December 29, 2008

New Year's Resolution

The family and I are headed to New Jersey to spend some time with Joe's parents and family. So unless I can find some quick time to blog you won't be hearing from me until after January 7th.

Here are my New Year's Resolutions - I have to admit that I am scared to put these in writing because it seems as if whenever I do the never happen - but I have been thinking about these for awhile.

1. - Run the Gateway Trail Marathon in May.

2. - Run the 4th of July race from Gothic to Crested Butte. This is a 1/3 marathon and I have done this twice before. With the marathon training I hope to beat my previous times of 1.5 or 1.75 hours.

3. - Olympic Triathlon in Salida. I will need to get a road bike to do this. I have been thinking about doing this for awhile but this comes at a perfect time since I won't be training for marathon I can mix things up with the swimming and biking.

4. - Second Marathon - Mountain Air Marathon. This one is local from Crested Butte down to Gunnison. (They are re-doing their website so this was all that I could find.)

Hopefully with all of this training I will get down to 133 - my pre-baby weight. I am having so much trouble with these last 9 pounds.

December 28, 2008

I have found my max

Since I have started training for this marathon I have been doing my long runs but at the end of each one I feel as if I could go longer. Normally I will come home and take the girls for a walk because Mikayla wanted to go running with me and when I tell her no because I am going to far she asks if we can go for a run when I get home! I hope she keeps this up.

Well, I found my max yesterday. I did 8 miles and my average pace was 11 minutes 21 seconds per mile, which I feel really good about. Especially since at the end I was very tired but after a 1/2 mile of super slow I was able to summon up the energy to pick up my pace for the last 1/2 mile home. Boy when I got home I was tired and sore. But the good thing is that I woke up this morning just fine.

Even though I did not get a lot of runs in because of the snow I did a lot of cross training. I a great mix of cross country training, running, yoga and strength training.

December 24, 2008

Marathon Training Weeks 7 and 8

My marathon training has really slowed down the last two weeks due to the cold and snow. The first week I was stressed out that I was not getting the miles in but now I am just doing what I can.

Two Sunday's ago I set out late afternoon for an 8 mile run but after a couple of miles I was cold!! It was about 20 (which normally here in the winter is warm) but it was cloudy and just bitter. I told myself that I could turn around at 3 miles and if I felt up to do 2 miles around town. The closer I got to home the more I started thinking about a hot shower. My thighs were freezing and I am pretty sure I had icy in my panties!

After that cold run I decided to go to Gene Taylors (a local sporting goods store) to see if they had any sales. I found a pair of tights that have fleece on the inside for $25! I love them. I need to go back and get another pair so I can have one dirty and one clean pair. I could even put another layer on the outside if it is super cold.

The snow in slowing me down as well. I cannot go very fast on the snow so instead of doing speed work I am just running what I can as quickly as I can without getting hurt. The other day I did 4 miles through snow covered streets and I was happy with an 11 minute mile because in the snow that was pretty good.

Due to the snow I have been shoveling. On Sunday I set out to do 8 miles (again) and I felt great in the morning. As soon as I started running my back started hurting. I tried to run through it hoping it would stop but less than 1 mile into it I had to stop. I tried walking and stretching but that did not work either so I gave up and headed home. The rest of the day I my back was killing me and I tried to rest but that does not happen unless Lily is sleeping.

On Monday I was feeling much better but I did a strength training routine instead of running. Today I went for a 4 mile run and felt great.

December 23, 2008

Winter Wonderland

Have you ever noticed that when it is snowing outside it is also very quite. For the past 10 days or so we have been receiving between 3 to 6 inches a days. One day last week we had received about 6 inches so Joe ended up taking me to work. The next day we received another 3 or so inches and I decided to bike to work.
First, I had to change my normal route. Normally I head up a fairly busy side street. I started to do this like normal but the snow plows had only made the road big enough for one lane of cars on either side of the yellow line. The bike lane and parking area had not been plowed. Also, in Gunnison they push all of the snow to the middle of the road for quick plowing and clean up after the storm has passed. (When Lily was born it snowed for days (literally) and we received over 5 feet of snow. The snow piles in the middle of the road were bigger than the cars and trucks on the road.) Back to the story - because of the snow in the middle of the road cars could not swerve around me. Then I started to slip and slide and almost fell down, so I decided to take the side streets - much better. It was a beautiful bike ride to work.
Since then I have been riding through the snow. On Monday it was a pretty rough, slippery ride. I decided to do something I have never done before (and I have lived in Colorado for over 10 years). Instead of walking the dogs at night I took them for a cross country ski around town. We had a blast. Then this morning instead of bike riding I cross country ski'd to work! Joe ended up having to bring me home because it did not snow all day so the streets were drying out.
Here are some pictures of the snow around town.
My little model.
This is a picture of the pile of snow in the middle of the road.






This is what I was riding through the other day when it was dumping.


We have even more snow now.


This is just a cute picture of the girls I have to throw in.



December 11, 2008

Facebook

Are you on facebook? I have been for a month or so and my husband (Mr. Popular) already has over 100 friends and they are all his old friends from his school days seeking him out. I need some more friends (I have less than 20!)

So please, come find me - Tiffany Ziegenhorn O'Connell (yes my maiden is Ziegenhorn - what a mouth full!

December 10, 2008

Missing Witness

As many of you know I am a big reader. I picked up a book that I am recommending to all of you. It is called Missing Witness by Gordon Campbell.

It is about a mother and daughter who walk into the daughter's father's house and one of the two shoots the father. The first part of the book is about the mother's trial and the second part of the book is about the daughter's trial. I am almost done and I still do not know how it is going to end.

It is a true page turner. The only time I have to read in right before bed and I have been staying up later than normal because I just do not want to put this book down.

December 9, 2008

O Christmas Tree, O Christmast Tree

This weekend we put up the Christmas tree. It is beautiful and looks great. Not an easy job to do with ah 3 1/2 year old that wants to help and a 10 month old that wants to pull the decorations off of the tree.

After we finished we took a couple of picture of the girls for Christmas cards. I think we need to take some more.







What do you think?

Later that evening I was giving the girls a bath and Joe was cooking dinner. I heard this loud crash right outside the bathroom. I went out into the hallway and the Christmas tree was laying over on its side. It had fallen over. We have never had a tree to that. I should have grabbed the camera but I had two girls ready to get out of the tub and a Christmas tree in the way with water and broken ornaments everywhere. Luckily most of the broken ornaments were just balls but there were a couple of nice ones.
I manged to get the two girls dressed and put them in Mikayla's room to play with the door closed. I did not want Lily crawling over broken glass and we were right outside the door. It was amazing the both played happily in there while we cleaned up the mess.

December 8, 2008

Marathon Training Week 6

7 miles - yup you heard (read) me. I did 7 miles on the long run on Sunday. Since the marathon I want to do is trail running I headed to a recreational area (Hartman Rocks) to go running.

It was hard and very slow at first. I had to run uphill and in the snow. We have had a couple of small snows and there was a couple of inches on the trail. Finally I found some dry jeep track and was working on heading back down to the base area where I had parked the car. I did get a little lost so that meant a little bit longer than I had planned. When I was about a mile or mile and a half from the car and I said to Sky (My dog that went running with me. She is a tropper, she is 10 years old but still loves to run even if it means limping the rest of the day. But an asprin after the run and she was good. Tired but good.) "if we get to the car and we are at 6.5 miles we are going to finish it up and make it 7 - even if it means that we are late getting home." (I was already late but what is another 5 minutes when you are over 15 minutes late.) We got back to the car at 6.44 miles so we made it 7.

It did take me awhile, 1 hour and 30 minutes, but it was VERY slow in the beginning. Next week when I head out for my long run I think I will stick to the streets. Even though that is boring to me I want to see if I can get 8 miles in an average of an 11 or 12 minute mile.

December 7, 2008

Crawling Baby

Lily started crawling about a month ago and now she is all over the house. One minute she is in the living room and the next thing I know she is the bathroom crawling into the walk in shower. She is so cute and getting more and more vocal. She will yell, dadadada.

Today I called a friend of mine to see if she wanted to go for a walk and she was home sick. Her husband has his own business so that means many hours away from home. I told her to bring her kids over so she could get some much needed rest. Her kids are 7 and 6 months. The 7 year old loves to play with Mikayla. They spent an hour jumping on the trampoline. It is very unseasonably warm here and I was glad that Mikayla got some exercise.

While the girls jumped I put the babies on the living room floor to play. Her son was happy to play with the toys but every time I would get up to check on the girls Lily would come crawling over saying mama, mama. Even thought it was annoying it was nice to hear her call me mama.
Here are two pictures of the crawling baby who also enjoys her rice and beans for dinner!!

December 1, 2008

Marathon Training Week 5

Here I am at week 5 of my marathon training plan and as I look back through my log I see that I am back to week 2 of my training. It is frustrating but I still have plenty of time so I am going to get my butt in gear. It is always easier to say that on a Monday morning than on a Wednesday morning. It seems as if I start many weeks out great only to fail. I gotta stick with this because I really want this.

Why do I want to do a marathon? All though highschool I was never athletic. I never ran a mile. I was a bit overweight - not much just a bit to make me feel self conscious. Now that I can run I want to run and I want to prove to everyone and myself that I can do it. I also want to lose some weight. I am trying to get this baby weight off but most of the trying is wishing it off and we all know that does not work.

Here are my goals for this week. Please help me stick to them. Send me emails, leave me comments, tell me not to eat the chocolate in my boss’s office or the chocolate sitting on our office managers front desk. I hate/love the chocolate that comes out this time of year!!

Ok back to the goals for this week.

Goal 1 - Keep my calories under 1200 per day before dinner. It is hard to calculate how many calories dinner is because hubby makes dinner and boy does he like to use olive oil. I tell him that even though olive oil is good for your it is still a fat so use it sparingly.

Goal 2 - Do 4 runs this week, 3 miles, 3 miles, 5 miles and 6 miles.

Goal 3 - Weigh 138 my December 30th. December 30th we are heading back to New Jersey to spend New Year’s with hubby’s family. I have been struggling between 143.5 and 141.5 for the last 2 months and I want to be in the 130's before we leave.