Category Archives: Isla

running and horses

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I read about the Strava mile on the Strava app and decided to give it a go.  My mile PR is 5:52 from high school when I was 17, had had no kids, weighed maybe 115, and did a lot of speed work.   I think it’s safe to say I’m not breaking 6 minutes any time soon, which makes me a little sad.  But, no matter.  Strava thinks my PR is 7:05 or something like that, so I decided to go after a sub-7.  I found my nearest track, less than 10 minutes from my house and is synthetic; there isn’t a track like that in the whole city of Roanoke.  I headed out there at 6:30 in the morning or so and had it to myself.  I wore my watch and decided to try and target 400s between 100 and 105 s — leading to a 1600 m between 6:40 and 7:00.

My splits for 1600 m ended up being 99.5, 102.3, 102.1, and 101.9.  That’s a 6:45 1600m.  Strava clocked me at 6:43 for my fastest mile (as I kept running since 1600m is just a bit short of 1 mile.)  Overall, I’m pleased, though honestly I thought I could run a few seconds faster.  I’m inspired now to do some speed work.

Saturday, I went out for a 38 miles bike ride around the lower half of Lake Washington.  1737 ft of elevation gain.  I’ve done the ride before, but it felt a little easier this time.  I’m always intimidated by a ride that long, but it’s better when I at least know the route.  I averaged 12.9 mph, which is pretty typical for me for this type of ride.

LakeWARide

After my ride, we headed to a birthday party with L – an equestrian party.  We live very near a beautiful area called the May Valley that has a lot of horse farms, and the party was at one of them.  L, as I’ve mentioned on here before, tends to be timid and afraid of most new things, and she has always been afraid to sit on a horse every time the opportunity has come up.  The people at the horse farm were so great.  They started with having the kids brush the horses.  L was initially afraid to touch the horse, but I eventually was able to talk her into it.  Then B got up on the horse they’d been brushing, and we all managed to talk L into getting up to.  What did it was the option to ride with her sister.  It was so sweet.  Unfortunately, I was so busy providing moral support to L that I got no photos, but I’m hoping I can get at least one from one of the other moms.

ambivalence

I recently stumbled across one of my most favorite pieces of running writing.  When I was in high school, there was a bit of a running fad that favored fewer miles.  Of course, this was the pre-internet age, but in my teens I was pretty convinced that I was “burned out” and other such nonsense when my times slowed down in 10th / 11th grade.  (Looking back, puberty and (healthy) weight gain had a lot more to do with it.)  In any case, it wasn’t until my junior year of college that I stumbled upon a community of running enthusiasts on the internet on the CoolRunning forums and became convinced of the opposite, that as far as running goes, more is almost always better.  The author of the piece above ran many, many miles and enjoyed the payoff.

The weather was warm enough to run in shorts and short-sleeves yesterday for the first time in, oh, six months?  Longer.  Who knows.  It was wonderful.  I took advantage and ran 8.5 miles, my longest run since before B was born.  It felt great, though I’m sore today.  I need to drag myself out for a shorter run this morning sometime soon before the rain starts again.

We’ve settled on a school for L.  We’re going to send her to a French immersion Kindergarten.  I have mixed feelings about this.  I wish we were living slightly farther North, in a better school district, but for a wide variety of reasons the cards did not fall that way.  We’ll re-evaluate the long-term path after next year.  You might wonder, why French?  Well, there are two French immersion schools near us and none in any other language.  I think there is a value in knowing any second language, regardless of what it is.  I also think that L is precocious and this will ensure she is challenged.  Hopefully, she won’t be TOO challenged.  Both B and I feel ambivalent about the whole thing, in contrast to how we feel about the preschool, which we love.  But we’ll give it a try.

swimming

L graduated from level 1 of swim lessons.  It’s been a long road, and I’m frankly just delighted.  It seems like a small thing, and she was beginning to tower over the other kids in her class.  It had just become obvious to me that swimming would be a challenge for her.  However, I have derived an enormous amount of joy from swimming and being in the water through the years, from just playing at the pool in the summer to swim team to being confident in deep water at Smith Mountain Lake and pool parties and on and on.  As an adult, I really feel water aerobics and my weekly swim were incredibly important to my mental and physical health, and I met one of my best friends in Seattle at water aerobics class.  Anyway, I’ve watched L gradually gain confidence and comfort in the water, and I see a clear path towards her becoming a confident swimmer over the next several years.  (A path paved with bribes and sparkly swimsuits, no doubt.)  Now, B is getting old enough to start swim lessons!

I myself have been swimming once a week.  I absolutely detest getting in the pool and swimming that first half lap.  It’s just torture!  After that, however, it’s quite pleasurable.  I always preferred breaststroke, but I’ve been swimming freestyle with an eye towards triathlon, and I’ve become so much more comfortable with freestyle.  I even tried some flip turns at my last session.  They went . . . ok.  I ended up with a nose full of water during one of them, and I basically found them exhausting.  But it was kind of fun to realize I can still do one, more or less.

My parents are visiting, and H is out of town.  My loyal readers will know that the latter has caused me a great deal of anxiety in past.  Today, I’m doing fine.  A friend told me to try and celebrate the small achievements, and so I’m going to celebrate how today has gone.  We’ll deal with tomorrow tomorrow.

strife

Watching this made me tear up a little.  A mother and child lost and reunited while Nadal holds the tennis match.

My own little munchkin (the larger one) came home with a bloody lip today, sustained after a fall from her scooter.  The poor little thing takes bodily injuries so seriously, much as I do I suppose, except worse.  She has been this way since she was tiny, so I guess it’s genetic.  It’s hard because getting hurt is part of life.  Her little sister is much less sensitive.  I do think life is a bit harder for sensitive types.

On a side note, I enjoyed watching Streif.  I’m fascinated by downhill ski racing, so naturally, I’ve been interested in this movie for a while.  It’s not perfect – a bit choppy and over-edited in places – but if you’re interested in downhill skiing, it’s a must-watch.

sense and sensibility

L had her second soccer practice today.  This time, she was again the other kid, but there were two coaches there.  Two!  I am so amused.

I’m re-reading Sense and Sensibility, and this time through, I’m really struggling with the premise that Marianne, age 16, should fall in love with Colonel Dashwood, age 35, despite his various qualities.  People died younger then, to be sure, and grew up faster.  Life expectancy at the time was less than 40, but this is greatly affected by the fact that perhaps 40% of people died before reaching adulthood.  Also, consider that Colonel Brandon is wealthy, and it’s no unreasonable to suppose he could be expected to reach at least his 50s and perhaps 60 years of age.  Being generous, assuming 60, and scaling the ages by 1.33, one could argue they are equivalently 21 and 47.  Should a 21-year-old consider someone nearing 50?  It is too much for me, even if the elder man is charming and rich.  But, living in poverty in the 1800s would have been a terrible thing, so I guess I would have been willing to put up with a lot to be well-off.  But I don’t find this reality charming or romantic.

I was talking with a (male) friend today at work about how I have a different personality that I show to men and women.  This is due in large part to the fact that I interact with many, many men professionally, whereas most of my friends are women.  Still, even at work, I treat women slightly differently, and I have a different way to trying to form friendships with men.  Do you, fair readers, interact differently with men and women?  I think even now as an old married woman, I am cautious about being too nice or too friendly towards men, lest they get the wrong idea.  It’s the old shyness I’ve carried since childhood about admitting any kind of affection to the opposite sex.

 

kids and books

I’ve just started reading James and the Giant Peach to L, and we are both tremendously excited about it.  I think we were still in our old house when I first read her Little House on the Prairie, so she was just 2.  Since then, we’ve enjoyed reading a fair few chapter books with pictures – LHOTP twice, On the Banks of Plum Creek twice, some Galaxy Zack books, and a few of the Frozen books.  (Frozen is a very big thing around here lately, but more on that later.)  We still read lots of little kids books as well, and she enjoys listening to the books I read to B, too.

We tried Charlie and the Chocolate Factory last year, but she just wasn’t really ready for it.  She’s older now, though, and JATGP has more pictures than Charlie.  James is illustrated by Quentin Blake, unlike Charlie.  We’ve only read the first three chapters, and I’m delighted with reading it already.  I did have to gloss of James’ parents getting eaten by an angry rhino.  Eek!

Meanwhile, B has mostly graduated from board books and is starting to enjoy simple children’s books.  She loves all the Jane Cabrera books, and Good Night, Good Night Construction Site is a new favorite.  We’re also reading Where the Wild Things Are, Chicken Soup with Rice, Ferdinand, Madeline, and Blue on Blue.  How I love Madeline!  Some of the old classics are just unbeatable.

saturday

H is away for about 24 hours.  He left this morning and will be back tomorrow mid-morning.  One of the most challenging parts about his trips is that I have to put the girls to bed, and it can be tough to leave L on her own while I put B to bed.  (The opposite is impossible.)  L can play on her own for long periods of time, but there’s something about knowing that I can’t / won’t come to her that makes it tough.  It’s gotten easier as putting B to bed has gotten quicker.  Currently it takes about 30 minutes.  Tonight, I read to both girls, then sent L out to entertain herself for half an hour while I got B down.  She tapped on the door for a while at one point saying she wanted her book, and I told her to go away, that I’d get her the book after B was down.  I came out and found her kneeling at the foot of her bed in her room crying because she was lonely.  It was so sad!  She is so sensitive sometimes, it just pulls at my heartstrings.  All was well shortly thereafter, but still.

We went to a neighborhood easter egg hunt today, a private event hosted by a neighbor across the street.  Like all social events featuring people I don’t know well, it caused me a ridiculous amount of stress.  There were a few kids there around L’s age that I hadn’t met before.  She was shy and reluctant to join in many of the activities, and I just really didn’t know how to help her.  It’s like the blind leading the blind.  The whole thing was actually organized by a 12-year-old, and I was very impressed.  It was cute watching her stage-manage everything.