A Sense of the Infinite is one of the last books on my list of books to read and review for the young adult book committee I'm on. Usually the last books I get to are a slog, because I tend to read the ones I'm most excited about right away. I was shocked at how my I loved this one! I read it in 3 sittings. It was a fast-paced, intense book. There was some content in there that may be triggering for some individuals (eating disorder, discussions of rape, abortion), but the way they are discussed is in an honest and mature manner, which I really appreciate. They weren't just thrown in for shock factor (which I can't stand! And is becoming more prevalent in teen books, unfortunately). Loved this book!
My rating: 5 stars
Summary from Goodreads:
It’s senior year of high school, and Annabeth is ready—ready for everything she and her best friend, Noe, have been planning and dreaming. But there are some things Annabeth isn’t prepared for, like the constant presence of Noe’s new boyfriend. Like how her relationship with her mom is wearing and fraying. And like the way the secret she’s been keeping hidden deep inside her for years has started clawing at her insides, making it harder to eat or even breathe.
But most especially, she isn’t prepared to lose Noe.
For years, Noe has anchored Annabeth and set their joint path. Now Noe is drifting in another direction, making new plans and dreams that don’t involve Annabeth. Without Noe’s constant companionship, Annabeth’s world begins to crumble. But as a chain of events pulls Annabeth further and further away from Noe, she finds herself closer and closer to discovering who she’s really meant to be—with her best friend or without.
On Saturday, Kyle finally got to enjoy some hole in the wall texmex, literally his only request for the trip was to eat some really good texmex. I took him on quite the trek and when we walked in at lunch, it was packed, which was a great sign. The food was delicious. Wife points: 1.
After lunch we headed to the Alamodome to watch the Rangers play the Indians. I've only been to a couple of professional baseball games in my life, so it was a lot of fun. While I was bummed that I wasn't in an open stadium to work on my tan, in hindsight it's probably best that I wasn't exposed to excess sun the day before my race.
After the game, we had to hustle to get ready for Kyle's conference dinner and concert, and I had to pick up my race packet. I got ready super fast and hustled over to the hotel for the out of town pick up. I had planned to go to the regular packet pickup earlier in the day to check out the expo, until I realized it was a 25 mile/$30 uber ride (one way!!). Uh... hell no. The packet pick up was incredibly unorganized. I arrived 5 minutes after it opened and I was in a line of 30+ people that didn't move in an extremely hot room. My version of hell. I think they had some issues with their workers showing up, because as I was in line, a few more people showed up, and finally the line started moving. 30 minutes later, after I had sweat through my dress. For real.
We went to Kyle's conference dinner, ate some great food, including some steak, shrimp a giant salad and steamed veggies. This might be a variation off of my new favorite pre-race meal, as I had zero stomach issues on race day! After dinner and the presentation, Big and Rich performed for the bankers. We hung out for a bit, sitting because... race eve.... double fisting waters.... so boring.
We went out on the balcony before we left to try to take a picture overlooking the River Walk, and then the couple we asked to snap a pic of us, literally turned their shoulder to give me the cold shoulder. Selfie it is! Where's the southern hospitality?!
When I got back to the room, I immediately put my compression socks on and observed some legs up the wall. My feet were so swollen and squishy.
Sunday morning was race morning.
And immediately after my ice bath + shower, we headed to Chipotle for lunch. Guacamole dreams right here.
And then it was FINALLY time to catch some sun by the pool. The real reason for the vacation. For me, anyways. We got to soak up vitamin d for about 2 hours before we had to head to the airport to make our trek back north. :(
But not before eating one more time (we ate a lot on this trip, thank goodness I had to run 13.1 miles at the end of the trip. For a hotel bar, this Margherita pizza was to die for. My only regret is that we were going to the airport and I felt lame bringing a to-go box to the airport, so I gave it to our uber driver. I miss that pizza.
I haven't ran a 5 mile race in years. March of 2011 to be precise. I've only raced two 5 milers, and both of them were when I was much speedier! 3/13/10St. Patty's Day 5 mile 38:51 (short course) and 3/12/2011 Irishman Races: 5m 44:12 (as part of the Irishman races). The training plan I'm following has a 5 mile-10k race scheduled for this weekend, so I immediately signed up for the Chilly Cheeks 5 Mile that one of my running friends is the race director for. I'm excited about doing a longer race effort to give me an idea of what my race pace might look like for the half in May. I'm really not sure what to shoot for during this race, so I used the trusty Macmillan calculator to help me calculate some paces. A goal: 8:44 pace. This would have me around 43:42 finishing time, which would be just slightly faster than my 2011 race. B goal: sub 9 pace/sub 45.
C goal: Sub 46 miles (9:12 pace). Fingers crossed my legs decide they have some speed in them tomorrow!
Friday we made our way to Austin to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.
I've heard that Austin is pretty crazy, but add St. Patrick's day and SXSW into the mix and whoa. In small town news, the first person I talked to while I was there, his mother lived in Sioux Falls. Small world, immediately.
While we were in Austin we spent some time at a bar just people watching.
And then we realized we needed to get some food if we were going to sustain our pace. We found a great Mexican place, and I'm fairly certain that I ate my weight in chips, queso and guacamole. If I were to eat one meal for the rest of my life it would be chips + queso + guac. <3
After dinner, Kyle's boss was ready to leave, so we made our way back to SA. We spent more time getting to and from Austin that we did there! But I think we made it out of town before it got even weirder!
We spent some time dancing and sweating profusely at some bars in San Antonio before heading to bed. I think it's safe to say, that will be the wildest St. Patty's day we'll have for a few years.
Week of March 27-April 2 Monday Planned: General Aerobic + Speed 8 miles 6x12 sec uphill, 6x100 m strides
Monday Actual: General Aerobic + Speed 8 miles 6x12 sec uphill, 6x100 m strides. Whoop whoop! In a tank top no less! There's something about these workouts that I love! To think about a week day 8 mile run sounds terrible, but throw in some little fun mini-workouts and it becomes fun and exciting!
Tuesday Planned: Endurance 6 Miles Tuesday Actual: Six miles with Jordanne! I haven't ran with her in weeks and I missed her! We had to take a picture in our new matching SFWR hats, even though it was way too hot to run in them, so we left them behind. Speaking of too warm (!!) I was way over dressed in a long sleeve and pants. My heart rate monitor strap and shoes were still soaked from the sweat and humidity during Wednesday's run! I texted her Monday night and asked if we could please run this on the sloooooow end, maybe 11-11:15 pace, knowing I had a hard workout on Wednesday. But of course we talked too much and didn't pay attention at all to our pace and ran it in 10:30. Oops.
Wednesday Planned: VO2 Max 9 miles 6x1000 @ 3k-5k pace Wednesday Actual: Woof. This was hard. It was raining, there were puddles, and 25 mph wind gusts. We warmed up one mile and then set to work. I told Toni I was shooting for 8:00-8:30 pace for the repeats, having not done any speed work in forever. The first one was in to the wind and so incredibly hard. I thought I was going to have to bail on the workout completely it felt so hard. And the first repeats pace was 8:43. Ugh. We recovered for the remainder of the mile (.08 walk break, and then .3 jog). Luckily the rest felt much stronger: 8:25 pace, 8:25 pace, 8:42 pace (back into the wind), 8:23 pace, 8:26 pace. We finished off running a cool down of two miles with the rest of the group run.
Followed by some yin yoga! I was absolutely miserable teaching yoga. I was soaked to the bone from sweat and rain and was chattering and freezing, so I taught class in a hoodie, totally normal. And when I sat down to stretch and foam roll before class I tweaked my knee. Crazy pressure behind my knee cap. Fingers crossed that it's nothing.....
Thursday Planned: General Aerobic 3 Miles Thursday Actual: REST! My body needed it like crazy. Kyle and I had a date night, and I had plans to foam roll and take an epsom salt bath, but that turned into laying in bed and watching the first three episodes of The Americans!
Friday Planned: Rest/Cycling Friday Actual: Rest. I had considered doing my long run here, but my knee was still being a little wonky.
Saturday Planned: Endurance 12 Miles Saturday Actual: I had a sick baby girl at home, so no running for me. Poor pug bear. :(
Sunday Planned: Rest Sunday Actual: More rest. Kyle didn't end up getting home until 9pm, and I was worried about leaving Ollie alone since she had been sick all weekend. :(
Total Mileage Planned: 38 miles Total Mileage Actual: 23 miles
Love & Gelato is a book I have been wanting to read since it came out. To be honest, I was 100% attracted based on the cover alone. So cute. It was on the list to be reviewed for the Young Adult Reading Program I'm a member of so I added it to my list. It was amazing.
First of all the girl is a runner. Love it. Second of all, the girl's mother dies of pancreatic cancer (all the sads, all the feels, I can totally relate), and at one point in the story we see the mother's journal entry on her birthday and it's the same day as MY mom's crazy! Unfortunately I didn't get to take a sweet trip to Italy after my mom passed. Sweet sad love story with a bit of adventure.
My rating: 5 stars
Summary from Goodreads:
Lina is spending the summer in Tuscany, but she isn’t in the mood for Italy’s famous sunshine and fairy-tale landscape. She’s only there because it was her mother’s dying wish that she get to know her father. But what kind of father isn’t around for sixteen years? All Lina wants to do is get back home.
But then she is given a journal that her mom had kept when she lived in Italy. Suddenly Lina’s uncovering a magical world of secret romances, art, and hidden bakeries. A world that inspires Lina, along with the ever-so-charming Ren, to follow in her mother’s footsteps and unearth a secret that has been kept for far too long. It’s a secret that will change everything she knew about her mother, her father—and even herself.
People come to Italy for love and gelato, someone tells her, but sometimes they discover much more.
All week long, I kept refreshing race day weather for San Antonio. It was cooler than normal all week long (really reducing my planned pool and tan time; at one point I had to leave the pool because I was covered in goosebumps! Me! Who never gets cold!). The forecast remained the same: Sunday would be the nicest day of the trip. 67* at the start of the race and 99% humidity. I decided to adjust my game plan dramatically.
New plan: long run at my higher end of the long run pace. My current long runs range from 10:20-11, so in the 10:45-11:00 pace. Long run with a medal at the end! yes!
Our hotel was super close to the race start so I hung out there to have access to a bathroom. My stomach was the best it's EVER been before a race which was so exciting. I'm not sure if it was because I had adjusted race goals/expectations or if it was my meal the night before. TBD. I spent all day Saturday hydrating in preparation for a hot and humid run, and drank a bunch before we left our hotel. By the time we got to the race start, I had to pee. And I couldn't find portapotties anywhere. I snapped a quick pic with Kyle before venturing off to find some a bathroom.
I kept venturing around looking for portapotties and no one seemed to know where any were. When someone finally pointed me in the right direction, it was 7:15 and the race was ready to start! Sometimes I have to nervous pee when I don't really have to pee, so I hoped that was the case, and stayed in the corral. My cheeks already had sweat building up on them. The race started about 10 minutes late (grrrr) so I could've used the bathroom. And we were off!
Very quickly into the run I realized that I wasn't experiencing nervous pee symptoms and started looking for a portapotty. I was very uncomfortable from the first step. We ran around near the River Walk until I spotted a Starbucks during mile 2 and quickly ducked in (this isn't the first time that Starbucks has come just in the nick of the time during a race; it's why I'm okay spending so much money there :P) I spent about a minute in the bathroom before making my way back to the race.
1. 10:54 2. 11:40 (bathroom break 1 minute)
All of mile three and the first half of mile 4 was the one uphill in the race, but boy did it feel like we were going up, up, up!! I really didn't pay attention to the race elevation at all, so I didn't realize that was the only hill. Ignorance is bliss sometimes, I guess.
3. 10:52 4. 11:02
Around mile 5 I started to notice that I was feeling pretty good, and that my heart rate wasn't going too crazy. At this point I was staying in that slower end of the long run range, and my heart rate was staying in my long run range as well. I decided if I still felt good, I would try to pick things up a little at the halfway point. I feel like 6 miles is a sufficient amount of time to suffer in a half, right?
I distracted myself for awhile planning out the last six miles. My plan was to drop to 10:30 for two, then 10-10:15 for two, and then the last two as hard as I could.
5. 10:39 6. 10:40
By the time mile 7 hit, I was ready to turn up the effort level, and we were running through a really cool nature preserve/foresty type area. And the path was gravel. Not exactly ideal for picking up the pace. I concentrated on upping the effort level but not being too concerned with pace. The next surface we encountered can best be described as cement that someone has taken a jackhammer to, and then left all the little destroyed bits to dig into your foot and cause for uneven terrain. Harumph. Then back to the gravel. And then I started to get TIRED.
7. 10:39 8. 10:45 9. 10:38 10. 10:35
The last 5k I was ready to be done. I tried to pick up the pace, and while my paces don't reflect it, I was working HARD. In comparing my heart rate data from this race to the Dallas half in January, my heart rate was almost identical for the average and the maximum, and I ran a full 10 minutes faster there! Craziness. I cranked up my music and just put my head down. With a half mile left I tried to kick in to my final sprint....ish. Based on my horrific finishing photo, my form went to crap somewhere in the end of the race. Heel striking like a crazy fool (no wonder I was SO SORE after this race + all the random surfaces, I suppose).
I crossed the line, grabbed a medal and Kyle found me immediately. I made him play paparazzi briefly before we headed back to the hotel. I had big goals of hitting Chipotle as soon as it opened (there's no Chipotle in SoDak), so I was hustling.
A Sense of the Infinite
