. Considering I had 37 pounds to lose, getting rid of 34 pounds in 14 weeks isn't too shabby. But things don't fit the same way, and it's really going to take more than 3 pounds for them to look right, so apologies to all the coworkers who are forced to watch me paint myself into my pants for the next few weeks!

I'm really happy with how my April turned out, I lost an average of 2-3 pds per week and also hit my 20 mile goals each week pretty easily. In May I hope to really improve my speed. It's coming along, and I'm getting a lot better & stronger each day. From Mon-Wed I shaved about two minutes off my 4 mile time, which is pretty good for such a short run! I'll be back to lunchtime workouts, sans Lilli and running strollers, so hopefully I can really focus on speed and intensity more than I can right now when there's always paci-s to replace.

Lilli is cheering for all the runners at the Pig this weekend!!!
She had a great time cheering for all the runners last week at CMM here!
Can you believe she's already 3 months old??? (And no, the cupcake WAS NOT lit!)My baby doesn't drink out of sissy bottles!
Have a great weekend and good luck to everyone at the Pig!!!!!

Rachel

Week 2 in Review

Hey everyone! I hope you all had great Easter weekends! This will prob be short due to the sleeping baby on my chest and I'm not so great typing with one hand!

Here's how Week 2 (last week) went:

Sunday: Killer Butt DVD (45 minutes)
Mon: 4.5 miles
Tues: 4.25 miles, Perf Abs (17 mins)
Wed: 4.25 miles, Perf Abs (17 mins)
Thurs: 4.25 miles, Aft stroll w/ friend + Lilli (prob a mile)
Fri: 3.25 miles
Sat: No formal, but we walked several miles at Opryland Hotel

Total run: 20.5 miles versus goal of 20 miles!

So once again I hit my goal and am back to my usual mileage (when I'm not training for anything!). I'm still focusing on getting back into shape and for right now am not adding a long run in. I wish I had had more time to tone, but it can be really tough to motivate myself to do that late in the evening when I'm tired from wrangling Lilli all day! It can also be tough to motivate myself to run first thing in the morning, but I'm just focusing on the weight loss and I know it will be worth all the hard work! I'm down to just 8 more pounds to go, so I'm getting there!!!!! I've got 2.5 more weeks off, and then it's back to work! It will be so great to see all my lunchtime workout buddies again!

Take care!!!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, we hope you had a great one!Week 2 of my "comeback" review to come later, but the short version is it went pretty well and I exceeded my goal of 20 miles!