Living Life to the Nines

This week has been pretty epic.  Mike and I celebrated nine years of marriage, and Logan celebrated nine months of, um, being alive. This week is also a down week in mileage (my longest run will be nine miles to keep with the theme), and then this happened:

Lawwwd, someone smack me!  ...homemade ice cream cake surrounded by homemade chocolate chip cookies and hot fudge.  Would it be excessively cheesy to say we are on cloud nine this week?  Too late.  I said it.  I'm a loser.  Shut up!  You weren't supposed to agree.  

Once the jiggle wears off from the cake, I anticipate my training will continue kicking ass.  I've been back at it for three and a half months now, and other than having a pet lizard living in my stomach, I feel awesome.  I rejoined a gym to hit the weights again, added tempo/speed workouts back in, and I'm not in as bad of shape as I anticipated after pregnancy and all that stomach surgery vomit.  My long run will reach 18 miles again next weekend, and I dropped two miles at 6:17 pace at the end of a seven miler the other day.  I start to hit the wall as I get close to the end of my long runs, but I know that is my endurance still rebuilding.  I am getting the itch to race and might enter a 5K for fun sometime soon.  Granted, the 5K is not my cup of Starbucks, but as a good friend said to me, I just need to "rip off the band-aid" and do it.  It's gonna hurt, and it might not be pretty to look at afterwards, but it's the only way to know where I am and move forward.  Seriously though, 5Ks kinda blow, dude.

So, yeah, this pet lizard thing. When you look at your stomach, does your belly button continually contract out and sink back in, even if you hold your breath?  Do you randomly see a bulge on one side that if you look five minutes later, might have either completely disappeared or moved to the other side?  Do you feel like you are being inflated like a hot air balloon the farther you run?  No?  That's because you don't have a lizard living in your stomach like I do.  It's the only thing that makes sense. So, I named her Lizzy.  Lizzy used to bite, but I keep her on a leash now, and her temperament is therefore well under control.  For reals though, abnormal abs have become my new normal, and as long as I am not in crazy pain or doing further damage, I am a-ok with that!

Life right now is all-around awesome.  Logan is growing up so fast (too fast!), and I fall more in love with him everyday.  He is standing up, has three teeth, and is so perfectly FAT!  Fat babies RULE!  He loves margaritas (proof he is my son) and wants to let all the single ladies know that he is on the market and ready to mingle.  

Disclaimer:  not allowed to date until age 35

   

I have become the master of efficiency lately.  It took me a while to figure out how to fit all the pieces of my life puzzle together, but it CAN be done.  When I am working, I am working; no random chit chatting with the nice lady sitting next to me at the coffee shop.  When I am lifting, I am lifting; less time in between sets, and less judging of those that take too long in between theirs.  What?  Me do that?  Nooooooo.  When I am done running, I move right on with the day; no more hoovering a bag of gummy bears, except for on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, because I earned it, and no more over-analyzing my run stats.  Ultimately, when I pick Logan up at the end of each day, I want all the other pieces to be in place so that he and Mike are my sole focus.  After all, they are the most important and beautiful piece!

Happy running!  

Only NINE weeks left until the Philadelphia Marathon!