I’m a long-time subscriber to Runners World, and always look forward to getting the new issue in the mail each month.  I also subscribe to the email newsletter and daily quote.  One of my favorite stories that they regularly have, in both the print magazine and the email newsletter, are their “I’m a Runner” stories.  In these stories, they highlight one well-known person (a celebrity, a politician, an author, etc.) and tell their running “story”.  How they run, why they run, how they got started.  I love getting a different perspective on someone that I already thought I “knew” something about.  I think about people differently when I learn that they run – I’m not sure why that is but I think it has to do with a mutual respect and understanding that I feel runners have for each other.  When you start running, you become part of the club.  You learn the secrets, jokes and woes that only the insiders know.  You runners know what I mean (snot rockets, anyone?)

Today’s “I’m a Runner” story was about Drew Carey.  I never really watched the Drew Carey show, and I think I have only seen him once or twice on “The Price is Right” as I have flipped through the channels some random weekday when I was off of work.  So I’m not really a Drew Carey fan.  However, I recently read an article about how he had worked really hard to get healthy – losing weight and getting into exercise – which I thought was pretty cool.  He actually lost 85 pounds, and he did it the good old fashioned way – being active and exercising, and eating well.  In addition, he was diabetic – but not anymore.  He no longer has any symptoms or has to take any medicine.  Pretty fantastic!

photo courtesy of Runnersworld.com

The article said that not only did he just finish the Marine Corps marathon – but he finished it in 1 hr, 57 min!  And he is running a marathon in October.  He’s also passing it on to his son, who ran the 5k on the day of his dad’s half marathon.

So yeah.  That article made me happy and I wanted to share.  I, for one, didn’t know Drew Carey was a runner.  And there just might be a little higher of a chance that I will linger on “The Price is Right” when I am flipping through the channels on my next day off.

In other exciting runner news… the photos from the NorCal marathon have arrived.  Check out the SUN – it was hot! 

I really wasn’t that happy, but tried to put on a smiley face when I saw the photographer.  Fake it till ya make it, right?

And at the end.  The finish line was in sight!

And look at this handsome devil.

Does learning that someone is a runner change the way you think about them?

Last week, I got to take my first ever business trip.  It was also my first ever trip to Seattle and I was really excited to see the city. 

When I flew in on Wednesday morning, I took a taxi directly to the office.  My company’s Seattle office is awesome.  It’s a lot smaller than the San Jose office that I work in, as San Jose is the headquarters and has more than five times the number of employees on site, but it is in a beautiful location in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle – right by the water.

(photo courtesy of wikipedia)

The Fremont neighborhood is known for its playful public art.  There is the Fremont Troll, an 18-foot-tall concrete sculpture of a troll crushing a Volkswagen Beetle in its left hand,under the Aurora Bridge. 

(photo courtesy of wikipedia)

There is also a statue of Lenin and the Fremont Rocket.   In addition, signs throughout Fremont give such helpful advice as "Set your watch ahead five minutes", "Set your watch back five minutes" and "Throw your watch away."  Directly behind the office is a trail for running, walking, biking…

Or flute playing.

This guy was just out back, practicing the flute along the water.  Kinda cool, right?

In a way, Seattle reminded me of Pittsburgh because there are a lot of bridges.

But Pittsburgh doesn’t have as many boats or boat houses.

The Fremont bridge was my favorite – it opens for ships!

When I was outside looking around, all of a sudden a big yacht came through and the bridge had to open!

I thought that I must have gotten really lucky and been in the right place at the right time to be able to see the bridge open.

However, as my coworker informed me (and I later confirmed on wikipedia) – I wasn’t all that special.  Due to its low vessel clearance of 30 feet,  the Fremont Bridge opens an average of 35 times a day, which makes it the most frequently opened drawbridge in the United States and one of the busiest bridges in the world.  Oh well. 

There are a lot of cute, unique restaurants and shops within walking distance from the office.  For example, on my first night there my coworkers took me to dinner at a restaurant called “9 Million in Unmarked Bills”.

Of course while I was there I had to visit the Pikes Place Market.  It was less than a half mile walk from my hotel!

It did not disappoint.  From the fish market to all the fresh fruits and vegetables – it was beautiful!

I saw the biggest a

vocadoes and garlic that I have ever seen in my life.

And saw the very first Starbucks that ever opened.

We stopped by a little Russian bakery that a coworker of mine had recommended.

And we picked up a spinach, egg and cheese pirozhki.

It was my first ever pirozhki and I give it two thumbs up!

They sell a smoked salmon pirozhki that I really wanted to try, but they were sold out by the time we got there.  I am putting it on the list for when I go back!

I also saw them making cheese…

For my final meal in Seattle, lunch on Friday, my coworkers too my manager and I to the Sky City restaurant in the Space Needle!  The Space Needle was built for the 1962 World’s Fair.  It is 605 feet high and was the tallest structure west of the Mississippi River when it was built.

The Sky City restaurant has a view of pretty much all of Seattle – including Downtown, and also the Olympic and Cascade Mountains, Mount Rainier, Mount Baker, Elliott Bay and surrounding islands.  The restaurant takes 45 minutes to make a full rotation, so by the time you finish your meal you have gotten a chance to see Seattle from every angle.

Right next to it was one of the local news stations, and a helicopter was just taking off from the roof.  It was super cool!  I love helicopters.

I wanted to take the stairs to the top of the Space Needle, but my coworkers said we had to take the elevator

When we got up to the top, it was so had to decide what to order.  Everything on the menu sounded delicious.

I finally went for the Louie Salad.  Look at this beauty. 

A TON of fresh shrimp and crab!  Good food, good conversation.

But the real treat was the view. 

I totally fell in love with this city.  I must mention that for the three days I was there, the weather was absolutely gorgeous.  Blue skies, sun shining.  But according to the woman working in the Space Needle elevator, Seattle has an average of 235-285 cloudy days per year.  That means that although I might not have gotten that lucky seeing the Fremont bridge open, I got really lucky with 3 days of sunny, beautiful weather. 

Truthfully, though?  I think that the overcast weather is something I could deal with.  I like sunshine, but I don’t like too much sunshine (which California has.)  One of my coworkers summed it up perfectly when he said, “San Jose doesn’t have weather, it has sun.”

And when I’m running, I love overcast weather.

S, on the other hand, does not love overcast weather – at any time.

So… now that I’m back in San Jose, I have a second job – and that is convincing S that we should move to Seattle.  Because I left my heart there…

Could’ve, should’ve would’ve. 

Today, I am making the executive decision to never run a marathon again without giving myself an ice bath right afterward.  I was going to try to take one on Sunday, after the NorCal marathon, but since we didn’t get back to the house until after 3pm (after leaving at 6:30am) I was exhausted and about to eat my own arm off because I was so hungry.  So hunger trumped freezing cold ice bath.  Although now that I think about it, I’m sure my chicken nuggets would have tasted just fine with my body submerged in freezing cold water from the waist down.  Oh well.

So I didn’t have an ice bath.  Which now, two days later, I am regretting because I am still sore.  Which means that I don’t want to go to the gym, go for a walk, or even really get out of my chair.  I am confident that if I would have taken the time and effort to give myself an ice bath, as unpleasant as it would have been,  I wouldn’t be kicking myself right now.  Or at least trying to kick myself, which I can’t really do since my legs are too sore to reach myself.

On to better things – food.  A few weeks ago, as a part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program, I received KC Masterpiece barbeque sauce to try! 

Mmmm…  Southern Style!  I decided that tonight was the perfect night to finally try it, and I had some chicken breasts calling my name.  I started off in boiling them in some apple cider vinegar and barbeque sauce.

About 6 minutes or so, until they were cooked through.

Remove from the pot and shred with a fork.

Once it was completely shredded, I mixed it in with a generous amount of the barbeque sauce.

I let it sit for about an hour, soaking in the flavor, and prepped my bun.

All together now:

This meal was quick, easy and delicious – perfect for a sore, stupid marathoner who didn’t ice bath after the race.  The KC Masterpiece sauce was delicious – it had a tangy taste that made it different from other barbeque sauces I have tried and that kept it from being overly sweet.  I’m excited to try it in another recipe soon!

Have you ever tried a post-long-run ice bath?  Would you do it again?

Yesterday… I ran a marathon.  I haven’t blogged about running or this upcoming marathon for a while because, up until yesterday when I was at about the 6 mile mark, I wasn’t sure if I was going to do it.  I have been going through some health issues, with lots of tests and medications, and am not feeling great.  I also haven’t been running or working out regularly (partially because of my last point.)

And now, after completing it, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to blog about it.  Because it SUCKED. 

From the beginning, shall we?  Friday evening, S and I headed to Sports Basement in Sunnyvale and picked up our bibs and t-shirts.  As soon as we saw the “expo”, I knew that this wasn’t my kind of marathon.  It was basically two tables – one where they were handing out the bibs, and one where they were handing out the t-shirts.  Although we had registered months before, and S had requested a size large shirt, they were out of larges at the “expo” and told us that if he wanted one he would have to go to the Saturday expo at the Airport Garden hotel to exchange for one.

Fine.  So we went to the other expo on Saturday.  This one might be better, I thought, since it was the day before the race and was at a hotel.  Nope.  Exact same thing.  Luckily they actually had a few size large t-shirts left so S was able to get one.  While we were there, we asked some people who were working there with a big poster of the race route in front of them what the road closures were going to be for the race and whether we could park in a specific lot.  Their response? 

We don’t know… you should check the website.

For the record, we had already looked for all that information on the website and it wasn’t there – there was no list of which roads were closed at which times.  Ah well.  We decided to just wing it the morning of the race and weren’t that concerned about finding a place to park since it was clearly a small race.  One plus – the t-shirts were cool!

Saturday night we I made the obligatory pre-race pasta dinner.

Eat PASTA, Run FASTA!!! 

The other postitive about this race – it was in San Jose.  Usually we have to travel to San Francisco for races, which means either getting a hotel room or leaving at the crack of dawn in order to find it, find parking, and get to the starting line (with a trip or two to the porta-potty, of course).  But this one took us all of 10 minutes to get there.  And the road closures were minimal, so we were able to park at the office where I work!  Double score.

The race started at 7:30am.  We were ready to go.

Well, I was as ready as I was going to be.  I was still talking about how much I didn’t want to do it!  And, although I hate to admit it now, I was considering not doing it, or just doing the half.  I tried to convince S to skip it and go have breakfast at IHOP with me, but he said no.

The first 6 or so miles were pretty good.  They were around downtown San Jose and were interesting, and the morning was still early and cool.  Just a few miles into the race, I really had to pee!  I went a little heavy on the coffee in the morning, because a.  I was exhausted, and b.  I didn’t really think I was going to run the race!  But I didn’t expect any problem anyways, because races always have porta-potties every couple miles or so, right?

Not this one.  By mile 4, I hadn’t seen a single potty.  So, when we ran near my office, I made an executive decision to leave the race, run the quarter mile to my office, go to the bathroom, and run back and hop back in.

Done and done.  I got 99 problems but a potty ain’t one.

That turned out to be a good executive decision, because I didn’t see a porta-potty until mile 9!!  And, there was ONE.  One potty.  For an entire group of half and full marathoners.  Are you kidding me?

After about mile 6, however, the race turned onto the Guadalupe River trail.  That’s where the major suckage began.  The Guadalupe River trail is long, boring, and has no shade.  Two hours into the marathon, it was super hot.  The sun was beating down on the dirt trail and I felt like I was melting.  By the time I got to the trail turnaround, right before mile 16, I felt awful.

I should note that S and I decided not to run this race together.  We run at completely different paces and last time we tried to run together, at the Lausanne Marathon, S went out too fast and then ended up really struggling during the second half of the race.  We didn’t want that to happen this time.  But there were a lot of cross-backs where we crossed each other, so I was always keeping a lookout for him and when we saw each other we would take little time to check in, figure out how we were doing and whether we wanted to keep going. 

When I got to mile 20, I felt like I couldn’t go anymore.  Part of it was physical, but I think a bigger part of it was mental.  I was hot, I was tired, I was dirty and I was grumpy.  If I would have been able to, I would have quit right there.  But… I was still 6 miles of hot, sunny, dirt trail away from the end (and our car) so I had no choice but to continue.  I was constantly having inner conflict – I wanted to walk so badly, but I knew that if I did, it would take me even longer to get to the car.  So I did some run-walking.  For four miles, I ran for 8 minutes and then walked for 2.  That helped – each time I started running again after my walking break, I felt a little bit more renewed.  For about 2 minutes, and then I was waiting for the next walking break!

Finally, I was at mile 26 and willed myself through to the finish line.  They handed me a cold water wrapped in a cold towel (which was awesome) and my medal.

The breakdown:

About the race, S had pretty much the same thoughts that I did.

Overall pros:

• Nice tech t-shirts
• Cool medals
• San Jose location
• Price (I got half off entry from a Living Social deal)

Cons:

• Boring, boring, boring route.
• Very few spectators
• No shade!
• Limited porta-potties
• We missed the Steelers game, although this would have been the case with any race

Post-race, we were starving.  We actually didn’t leave downtown San Jose until 2pm.  I was in no mood to make a meal when we got home, so we made a pit stop at Burger King for S.

His chicken fingers smelled so good that by the time we got home I knew exactly what I wanted.

Boca Chik’n nuggets, with multiple dipping sauces.  This was my starter… and I had 2 more plates.  Major marathon appetite!

For the rest of the day, I was a total bum.  Which was wonderful because we just got a new couch that I could enjoy being a bum on!

Our old, crappy couch:

Our new, super-comfy couch:

JB approved.

Now, our living room looks really white.  White walls, white carpet, white-ish couch.  We need to buy something nice and colorful to go on the wall behind the couch.  Maybe a nice piece of art?  Any ideas or suggestions?

The other good news of the day was that the Steelers redeemed themselves.  After last week’s 7-turnover fiasco, they needed some serious redemption.  Can’t wait until next week so I can watch the game!

Next up – Nike marathon in a little over a month.  To run or not to run… that is the question.  Right now, I must admit that I feel a little marathon-ed out… but maybe that will change once my sunburn and sore legs subside in a few days!

SUCKED.

That is all.

We’re baaaaaaaaaaaaaack!

Football season is a happy time in our household.  We have been waiting many months for today – the first Steelers game of the regular season!

You know it’s a special Sunday when S sets the alarm for 7am.  The game started at 10am, so why so early?  This is why:

S had a free Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘n Fruity coming his way from his birthday last week, and it was about to expire.  So we had a post-birthday, pre-game breakfast celebration!

While we were waiting for our breakfast, we looked through one of the library books I picked up yesterday at the library.  Actually, S picked this one out for me and asked me to read it.

Apparently I’m projecting a glass-half-empty worldly perspective to my husband.  Whatever could he mean? 

In all seriousness, though, I am looking forward to reading that book.  I do have a tough time looking on the bright side sometimes – especially lately.  I tend to think of it as being a realist, but I can see how it strikes S as being a pessimist.  So I shall read.

Breakfast arrived.  I went for a veggie and cheese omelet with a side of fruit.

S got his free Fruity Tooty.

It was perfect pre-game prep food!  We hurried home to find we had missed the first few minutes of the game… and the Steelers were already losing

It’s ok though – we will just practice our positive thinking!

And while we watch the game, I am making my first attempt at baking a baguette.

Rise baby, rise!  You’ll have to read my next blog post to see how this one turns out.

Now back to the game.

By the way, anybody have a suggestion for a good use for fresh Italian prunes?  I have 5 pounds of them to work with…

Thank you, Costco.

Today was a jam-packed day!  I started it off with my German lesson.

By the time it ended, my stomach was growling.  I whipped up this bowl of shirataki pasta with veggies and shrimp, laughing cow cheese and red pepper tapenade.

Do those shrimp look a little funny to you? 

That’s because… they are veggie shrimp!

I saw them at the store last week and was intrigued.  I was actually a little nervous to try them, because the concept sounded weird.  Vegetarian shrimp?  I don’t know…

But they were delicious!  They tasted a lot like the imitation crab flakes (made with surimi) – a little bit of sweetness to them.  They probably won’t be on my regular rotation, because I love real shrimp and I was a little disappointed with the low amount of protein in them, but I would definitely get them again if they were on sale.

After lunch, S and I did some lounging watching some tennis.  S, of course, was rooting for Federer and was sad when he lost.  I was just kind of glad the match was over so that we could finally leave the house and go do something!

While we watched tennis, JB had some entertainment of his own.  The hummingbirds have been visiting our feeder non-stop!

He was in heaven!  He couldn’t take his eyes off them.

When the match was finally over, we made a quick trip to the library, to return our books and get some new ones.

Next we stopped at Petroglyph to pick up our glazed and fired pottery pieces from last weekend.

Before:

After!

I can’t wait to eat off my new plate!

After Petroglyph, we made a Costco run.  The main purpose?  Picking up a new gym membership!

I’ve been slacking in the exercise department recently.  My gym membership expired in the beginning July, and I didn’t renew it because the truth was that I hadn’t been going very often at all the months prior.  And I was focusing on my Sunday long runs in final preparation for the San Francisco Marathon.  Since the marathon, however, I have basically done nada.  With the exception of 2 long runs, pretty much the only exercise I have engaged in has been…well…  I went hiking once!

S, also, has been limited in his physical activity.  So we both picked up a 2-year voucher for the gym we used to belong to, 24-Hour Fitness. 

Here’s to 2 years of gym going!  *Fingers crossed*

I also picked these up at Costco:

New comfy slippers.  JB approved!

Now S and I are going out to dinner.  Tonight’s dinner and a movie night!

My husband is now another year older, another year wiser.

Notice the wrapping paper on his gifts?  Same as last year.  Oh yeah, and the year before.  Well – this year I finally used it up.  So  next year S will get to see some new colors   I think I win the award for most judicious and conservative use of wrapping paper!

The first gift he opened was from my Mom, the rest were from his good old wifey.  From my mom he got…

A running medal holder!

She also bought one for me, wheeeeee!  But it is a birthday present for me, so it is going back into storage until my birthday in December.  It was just easier for her to purchase and ship them to us at the same time.  So S gets to use his for two months while my medals keep building up in preparation for December

He pretty much made out like a bandit.  This fleece, from me, was one of his favorite gifts.

Some birthday quality time with the kidaroos

At least JB appreciates my frugal mindset when it comes to wrapping paper!

But he couldn’t understand why he didn’t get any presents.

The highlight of the day was his cake.  S requested a black forest cake.  At first, I was going to make it myself.  But as last week got crazier and crazier, I decided to go the pre-made route.  The problem?  I couldn’t find a single place that sold a black forest cake!  Who knew they were so difficult to find?

I eventually found that I could order one at our favorite European bakery – Bijan bakery.  So I placed the order two days in advance and scheduled to pick it up for his birthday.

Side note:  The day before his birthday S and I went to the new Safeway that just opened in Los Gatos.  And lo and behold… they had a black forest cake.  For a quarter of the price of the one that I got at Bijan bakery.  *sigh*  Oh well – I know the one from Bijan was much better!

Behold:

The happy birthday boy.

Look at this beauty.

Truth be told…. I didn’t love the cake.  Black forest isn’t really my favorite.  And I prefer buttercream frosting and white or yellow cake to chocolate cake with whipped cream-ish frosting.  But it’s probably a good thing that I don’t love it, or else I would eat pretty much all of S’s birthday cake, per usual

S, however, loved it.

We spent the day at Dave and Busters and just relaxing.  It was a wonderful first birthday celebration as a married couple.  Can’t wait to see all the future birthday celebrations in store for us!