What a week

What a week it was.  It was illness central here at casa Raul.  Mini Raul got the worst deal of it all.. He was sick last Saturday, and we figured he had picked up a cold after his double ear & sinus infection passed.   Fast forward to Sunday night... The poor kid was puking every half an hour.  He woke up at 11pm, surrounded by vomit and saying "Something happened?!".  Nothing tears at your heart quite like that.

It was a long night, that whole puking every half hour.   He's been prone for most of the week, too.. He's been back to the doctor, pronounced with stomach bug, more ear infections, and another sinus infection. (Perhaps the last one didn't go away).  Anyways, it was a long week.

Mrs. Raul got the next bit of the short end of the stick, picking up Mini Raul's stomach bug.

I lucked out, and came out of this (thus far) with a head cold. Whatever.  No big deal there.

Mini Raul finally showed some signs of life late this afternoon, so here's hoping we've turned the corner...


Last Sunday, I did another long run.. 7 miles. Tried out the plain strawberry Gu.  Not terrible.   I didn't run again until today, Saturday, where I did a 5 mile tempo run.. I mixed in a couple of the P90X DVDs and a couple of rest days.. It was an unplanned recovery week. lol


I did do some baking and cooking..

Those are Irish soda bread, followed by slow cooked minestone.  The soup was fantastic, and I plan to make it again.

When I heard Mrs. Raul was getting ill, I whipped up some bread:

This turned out better than my first batch, too!

Tonight, I took some of that bread and made some garlic bread:

Delish!


So, other than that, the only noteworthy thing was this story..  I'm looking out the window the other morning, and I see this:

Not sure if you can read that, but it's a van that has "S.W.A.T." on the side.  That's something you don't see every day.   This is a picture I snapped after the action was over, the guys are piling back in.

Turns out, someone was busy selling some H, and the police caught wind of it.. Took down a small ring of people.  I'm thinking now, there's a vacuum and a need... perhaps a second career?

Ah well, keep on rockin, with or without your opium.

Schedule

So, yesterday, I decided I should make a plan.

The plan was to answer this:  What's my race schedule for the year?  What the hell am I doing?

Starting backwards, my spring goal is a half marathon on 5/6.  Registered, paid.  Now I just need to train for it.

There's a 15K on 3/25.  OK, that will be my gauge for pacing.  9 miles, should be doable.  I just signed up and paid for that one.  Bam.

So, after that, it was making a list of the weekends between now and 5/6, and making a stab at the long run length.  My mid week runs have been pretty consistent: one hill run, of 4.5 miles, and one "whatever my body feels like" run, of 4-5 miles.  I'll try slowly ramping up the long run on Sunday, with some cut back weeks, and we'll see if that gets me there.

To make it more official, I threw the races into a list on the blog, and that's that.

After the spring is done, I don't know what I'm doing yet.  I have something small planned for the end of June, but nothing for the fall.  I think the smart plan is to wait and see how I'm doing in May, and decide from there.  There's plenty of time to recover and then ramp up for something if desired.

Part of my problem is that Mrs. Raul gets Saturdays.. That in of itself not a big deal, because I usually get a night out every week.  However, almost all of the local races are run on Saturday mornings.  Sigh.  Maybe that's a good thing, so that I'm not running a 5K every week.  This will force me to pick a certain goal, and then plan for it..

Ah well, the weekends are plotted through the beginning of May now.   That's a respectable start.

Keep on rockin..

Long cold gu

Well, yesterday was winter here.  Honest to goodness snow, cold, and general disgustingness.

Hooray for me, that it was my scheduled long run day!  Sigh.   I debated all morning, looking for a valid excuse to not go.  Sadly, reason and common sense did not win out.  There was a brief break in the snow, so I bundled up and trucked on out there.

Holy shizzballz, it was freaking cold.  The wind just bit.  My winter running hat transforms into a balaclava, and in 2.5 years of winter running, I've never once tried it in that format.  Until yesterday.  I must admit, that helped quite a bit (except my glasses fogged up, but whatevs)

I was pretty excited about the run to start, as it was the first time I was going to try a Gu.  Yes, I'm a Gu virgin. I rolled to my local Dick's store last week and picked up a handful of various gels, just to try them out.  (and I just used Dick's, gels, and virgin in close proximity. *snicker*)

I had planned on running 8 miles, with the Gu at 5 miles in.  As I trudged along, I needed something to look forward to, so I moved that Gu up to mile 4.  Not much to report at this point, except the wind sucked.  Slow pace maintained, as desired.  I took an out and back route, different than the 2 loop route I had originally intended.  My thinking was that if I did 2 loops, I would probably call off the second loop. lol

Anyways.. Mile 4, Gu time.  Let me tell you, I've certainly had worse than that strawberry-banana creation.  It was thicker than I imagined, but palatable (as pure sugar often is).  Flavors and other advice on this sort of thing are welcome here..

So, heading back.  That break in the snow ended, and it started coming down.  I was "that guy", outside, running in the snow.  What a nut job.

My left knee has been holding up very well the last couple of weeks, but both of them were getting a bit creaky on me around 6.5 miles. I mixed in some walk breaks and managed to grind through.  8.01 miles done, a 10 minute-something second pace all the way through.

No issues last night from the run, and today, I have general muscle fatigue, but nothing alarming.  I'll call it a success.  I think the creakiness is just due to me not being used to those distances yet, plus the cold.

I found that I wasn't as lightheaded, fatigued, and just generally feeling weird when I got home, and I attribute it to that little packet of nutrition mid run.  Looking forward to trying some more of them..

That's all for now.. Keep on rockin

Recovery week, food

Well, it was a recovery week this week in Casa Raul.  I've been training pretty hard, so I took a lighter week in running.  The long run was a 5 miler, and I knocked off the hill run.  2 runs, 2 rest days, and some chest/back/arm work.  No aches or pains or anything like that, so I'm ready to go for this week.

Mrs. Raul had the real recovery week.. She went and had her gallbladder out, poor gal.  Apparently the pain of the laproscopic air they pump into you was worse than labor.  The pain scale was thusly redefined.  I did what I could do though, and make myself generally available and supportive and all of that good stuff.

I got a KitchenAid mixer for Christmas and busted it out this week.. My first project was.. bread!  Who doesn't like bread?  The output was:

And, I must say, it was pretty tasty.  I paired it with a homemade garden vegetable soup, and made a pretty decent meal:

The mixer.. holy cow. That thing is a dream.. My mind started going... white cake, yellow cake.. chocolate cake.... italian herb bread... irish soda bread.. hot cross buns..  I need to give this some thought and make a plan!

Tonight, I rocked out some pizelles (also using the mixer):

Last but not least, inspired by a post from a while back that I never tried from Sassy Molassy, I cooked up a no-noodle veggie lasagna, using eggplant as the noodles:

This week is back to the full workout schedule, and Mrs. Raul appears to be well on her way to her usual antics recovery.  All is well.  Keep on rockin..