Rx: Ironman

Coaching, Snow, and Everything in Between

I love motivating people. I have said for a long time that if I weren’t a pharmacist, I would have gone to be an athletic trainer. Who wouldn’t want to wear yoga pants and tennis shoes every day? It sure beats dress pants and, ugh! dress socks on a daily basis. Saturday, I got to play the role of coach. Steph rocked her awesome new swim suit. It was the first time I had seen it on. It really doesn’t look as bad as you would think, especially far away. (By the way, she says that she will order from the grab bag again. It really can’t get much worse!) We had “putting on your swim cap 101;” took a tour of the Y’s locker room; and I showed her how to use the suit drying thing. Then we got started. We did lessons 1-4 of the program. She did great. Steve and I also critiqued each other’s strokes. Turns out I am rotating WAY too much. This may explain why I’m not getting faster. Ah, one more thing to work on this year. I’d be nice to get my swim time down a bit for IM, though. I probably have a good 20-30 minutes of time to comfortably cut out when I think back to it this past year. That’s just with improving my form and working more on speed.

I haven't convinced Steph to take up tris yet, but she will probably be running the marathon with me next fall, so that's a start. Who knows what'll be next?

Minnesota finally looks like winter! We’ve gotten several inches of snow over the last 2 weeks. I love running outside right now. I think there’s something magical about running when it’s supposed to be dark, but the city lights combined with the white snow light up the whole sky. The sidewalks are nice and clear now too, so there’s less risk for ice and subsequent falling, which has been known to happen. I’m hoping for a 7 miler tonight. It’ll be my longest run since the marathon in October.

I am totally jonesing for some sunshine right now. I have a business trip planned to Orlando in 3 1/2 weeks, and boy am I hoping for some swimsuit time. They said on the news this morning that we gain an extra minute of sunlight per day in Jan and that come Feb, we’ll get an extra 3 minutes per day. As far as I’m concerned, it can’t come fast enough. I have literally been having dreams about going somewhere warm and tropical.

I got new running shoes on Sunday. Superfun! There are three clothing items in which I always have a new one handy: swimsuits, running shoes, and Steve’s jeans. For some reason, they all wear out to the point that one day, you realize that you absolutely cannot wear this thing another day. For running shoes, it’s usually weird leg or back pain for me. For Steve’s jeans, there’s some massive hole somewhere, and I cannot let him out of the house knowing that his students will judge me based on what he is wearing (hey! I did it to my professors in college. I know it happens). Swimsuits? Well, there comes a point when you realize that your suit is no longer supportive and that you should probably be charging people to look at you because it’s so see-through in some parts. I’m too, ahem, thrifty and busy to just go out and buy any of those things full-price, so I stock up when I can. So I guess it will be a little while before I can sport my new digs, but they’re in the closet when I’m ready :)