Busy busy busy bee

I've been a busy little bee since I posted this Thursday last. Friday, instead of swimming or playing with the bodyrocktv.com site, I continued helping with the insulation, then made fresh tomato soup with tomatoes from the monster plant in my garden.

Yes, that's one plant.
The tomatos are cherry-sized and pear shaped

Who knew the thing that made tomato soup taste like tomato soup was cloves? The recipe I didn't follow was from AllRecipes.com. I say didn't follow because a) I am incapable of following a recipe, and b) I only went to look it up when my soup didn't taste right. That's when I realized the cloves made all the difference. I didn't follow the rest because I didn't want sugar and flour in my soup. I did add fat in the way of bacon grease, since I'd just fried up a pound of bacon for BLTs. Gotta use these tomatos some way! I spent the rest of the day doing homework.

Saturday I was supposed to run 7 miles, but spent 10 hours completing the insulation job, then did homework, then went out singing. I was rather amazed I managed to stay up until 4am, considering. No photos of karoake. I was too busy having fun.

Sunday I recovered from karoake, which included waking up at 7:15 to drive 45 minutes home from Goddess's house, only to find I'd left my phone, shoes and jacket back at her place. Yeah, 3 hours of sleep will do that. And no, it's not unusual for me to forget my shoes. I'm barefoot as often as possible anyway. So the time I'd planned to run the 10 miles on my calendar (or the 7 miles I was supposed to run Saturday), I spent driving to Kent and back. Again. When I got home again I rewrote our team submission.

Monday I hoped to run either the 7 or the 10 miles, either in addition to or in lieu of the swim on my schedule. That didn't exactly happen either. I was dressed to run when someone knocked on my back door. I'd forgotten I scheduled Kirby to come out and clean my carpet. I'd "won" this from the booth at the Geauga County Fair. I realized it would be a sales session, but not that it would take literally hours. The Kirby vacuume can apparently do just about everything. I felt sorry for the guy when he finally got around to vacuuming my carpet with little circles of filter, to show me how much it picked up. I'd not vacuumed in a while, so he was going through quite a few filters. This was also about the time his manager showed up to help strongarm me into a deal. I like the vacuume a lot, but am not real thrilled with this type of sales tactic. Considering my economic situation, I could not afford to purchase a $2k vacuume anyway, even with the types of deals they tried to offer. I never did get my carpet cleaned. I wasn't going to make him shampoo after definatively declining the sale. I don't think the shampoo is very good anyway, as it's a dry cleaning sort of thing that sits on top of the carpet. 

After the Kirby guys finally left, it was time to write my weekly paper. I had a hard time with it this week. I kept walking away, and ultimately stayed up until 3am finishing.

Today I was back at my parents, touching up the front bedroom ceiling and mudding all the cracks and holes left by the electrician. We are back on track to finish renovating the 2nd floor, with a bit of every room on the first floor thrown in.

After working at my parents for several hours, I hit the Y. I couldn't decide if I should run the 7 or 10 miles I missed this weekend, or the fast 5 on my calendar for today. I opted to attempt both the fast 5 and then slow down for either an additional 2 or 5, depending on how I felt.

I ran the first two at 11-minute-mile pace, but could not sustain it. So I walked for a quarter mile, then ran another at the same speed. I ultimately ran 4.25 miles this way, with 3/4 mile walked, before the treadmill shut itself off. I forgot these did that after an hour.

When the treadmill automatically shut itself down, it started by slowing a full mile per hour. This made me kind of lurch, as I wasn't expecting it and I had the display covered. So when I started the treadmill up again, planning to finish my 5 and maybe run another 5, my hips and knee complained. I set the speed at 5mph and ran another mile, then walked a bit before deciding I really was done. I am fully prepared to push myself beyond my comfort zone, but not to hurt myself in the process. Luckily, the pain seems to have been transitory, as I feel only slightly stiff at the moment.

My training schedule over the past month has an awful lot of red in it. I'm not surprised, as I've always found it difficult to keep on track. Hopefully what I have done is good enough for the Towpath in just a few weeks.