Podcast Challenge 7

I just finished reading Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier by Neil deGrasse Tyson. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Tyson, he is an astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium in NYC. He's the astrophysicist you always see on Colbert or Stewart. He also hosts NOVAScienceNow and is pretty well known for demoting Pluto in his planetarium exhibit before the International Astronomical Union did. All in all, he's basically my hero. So when I heard he had a new book, I had to read it.

The book is a collection of essays that explain the science of getting to space, the history of space travel, and the future of it. It's really informative. Since it's not a novel, nor is it written in novel form, I don't feel I need to summarize anything. I definitely recommend it to people who are at all interested in space, or science in general. The science in it is really accessible, even to someone who has taken exactly two science courses since high school. Granted, I do get a lot of science education via PBS.

Broad Street Run

My parents picked me up at 6:45 and dropped me at the start line, which was really nice because it meant I didn't have to drive to the sports complex and fight the crowds on the subway. I got there in plenty of time to go to the bathroom and find the starting line water, then came the wait for actually starting the race and for my corral actually starting, and I took off. My knee was feeling fine! Then I got to mile 0.5, and my knee started hurting. But I was committed. To finishing, not to my time. I was just going to do what I could. I decided that between the crowds and the knee I'd just enjoy the race. I stayed close to the sidewalk for high fives and cheers, and waved to people as I ran.

Around mile 2, I saw my parents and husband. So I waved and kept running. This was probably when my knee was bothering me the most, but they said they couldn't tell. As I ran past Temple, I high fived the owl, waved to people in the stands, then high fived the football team. High fives gave me more energy than clif shot blox. There was a bit of a funnel effect to get around city hall, but then I immediately crossed to the other side of the street and it opened up a little bit. Around mile 7, I kept telling myself "just a 5K left, 30 more minutes of running." At this point, though, 30 minutes seemed like a long time. My husband saw me around mile 8 and said I was looking quite tired. I didn't see him, so I couldn't pretend I was excited.

Then came mile 9. I signed up to run with Jimbo's Squad. My boss has been running with them for a while, so I signed up, too. I didn't know anyone else running with them and couldn't find them at the start, but at mile 9, I saw their cheering section. They were yelling for me, and I was waving and fist pumping. At mile 9.5, a guy came up behind me and was like "hey, Jimbo's Squad, can I cross the finish with you?" He was also running with Jimbo's Squad. The clock time when I finished was 1:49:xx, and I was pretty certain I'd started somewhere around 0:20:xx, but couldn't be sure. So, I thought I was close. When I finally met up with my family, my mom had been getting text message updates, but they were all giving her the clock time and giving my pace based on that as well, so I still couldn't be certain that I'd beaten 1:30:00 like I wanted to.

We stopped for lunch, then hopped on the subway to head home. When we got above ground, I had a text from my sister Elaine telling me that she saw a sub 2 hour half in my future. I got really excited and tried to text her back as I was walking down steps, when I thought better of it and waited until I was on the side walk. I was really hopping down the steps, as my left knee wouldn't bend enough for me to walk down the steps like a normal person. She texted me back and said my time was 1:27:46. 8:46 pace! I was so excited! My last 10K was slower than that. Now I really want to do another half, but I totally need to take a few weeks off from running. Maybe at the end of the summer.

25 Mile Bike Ride

Actually, it was 28.7 miles. I had some time this afternoon, so I decided to go for a ride. I thought I'd try for the 25 miles, since my last ride (aside from to my garden plot) was over 17 miles. I biked down to Manayunk, up to Valley Forge, then back to Conshy. The headwind head to Valley Forge was killer. I've had headwinds before, but not like this. I had to downshift to keep biking. It was awful, but I made it. Then, I got to spend two miles riding through some bug swarm. I'm not even kidding. Every time I looked up, I got more bugs in my face. I had to stand outside and clean off my jacket and shirt when I got back so I didn't bring bugs into the house. It was pretty gross. In two weeks, I'll be biking with my parents. Hopefully, that'll be another 25+ mile bike ride, but I'll leave that up to Mom & Dad. If you ever want to ride with me, just let me know. I'll do shorter rides, if you like. I don't ride fast, but I am getting faster than I used to be, and I'm totally willing to go slower, take breaks, pack a lunch, go out for food. Just let me know.

Broad Street and Garden Update

First, Broad Street Run. I had been keeping my goal somewhat secret (I had told a few people early on, and more as I got more confident I'd make it) so that fewer people would know if I didn't make it. I'm going to finally state my goal for the whole internet to see, followed up a caveat that I may not make it, and that's ok, and you'll see why.

My goal for the 10 mile Broad Street Run is 1 hour 30 minutes. So, 9 minute miles. Last week, I did 10.3 miles in 1:33, which worked out to a 9:05 pace. And you always figure you'll run faster in a race than you do in training (except the third leg a Ragnar Relay when you have to run 9.1 miles, no shade, 3 hours of sleep, and you've already run a total of 9.1 miles over 2 runs in the past 24 hours; then you run slower), so you'd think I'd be fine. However, 8.5 miles into the run, my knee started really bothering me and I think I have and IT band problem. I bought a foam roller, iced my knee, and took some ibuprofin. My knee felt much better the next day, and I ran 1.5 miles on the treadmill on Monday with no real issue. Then, on Tuesday, I got an ear infection. It really hurt, was making me miserable, and I couldn't even fit my earphones in my ear (actually, the nurse practitioner couldn't get the ear looking at thingy in my ear). So, no running until Saturday, when I decided music or no (no music), knees hurting or no (pain), I had to run. I did four miles this morning, and my knee hurt around .25 miles in. On the plus side, I'm pretty sure I could've made it 10 miles. The pain wasn't too bad. Also, my knee didn't hurt nearly as bad after the run (last week, I limped until I finally got the foam roller, this week, I could walk properly and my knee was just uncomfortable, not painful). So, my current goal for Broad Street is back to 10 minute miles. My run today was faster than that (9:23 pace), and I didn't feel like I was pushing myself, but I'm not sure how much I'll be pushing myself if my knee hurts for 97% of my race and I don't know if I'll have to slow down more as I run farther. Maybe we should say my goal is 1:35 (9:30 pace). We'll go with that. Thanks, internet, for the confidence boost!

Onto the garden. I was finally given the OK to plant this week, so I loaded up everything in my backpack (aside from the watering can and markers for what I was planting [oops]), and biked out to the plot (holding the watering can in my hand while I biked). I planted cherry tomatoes, purple tomatillos (what do you call purple salsa verde?), green beans, sugar peas, brussel sprouts, green beans, lettuce, and zucchini. I still have a bit of space left, so I'm going to look for more seeds, and probably plant some flowers. I really enjoyed bringing home flowers for my dining room table earlier this year, and I think I want to continue that.

April Mail- take 2

In case you don't know, my little sister ran the Boston Marathon earlier this week. Yes, the one where it was 90 degrees on race day and she was used to running in the snow. You can read about her experience here. (I particularly like the post for her run after the marathon, but the link is to her marathon post.) Anyway, she is raising money to go volunteer in Tanzania, and has pledged to run a mile for every $10 someone gives. The rest of my siblings and I decided to to sponsor her marathon. She is also taking demands about what to wear/listen to/do on the run. We demanded she yell "Liquid Schwartz!" every time she had water/gatorade/goo as well as after when she had beers. This is a shout out to our Ragnar Relay team, Ludicrous Speed. If you don't get it, rent Spaceballs. Or come to my house and watch it on Blue-Ray. It's the only Blue-Ray I own. If you haven't seen Spaceballs in HD, you should probably visit me. Maybe I should just throw a Spaceball-themed party... Though I don't know what kind of food I'd serve... Raspberry jam?

Back to the mail part of this story: To make everyone's life easy, my older sister made the donation and the rest of us paid her back. Despite seeing her twice and bringing the check once, I never remembered to actually give her the check, so I dropped it in the mail about a week ago. And then was properly chastised earlier this week for not blogging about.

Podcast Challenge 6

In theory, I should've loved Death Comes to Pemberly. I'm currently obsessed with Downton Abbey, and while early 19th century Britain was different from early 20th century, I think the flavor should've been good. I also love a good mystery, and this mystery was quite interesting. Despite this, I couldn't get into Death Comes to Pemberly. My first problem was the way it was written. The tone was so forced to sound like it was written in 1805. Throughout the whole story, too, not just in dialogue. The story jumped around a lot to give background, but this was after it spent the beginning giving background, so I didn't understand why all of the background wasn't given upfront. Then, once the true story behind the murder came out, the details were given several times by several people, with a lot of the facts being repeated in each retelling. I found this rather ironic, since the judge the case was in front of was known for disliking hearing the same evidence more than once.

April Volunteering

I was supposed to help beautify my church this morning, then head to the community garden to help spread compost and till. So, I went to church and got assigned cleaning windows. Very exciting. I banged my elbow really hard and it still hurts, hours laster. Then, I helped set up for the Bishop's Tea tomorrow and volunteered to make scones for it. When we wrapped up there, I drove to the garden, but they appeared to get everything done in the morning (as there was no one there when I got there). So just one volunteer thing today. Unless you count the scones I'll be making after I go grocery shopping...