Speed Trials

Today I ran my first race since October 2009. And it felt great!  Today also proved that planning makes perfect: I had a solid training plan, a realistic goal, and trust in my abilities and hard work.  It all paid off in full, as I came in a at 24:11, a whole 49 seconds under my goal.

Though I did have a slight hiccup in my plan – yesterday I made a last minute decision to join some friends at Bluesfest to see The Hold Steady. I even had a beer, and spent 45 minutes jumping up and down like a lunatic in the crowd. The show was great, and I’m glad I went, but I was worried it might hinder my performance on race day.

I was a good girl though, and went home straight after the show, and ate a nice stabilizing dinner (albeit a bit light) of toast and spinach pesto. I also drank lots of water, and did a bit of stretching before hitting the hay.

I also laid out all of my gear for the race, and made some Overnight Oats for the morning…

Shorts, shirt, knee sleeve, heart rate monitor and belt, socks. All laid out in my newly revamped closet.

I woke up pretty early this morning (5:20am to be exact) because the cat was HUNGRY and he let me know it.  That boy has been such a meower since Ange has been away. He misses the male presence in the house!! I checked the weather and found that the temperature was a beautiful 23*C with dropping humidity and a light breeze. The running gods totally came through to make the weather perfect for this race!

I made myself a coffee, and pulled the oats out of the fridge, only to discover:

TOTAL OVERNIGHT OATS FAIL! I ran out of almond milk and so added water, and I had no banana so I put in some applesauce, and the result came out FAR too watery. The taste was okay (oh cinnamon, how you can save almost anything) but the texture was awful.

I opted for more toast instead. Peanut butter and chocolate chip:

MMMMM…

By 7:45, I was ready to go, and walked over to my mom’s house, where I was to meet my running partner and mentor, my brother Martin. We talked shop for a little bit, drank some more water, made our last bathroom stops, and headed out to the race at around 8:30am.

5k race shwag. I love it when they get the accents right!

My mom came out to cheer us on, and we took a few minutes to take some pictures.

The tall family. I may seem tall at 5’11, but I always feel like a shrimp next to my big brother (he’s 6’4)

Nic was super supportive, and even talked about walking a 5k race next year…

The race started at 9am.  There were some pretty fast runners in the pack, so Martin and I lined up somewhere within the third row of racers. When the buzzer went off, I dashed ahead, and Martin and I got immediately separated. I knew the kind of positioning I wanted, and I so I sprinted a bit at the very start to get ahead of a few people.  I’m still developing my skills in this department, but I’m not too shy to squeeze my way (safely) around racers at the start. If there’s space for half a person, I’ll find my way through. (I thank my Roller Derby training for this skill, as we had to train to step over legs and through tight spots ON SKATES in derby).

There were km markers in this race, which was nice because I got to mark my pace (something I wasn’t planning on doing). Here were my times for the first three kms:

Km 1: 4:55
Km 2: 9:50
Km 3: 14:40

When I saw that time, I knew I had it in the bag – all I had to do was maintain. I reached the turn around spot at Bayview (see map) and checked in with myself: all systems were a go (lungs, legs, knee, back, neck), and I felt strong! I saw Martin coming up behind me at the turnaround point, and we high-fived as we passed each other. Definitely the best moment of the race!

The other thing that kept me going strong were the amazing volunteers! They all cheered us on and gave us great encouraging words. Thanks volunteers – you made the run SO MUCH FUN! I had nothing but smiles and thumbs up for all of them.

My sprint to the finish felt strong and powerful for the first time ever! Usually sprints make me want to puke, and they don’t last long at all, but this time I tucked in deep, pumped my arms, and ran hard all the way past the finish line. I don’t know my official time yet, but I stopped the Suunto at 24:11.

Martin, who had a loose goal time of 20min, made the common mistake of holding off TOO much in the first half of the race. He sprinted in the last 2 kms to make up for it, but in the end, he came in about 30 sec after I did.

All in all, it was a great race, and I’m so proud of myself for running a race that is befitting of the effort in training that I put in over the last 12 weeks!

Yes, I trained for this 5k for 12 weeks! I don’t even care if it seems like overkill, it made me feel fantastic to finish this race feeling so strong and with NO KNEE PAIN whatsoever!

Once Martin and I caught our breath, we headed out for a well-deserved breakfast. And now, I’m off to rest up at the cottage on this beautiful Sunday afternoon!

Our workshop room sucks. It’s such a forgotten room, and I don’t like being in there AT ALL. It’s supposed to be my sewing room, Angelo’s bike shop, and our closet, yet it doesn’t really fulfill any of those needs. Worse than that, it always looks cluttered, no matter how much I try to rearrange things, purge things, or stuff things into nooks and crannies.  It’s badly laid-out, and doesn’t suit us in the least. It needs an overhaul, and badly!

So in true Marlène fashion, I’m taking the opportunity of Angelo being out of town for a week to makeover this room in our home. (Side note: Angelo hates clutter. It drives him crazy. The thought of having a room in complete chaos for a couple of days would be enough to send him over the edge. This is why I have to wait for him to leave before I take on any home improvement projects).

Here are the before pictures of our anti-room:

Upon entering. His workspace is directly to the right as you walk in. It’s the darkest corner of the room, and has a sloped ceiling.

Ange hasn’t really been able to do much with this space, expect hang some pretty cool bike art on the wall.

This is the back half of the room. My sewing desk is on the right, and the “closet” is tucked in the left-hand corner. We use the real closet for storage and to hang laundry to dry.

the “closet”

This clothes rack is WAY too small for the amount of clothes I own. I have no idea how I accumulated so much clothing, but I did. It’s all there for you to see. Also, that’s our mirror on the left. There’s no wall space to hang it up, so we have to rest it at a weird angle to get full body shots. Not super practical.

As you can see, there’s not much going on here. The classic decorating mistakes are all in effect: pushing all the furniture up against the walls; poor non-specific lighting; lack of organization and storage; no cohesive theme; bland colours.

The first thing I did was draw up a croquis of the space…

option A

Basically I was trying to move things around to make them work a bit better.  I thought of swinging the large Ikea bookcase out so that it was the first thing you’d see upon entering the room, and getting a second clothes rack to form an L shaped closet in the corner. It still didn’t solve the problem of Angelo’s confined, dark space, and I wasn’t 100% satisfied with the layout. I kept looking at this drawing, scratching my head as to how to fix it, and finally drew that rectangle on the right…

option B

By placing the clothes racks along the sloped wall, and the Ikea bookcase parallel to the clothes racks, I would be able to create a real closet space, maximize the amount of wall space in the room, and be able to provide Angelo with a bit of natural light from the window.  This floor plan suits the space SO MUCH BETTER than anything else I’ve tried, and I couldn’t wait to execute my plan!

Here is how it looks all finished up.

Upon entering the room:

Already it looks less cluttered.

The closet:

Check out those storage bins from Ikea. These are great and hold a LOT of stuff. Seasonal clothes, messenger bags, old t-shirts that we just can’t get rid of, they all go in there. And our mirror FINALLY got mounted on the wall. Hallelujah!

His workspace:

the bike shop

This is still a work in progress, since we don’t really know what his needs will be once he starts school, but at least he’s got all of his bike stuff within easy reach, and still enough floor space to work on bikes in this room.

My workspace:

the sewing room

I claimed this spot (the best spot in the house) when we first moved in, and I still love it. But it needed some lighting (the bulb in my sewing machine burnt out YEARS ago) – I bought this lamp, also from Ikea. It’s great, and can either be mounted to the wall (as I did on the right of the window) or clamped to a table or shelf. I bought one for Angelo’s side too, but will wait for him to decide where he wants to place it.

This room makes me feel so happy now, it definitely works as a closet, and I’ve managed to move Angelo’s space closer to the window.  I feel that the room works so much more efficiently now, and my clothes aren’t crammed into a tiny space. In total, I spent about $100 on the storage boxes and the two lamps. I also had an extra clothes rack stored at my brother’s house, so that was free. Everything else was already in the space, and it was just a matter of moving things around, and a little forethought and planning!

Now I can’t wait to get crafting!