Weekly Recap: 10 Weeks Until the Antarctica Marathon

Happy New Year everyone!

Big plans tonight? We are going out to dinner with Dustin’s family, but I have a feeling we will be home and in bed before midnight. Just the way this old lady likes it! 🙂

Tilda wanted me to share a photo of her new cozy cove bed she received from Santa (see above photo). She loves it! Vizslas love to be under a blanket; in fact, she sleeps in our bed, but curls up super tiny at our feet. She just loves to be warm and cozy,  so this is perfect for her. I recommend one if you have a similar type of dog.

I’m linking up today with HoHo Runs/Mississippi Piddlin, who host a link-up for bloggers to share their weekly training recaps.

*I’ll be back shortly with a full 2018 recap as well. Stay tuned!

This week was filled with lots of social commitments, which meant my training wasn’t all that strong. Here’s how things went:

Monday: 4 miles on the treadmill while Christmas brunch baked. We hosted Dustin’s family, including his brother and family, who recently moved back to the states from Tokyo. (Remember when they were our tour guides when we visited Japan for the Tokyo Marathon? What a fabulous trip that was!)

It was frigidly cold on Christmas day, but the boys still wanted to get outside to ice skate, so we all went over to Lake of the Isles, even Matilda.

She did not like the cold ice on her paws though, so she and I took many breaks to warm up in the car.

Tuesday: 5 miles on the treadmill after work. I’ve been watching “GLOW” on Netflix- “Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling”- it was entertaining enough for the treadmill. Standards are different on the treadmill, right?

Wednesday: A quick 5k before work just to fit in some sort of sweat. After work, my parents (who live in Michigan) and sister & family (who live in Eden Prairie, MN) came over for dinner. Easy pulled chicken sandwiches in the crockpot for the win.

Thursday: Total rest.

My college roommate Carolyn was in town just for the night; she currently lives in London, but was in Wisconsin visiting family and drove up to get-together with some of the old U of M Gopher crew. We met up in NE Mpls- Psycho Suzi’s and then Al’s Place, a fun little speakeasy above Stanley’s. Carolyn stayed with us, but unfortunately I had to work on Friday, so she headed back early as I headed out to catch the bus. It was fun to catch up, even for just one night.

Friday: I ran another 5 easy miles on the treadmill after work, before we met up with Dustin’s brother and family at the Gopher hockey game. I hadn’t been to a game since college; it was great!

Fun fact, one of my college jobs was actually at Mariucci Arena; I worked there during open skate time, renting out equipment. However, most hockey players have their own equipment, so really I just studied and got paid for it. Best college job ever.

Saturday: 8 miles on the treadmill- weird that this is my ‘long run’ right now!

I wanted to do more, but ran out of time before we had to get ready for my niece’s 11th birthday out in Eden Prairie at “Way Cool Cooking School.” Dustin and I joined as “chaperones” but let’s be honest, Dustin was there to cook donuts!

It was actually a cute little place for a kid’s party. Happy birthday Clara!

Sunday: Solidcore class followed by 5 miles on the treadmill. Nice little combo; felt great to do some strength training.

Summary: About 30 miles of running, one strength class.

This was a tough week with lots of social commitments, so I didn’t fit it much exercise. However, I think it was good for me mentally to take a longer break from more serious training.

I’m also dealing with some IT band tightness again and back at Orthology for treatment. Fortunately, there is an Orthology location right in the skyway downtown that I can zip to over lunch- love it! I’m seeing an awesome new doc at Orthology (Oliver Ang) and I think he’ll get things under control quickly.

I’d normally try to do more barre classes, which usually help strengthen my glutes and eliminate IT band issues. But I’m so sad to find out that my favorite barre studio, the Barre Edina, is closing at the end of January! Their Wayzata location will stay, but no more Edina location (which is super close for me). So disappointing….It’s a tough market I guess. They’ve already cut back to one class a day and only at 9:30 am, so that won’t work for me anymore. 🙁

In other news, we did a little shopping today and stopped by Askov Finlayson, where I ordered two new pair of Warby Parker glasses. There’s a Warby Parker showroom within the Askov Finlayson store, which is awesome, though if you’re familiar with Warby Parker, they have a great at-home trial program where they ship you a handful of frames of your choosing to try on and you ship them back afterwards. Easy. But it is also nice to be able to try on a TON at a time and then place your order.

Their glasses are so affordable and cute- so many options!

So, technically I am now in training for Antarctica, as there are only 10 weeks until that once-in-a-lifetime marathon. I’m getting excited!

For that trip, we will take a ship from Argentina to Antarctica. But before we board that ship, we will be on a plane that has to land in an airport in Ushuaia.  

(Ushuaia is widely considered the ‘southern-most city in the world.’)

Ushuaia also has this TINY landing strip at their airport…. (pictured below)

Yikes! I hope we have a good pilot!

What a view though, right?

10 weeks to go!

Happy New Year, friends. I hope your 2018 is filled of some amazing runs and all the right fits!