Wednesday, July 20, 2016

A day in the life and half a dilemma

Oh look - I'm not too late to get a blog post in for July! Since I seem to be writing an average of one a month. Go me. 

A day in the life: weekday edition

Ideal
5am - Wake up, run, stretch, roll, do a couple of strength exercises, start the coffee, prep breakfast, chug Nuun, and shower
6.30am - Little squirt wakes up (thus forcing everyone else to get up as well). Change, feed, entertain, and dress him. 
8am - Mr GCA carts kidlet off to daycare and heads to work. I finish my coffee and get going on work for the day, as I work from home.
12pm - Pump/ lunch break/ a bit of cleaning/ chores/ dinner prep. 
1pm - Back to work. 
4.30pm - Start making dinner
5pm - One of us retrieves kidlet from school, where he has been a delight, taken lovely naps, and refrained from walking over any of the infants in the infant room.
5.30pm - Playground time.
6.30pm - Dinner, bath, lots of reading and playtime (parent and kid), kid runs around the house being adorable and hilarious
7.45pm - Squirt bedtime
8pm - Sit down to work again with a nice cup of tea, work uninterrupted for an hour or two
9.30pm - Locate whatever book I'm reading from wherever child has stashed it, read a bit
10pm - Fall asleep. 

Reality
5am - Kid sits bolt upright in bed and fusses till 5.30. 
5.30am - Pull on running clothes and stagger out the door.
6.30am - Come home to offspring crying because he can't find mom, and dad Will Not Do. Hasty shower, breakfast, kidtertainment. 
8am - Mr GCA carts kidlet off to daycare and heads to work. I put coffee on for the day and set up for the first of 30628235 conference calls. 
12pm - Emerge from fugue of conference calls and untangle my brain. Work through lunch.
4pm - Contemplate a run, decide it is too late OR go for a run, take a hasty shower, retrieve kidlet at 5pm, and cook dinner while singing to a disgruntled kidlet who feels he's starved of parental attention
4.30pm - Start making dinner
5pm - One of us retrieves kidlet from school. His teachers claim he has generally been a delight. 'We're going to miss him when he goes to the toddler room next month,' they chirp. I suspect this is code for 'He is great but we are exhausted'.
5.30pm - Playground time.
6.30pm - Dinner, bath, lots of reading (parent and kid), kid runs around the house being adorable and hilarious
7.45pm - Kid runs around the house being adorable and hilarious
8pm - Kid still running around the house being adorable and hilarious, but it's getting old
8.30pm - Squirt finally asleep. Lose 30 minutes to Facebook, Instagram, and Spider Solitaire on phone 
9pm - Sit down to work again with a nice cup of tea. Tea goes cold as kid coughs himself awake and has to be put down again
10pm - Read ebook on phone and pass out with kid on our bed.  
2am - Squirt wakes up hungry and gets milk
2.30am - I get hungry and wander to kitchen for trail mix
3am - Fall asleep again

Meanwhile,

...I am still on the no-plan training plan. To run faster, I run faster. The idea is to get comfortable at slightly faster easy pace. Think 9:00-9:30, the faster end of which would frankly be my HM goal pace anyway - I should learn to run this pace by feel. 

Right now I'm training ('training'. Where are my laughing/crying face emojis?) for a sub-2:00 at the Baystate Half on October 16. If all goes well* this summer, I might even be able to make that goal.

BUT...an offer ('offer') for the Cambridge Half Marathon just landed in my inbox. It's $65 till August 1, including beer, cider, and a gender-specific long-sleeved tech shirt. The Cambridge Half is literally in my back yard - it's about a mile and a half from my front door, and I'd run to the start line as a warmup. And it's November 13 - a mere month after Baystate.

SHOULD I sign up? Could Cambridge Half be a backup (with potentially cooler, better weather...or possible pouring freezing rain...you know...New England) if I don't hit my arbitrarily selected time goal at Baystate? And if I do, could it be done as just another particularly well-supported long run?  

*Break out the laughing crying emoji. Last week I ran a grand total of 17 miles. 


10 comments:

  1. Hang in there!! I am told it gets better!! (At least you've got adorable/hilarious going for you...)

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    Replies
    1. Haha, thanks! I'm enjoying this season of my life on some level (or I wouldn't have signed up for it), but boy, is it hard sometimes!

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  2. Sing up for the backup! It's cheap, nice swag, close by - what's to lose?

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  3. I agree with Gracie - sign up for the backup race. I feel like life and weather are too unpredictable to put all of your eggs into one (race) basket. The backup race is perfectly timed in case your goal race doesn't pan out. It might even be less stressful on race day to know you've got the backup plan in place.

    p.s. maybe it's time to get a coffee maker with a programmable timer? It's been so great to set the coffee before I go to bed and stumble out of bed at 5:30 for my early morning runs...

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  4. Oooh I think I need a coffee maker.

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    Replies
    1. Coffeeeeeeeeeeee.....

      Yep, I definitely need to program the coffee maker.

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  5. Whew!

    I don't think you should worry too much about strategically picking a race -- just go out and do one! I was all trained for a half in June, but it got postponed due to brushfires. So I have the itch, but my life looks a lot like yours right now (minus the pumping... you are seriously super, as we weaned at 14 months). Also, super that you can make dinner with the kiddo around. Not possible for me somehow, or I just suck at dividing my attention. So I just let things cook while on conference calls, ha ha. Anyway, hope you sign up for that race!

    I have not tried running anytime outside of morning... just not happening.

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    Replies
    1. Cooking on conference call - brilliant! Slow cooker and oven - also handy.
      I'm pushing the pumping later and later in the day. Really want to quit pumping because I loathe it. Still nursing, because I have the sort of very determined child who will not only sign for 'milk' but also refuse a cup of cow's milk and then yank on my shirt; and also because baby snuggles. Sigh.

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