Aberham Lincoln

While eating lunch after Lulu's school: Mom, we learned about Aberham Lincoln today (she calls Abram Aber as well).

Me: Tell me about Abraham Lincoln.

Lulu: OK, but this is scary mom (she pauses for effect), he got shocked.

Me: He was shot?

Lulu: He got (eyes widen) shocked!

Me: Oh. Who shocked him?

Lulu: I don't know, who?

Me: John Wilkes Booth.

Lulu: (looks off into space contemplating murder by electrocution)

Lulu: This next part is dirty mom.

Me: OK.

Lulu: His floor was (pauses for drama) made of dirt! And he peed outside!



Oh, the breathtaking results of Challenger.

Week Whatever

My days are essentially spent: lifting, chasing, racing, serving, and amusing. I like who I am from 5:30 a.m. until around 5 p.m. It is around this time that I start to loose my grip. I'm always pushing the restart button during my nightly prayers asking for a little more something to get me through.

I've always felt that the Mormon culture's approach to the word of wisdom is a tad bit ironic (this is a generalization, I know there are members who take it very seriously), in fact, at every temple recommend interview when asked if I live the word of wisdom I always shrug my shoulders in a "pretty much" fashion because I know that I really don't live the code of health that was intended.

I mean, we do eat pretty healthy in comparison with the rest of the United States. Yeah, I know, that's not hard to do.

We pretty much cut out red meat years ago, we don't drink soda or caffeine, and we don't eat that much sugar, but the sugar is really what separates the boys from the men right (I know there is nothing in the word of wisdom about sugar but it is a code of health, and by eating more than a tiny bit of refined sugar my health is compromised).




So in my praying (and marathon training) I've started to feel the urgency of really committing to live a word of wisdom diet. I've been trying to ignore the promptings but...I do want more. Seriously, I don't want to.

I started Monday. I ate whole wheat toast with peanut butter, a breakfast salad with spinach, apples, oranges and vinaigrette, and orange juice (I do need to keep calories, just not the empty ones)for breakfast. I snacked on raw almonds and dried apricots. I had a salad for lunch and Mezedakia for dinner and Tuesday was similar.

I did have more energy for my long run this morning, but I am hating not having some sort of fix now and then. I hear it gets better, right? Right?

Mezedakia:




When Brad and I were first married we lived downtown on B street, than in Hollady. We frequently ate at a dive called The Other Place. They have a delicious Mezedakia platter. Mine is better:)

Cut an English cucumber into thin pieces, cut tomatoes into fourths or eighths, crumble feta into chunks, grill a pork tenderloin and cut into disks (you can use whatever meat you prefer), place kalamata olives in the middle, drizzle the whole thing with olive oil, champagne vinegar, balsamic vinegar, oregano, salt, and pepper. Place lemon slices on the side and if you are not too concerned about a few simple carbs toast pita bread drizzled with olive oil and salt in the oven and cut into fourths. Pretty delicious and really not that bad for you.



Maybe someday soon I'll be able to hold Rosemary all day long and not be weary, and listen to whining all day long and not faint.

Wearing a Hat is Hard

Running is good again. I ran hills on Thursday and felt great. We ran 10 miles in the fog and rain on Saturday and it felt pretty good. Lone Peak's track is still covered with snow (we discovered that this morning as we searched in the dark for anything dark amid the white), so we tried to do some speed work on the side of the dark bumpy road from Lone Peak to the Timpanogous Temple. We ended up running 4 miles in 31 minutes. Things are picking up. And I get my stitches out tomorrow. Yea for me!

I've only cooked two noteworthy ricipes: Emeril's chicken stir fry was fast, easy, and a good way to add broccoli and red peppers to my meal.
But this warm lentil salad with roasted beets and goat cheese was delicious. It is the second time I've made it and I can't get enough. Yum.

Week Two

Abram is a glass half-empty kind of guy right now (please let it only be temporary). I reason that it must be difficult being jammed quite closely between three girls, two being incredibly over-the-top dominant and one being a needy baby. Any task that needs doing on his part is just too difficult because of "the beetle biting his leg" or the "roley poley" caught in his ear, or how going potty makes his eye hurt, and how putting his shoes on makes his tummy hurt. Unfortunately, his mother nagging him about completely these tasks makes him hit, kick and push his younger sister, which in turn makes her cling to me.



It's kind of like I have a goiter slung around my neck, except this goiter laments in operatic baby babble, the terrors of being Abram's younger sister.





I don't lament my goiter too much.


So, I ran 10 miles Saturday, did a tempo run Monday, and ran 3 miles this morning. And I felt pretty miserable during all of them. I'm not sure what is up. Maybe it was the race combined with not running for a week because of the surgery and maybe I am running different because I am favoring the leg. I can't figure it out, but I'll give it some time.

I had an allergic reaction to the bandages that I've been covering my stitches with, and now my leg is swollen with bleeding hives and it is nasty, and I can't wear bandages. I'll spare you the photo.

What I've eaten:

Thursday I made Bobby Flay's Chinese chicken salad and it was pretty good. I've probably made a dozen different Chinese chicken salad recipes and I still think I like Tyler Florence's the best.

I made chicken Kiev Friday. It's an America's test kitchen recipe, so no link, but it's filled with butter so you may not want it.



I was snapping a photo of my bowl full of butter and herbs and this just happened to be taking place in the background. Sweet Lu.

One of Brad's clients owns an extra large smoker and enters his smoked meats in contests around the states. He often emails Brad and asks if he would like something smoked for him. Last week he said he had room for a smoked pork butt. We bit and now I'm making all kind of really healthy pork meals. Right now I'm reading Born to Run and the author covers the diets of some of the best runners in the world. Christopher Mcdougall seems to have left out the part about how pork butt makes you run really fast...

Week One

When I said that this week began marathon training which included running 5 times a week and weight lifting, I lied. I knew when I wrote those words that I would be seeing the dermatologist the next morning for a "little" procedure. Upon entering the doctor's office, it became clear that he had actually just stated that I was to have a "procedure" and that I had subconsciously added "little".

So, I have had the skin cancer that isn't a big deal before, but this time it is just shy of melanoma (whatever that means) and had to be cut quite aggressively from my leg.



Pretty eh? Below these top stitches there are a ridiculous amount of small stitches because he cut a pretty good chunk out of my lower leg just to the side of my shin and right above my ankle, in fact, I grew slightly light headed as I watched him stitch for 30 minutes. The skin had to be pulled pretty tight and honestly, now I have an indented leg.

Moral of the story: wear sunscreen.

I think I should be able to wrap my leg tightly and do a long run on Saturday. We'll see.

I promised my sister that I would post (daily?, we'll see) my program and the recipes that I eat. My family generally eats healthy, but we have room for improvement. During my training I'd like to go a little greener as far as adding more fruits and vegetables to my diet. I will not be a 100%er, so don't judge me, but I would like to see where it takes me. Runner nirvana? I'm thin, and I look fine, but I would love a stronger, healthier body. I would love to feel great most of the time and have amazing energy.

This is the problem: I am a food snob, I can't help it. I love to cook, and I do think one can cook really tasty meals that are really healthy, but I just have to try harder.

My other problem is that I really love fat. I love butter, I love cream. So my plan is this: 5 really healthy meals, 1 sort of healthy meal coated in butter (Sunday's are up to someone else so it's really not my call, right?).

I will post what I am eating here (Cathy and Dad) and try to be somewhat accountable,and if by May I look like Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2...there you go. But if I look less like Linda and more like Julia Child, it's not because I am eating her butter smothered roasted chicken.

Tuesday I made Ribollita. All the ingredients, with the exception of the pancetta, are healthy and the soup was delicious, of course Lu won't eat it but she is something entirely different.

Wednesday one of my running partners brought me Rigatoni.

And here we are on Thursday, I'll let you know.



I think sweet Rosemary may have contracted rabies from Abram because her temper tantrum at the grocery store this morning was relentless. The checkout lady crossed herself when she saw Rosemary foaming at the mouth.

St. George Half Marathon (Painters Half) Report

So, I just need to preface this with a few prefaces:

First, when I was preparing for this half, I scoured the Internet looking for personal accounts of this particular race on blogs and such. I only found one by the man who placed 2nd last year, and his account wasn't all that helpful for someone who was running their very first half-marathon. So I hope my account is somewhat helpful for a first time half-marathoner, or at least someone who isn't trying to win it.

Second, most half and full marathons in Utah are known for being on the slightly fast side because they lose a fair amount of elevation. Many of them start up a canyon and come down into the city or town. The St. George half-marathon isn't one of these, it's a loop course, and no one told me that when I registered for it. A couple of weeks after registering for it, I briefly met a girl who found out I was running it and gave me a half grimace as she said: That's a hilly one. And I've been in a panic ever since.

So that is how I came to the race: slightly panicked and slightly sick.

The weather in St. George was rainy and a little chilly the night before. I waited in line for my chip and number, turned to the pretty redhead next to me, and asked her if she had run it before. She said it was her third time. I asked if the hills were bad and she replied that they weren't that bad, but that it wasn't a "fast" race. OK, I thought, I can live with that, because I have nothing to compare it to. That night, I barely slept, I don't know what was wrong, but I grew more anxious as the hours ticked by, and again I was panicking. Rosemary threw up, Lulu woke in the middle of the night needing medicine for her sniffles, and in the early morning Norah had a bloody nose. During the theatrics, the rain poured down.

By dusk, my head was heavy but the storm had broken. The sky was pretty dark and heavy with clouds, so I made a big mistake--I totally overdressed and pinned my number to my jacket that was over a long sleeved shirt. Even if it is only in the
30's DO NOT wear a long sleeved shirt, wear a short sleeved shirt and pin the number to that so that you can ditch the jacket when you heat up.

Anyway, there were a couple thousand people running that morning, in fact, my husband and I recognized quite a few people--he actually went to high-school with the pretty red head.

The race started at the Dixie center and we all had to squeeze our way across the mats that did the chip timing and it took a few minutes to get to my desired pace because the crowd was heavy. We made our way up into a neighborhood for the first few miles and then dropped down to a trail along the Virgin River. There were a few good uphills in the first 7 miles, but they weren't that long. The inclines were mostly gradual. I felt pretty good for the first 8 miles, although I was growing hotter and hotter by the second and wished I could strip to my sports bra. It was around this time that the leader streaked by me because the course loops back around, he probably only had a mile and a half left or so. For a second I considered jumping the track and joining him--my chip would never know. But on I went back into some neighborhood streets, and that's where it got hard. There was a gradual uphill that seemed to go on forever. My inexperience, lack of sleep, and sickness caught up with me at mile 9 and I thought: those girls (running partners) of mine can kiss off, there is no way I am running a marathon with them in May! But then I had a good mile from 9-10 and it was back on. At this point (I think) you drop back down to the river trail. I was really tired, and then my shuffle loaded Where the streets have no name, I actually looked up and saw the red cliffs and the river, and thought briefly: this is nice.

Mile 11-12 was horrible. The last 2.5 miles are a gradual incline and my sorry thighs could feel it. The last mile we passed over a bridge and turned back to the Dixie center and ran over a little steep hill and crossed the line about a hundred yards later. I finished in 1:54 and was OK with that.




Me, right after the race.

See, don't I look thrilled.

Placing some distance between myself and the race, I started to feel better about it (maybe I just forgot mile 11-12). A friend called me from the Dixie center and screamed: Martha you did awesome! I was thinking: I did? She said they had just posted the results and that I had placed 160th out of 800 women, so I guess that isn't so bad for only 3 months of running 3 times a week.

But this week starts five times a week with speed training and loads of fun with food, weights, and core training. But really, the girls I run with are so wise, helpful and fun, it doesn't seem that bad.

And really, the race was kind of nice--in a crazy sort of way.



And see, by the next day, I had forgotten all about mile 11-12.

Ambitious

Yesterday I woke with a tightening in my throat, a soreness in my sinuses, and an aching body. Wondering why God hates me, I ran downstairs to start a torturous regimen of self-medication with every plant, animal, and mineral hypothesised to fight a cold. I swallowed whole garlic cloves, olive leaf, copious amounts of zinc and vitamin c, and something that looks like dirt. I am smelling sweet today (sorry to those I have to come in contact with)!

You see, that half-marathon in St. George is Saturday...and I felt so ready and strong until yesterday. I had a plan and a few goals, now I have weak muscles and a throbbing head.

And, the weather is supposed to be icky in St. George, this wouldn't have mattered a few days ago--but now, up those hills, in the rain, in the cold, with a cold (I do not like green eggs and ham)?

So this is my revised ambition for Saturday: I want to finish without peeing my pants. This may be too lofty a goal considering that after 4 kids in five years, I sometimes pee my pants when I sneeze, sometimes, just a little. Fast running may induce the same effect as sneezing, but then again, there may be no fast running considering the state of my muscles, but then again, I am downing the liquids like there is no tomorrow. Maybe the rain will be a good thing.

I will let you know how it goes.