February in Review

I didn't accomplish nearly as much as I had hoped to this month, but I did still make some progress on my goals. I also got to spend some time running with my best friend, planning future travels, and snuggling with my pup, so February goes into the books as a pretty good month.

My Professional/Writing Goals were:

1. Finish the primary source modernization project. I made substantial progress on this and finished on of the texts. I'm waiting for a green light from my co-editor and the director of the commissioning society regarding a technical issue before I start on the next. 

2. Get drafts of two grant applications done. I have drafted one and was in the middle of drafting the second grant proposal when I heard the bad news that the funding on this particular grant had been pulled for the year and that there would be no competition in 2012. It was a bummer to hear, but it's something I don't have any control over. So I'm counting this one as a success on my part at least. 

3. Continue working on chapter outlines for my book proposal. Yes. I have made some progress here so this one gets a check mark, too. 

My Fitness/ Health Goals were:

1. Run 70 miles in February. Nope. I only ran 45 miles in February. In part this low mileage was due to an unexpected bout of tonsillitis that caused me to miss several runs, including a long run. 

2. Maintain my food journal daily. I've done pretty well with this. I missed a few days mid month, but otherwise my calendar is pretty full of stickers. So this one was mostly accomplished this month. 

3. Do more yoga. I had hoped to get in a couple of longer practices, but I haven't. I also haven't done as many short practices as I typically due. Again, in part, this is a result of being ill. It's also probably a consequence of not making time to do yoga when I probably need to do it most.  

My Miscellaneous Goals were:

1. Take a photo every day for 365 project and create a collage. I've taken a photo most days but I've missed several. Because I'm pressed for time and really should grade papers instead of making a collage, I'm just going to share one photo from this month of the project with you. 

2. Make time for friendships. I think I did pretty well with this one. I got in a number of work outs and a long run with my dear friend Suzie. I had coffee twice with dear friend L. I had phone conversations with two good friends who are far away. I also took this hockey-lovin' fool out to dinner on his birthday.

Even though I didn't get everything done I wanted to this month, it was a full and mostly good month for me. I made progress on projects. I had a confidence-building long run. I ate birthday cake with my hubs. How was your February? Did you run any races? Pass any big milestones? Eat any good cake? 

The Long Run

After having missed a couple of long runs in the past few weeks (illness and travel) and pounding out several on the treadmill due to inclement weather or timing issues, I was finally able to get in a longer run outside in the cold this past Saturday. I met up with my group at 7am. My friend Suzie came, as well, and the original plan was for us to run together for three or four miles and then I would do several more on my own so that my mileage would end up somewhere around 10. It was a cold but otherwise beautiful day. There was almost no wind and the sun was shining. After we had run the first mile or so with another member of the group, we continued on on our own.

We ran past a little ski slope that was seeing some action

Suzie was feeling pretty good so she said she would keep running for at least another couple of miles beyond her original plan. We ended up running almost 8 miles together, chatting about our weeks and spring break plans. After 8 miles, I looped back to add a bit more to my run, and ended up with just over 9.5 miles. It wasn't quite the double digits I had planned, but I was getting cold and ridiculously hungry. I normally take a GU on runs over 7-8 miles, but I hadn't run more than 8 miles in such a long time that I didn't even think to stash some fuel in my jacket pocket. I need to get back in the long run mindset.

I was slower than I was the past couple of weeks, possibly because the route had a couple of sizeable hills and possibly because my Garmin was on the wrong setting so I had no idea what pace I was running at most of the time. Even so, it was a confidence booster to finish a long run outside in frigid February temps. Having close to ten miles under my belt, makes me confident that I can finish a double digit long run before the Get Lucky Half and make it across the finish line on my birthday.

How was your weekend? Did you do a long run? Did you attend an Oscars Party?

Thursday Threads: Teaching Friday

I don't teach on Fridays this semester, so I call Thursdays my "teaching Friday." This week my teaching Friday is ending with a social event for faculty and grad students in my department and one of my classes is watching a film today, so I'm going a little more casual than I otherwise might have.

Shell - ??? TJ Maxx, Blazer - JCPenny, Jeans - New York & Co, Scarf - Anne Klein, Shoes - John Fluevog

Pondering how to schedule in some writing time....

I'm looking forward to the outing this evening as a fun way of wrapping up the instructional part of my week. I have a department meeting to attend tomorrow, but I am hoping to carve out some substantial time for research and writing tomorrow and this weekend. After making it through my 9 day long writing streak, I haven't made much progress for the past week on my writing projects. And that needs to change.

Contemplating Mystical Unicorns

Earlier today I was writing some lecture notes for a class session on medieval religious devotion and female mystics, like Julian of Norwich, and I accidentally typed the words "contemplating mystical unicorns" instead of "contemplating mystical unions". Perhaps this typo was a bit ... um... errr... Freudian.... I mean, who doesn't dream of riding a unicorn?

Seriously, though, maybe my mystical unicorns are those things that I wish for and hope for and work toward, but still seem maddeningly elusive at present -- the things that are hiding in the Forbidden Forest. What are your mystical unicorns? What are some of the goals that seem out of reach to you right this minute but that you believe that with hard work you can attain?

Here are some of my mystical unicorns.

1. Running a sub two hour half-marathon. Clearly the 11:10 min/mile pace that I've been running here lately on my longer runs isn't going to get me to this goal tomorrow, but I hope to get there eventually. I hope in 2013. It means that I will have to shave a minute per mile off of my PR half-marathon pace, but I'm starting to reintegrate some speedwork into my routine and hoping that with continued hard work I can set a new PR at this distance later in 2012.

2. Getting tenure. Like many most people working in academia these days, I'm not currently in a tenure-track position. I hope that before long this will change, not only for me individually but for the profession as a whole. I would say more, but I don't want this post to turn into a rant about labor practices.

3. Mastering bakasana. This pose has eluded me for many years. I will probably have to gain some more upper body strength and lose a few pounds in order to float into this pose and hold it rather than barely getting into it for less than a split second.

4. And, of course, going for a ride on a mystical unicorn.

Run for Fun

Last week someone asked me about my hobbies, and I responded that my most time-consuming hobby was probably running. Although running has not consumed nearly enough of my time over this past week, I often spend hours on the road, doing that thing that I love to do. I also tried to explain that since I'm not a particularly fast runner it's probably a good thing that I do really enjoy it.

I've written in the past about the reasons that I run. But I think it's worth noting again that I primarily do it because I enjoy it. It gives me happiness and keeps me feeling a little more even around the edges. This past week I only managed to get in one run, and I definitely felt the difference in my body and mind. My energy lagged. My posture wasn't as good. I felt a little more pent up than normal. When I ran for the first time in several days this morning, I immediately felt the little boost that comes with that act of sweating in the sunshine.

I also mentioned that I had plans to run a half-marathon next month. That race is now less than four weeks away, and I am currently behind schedule and will probably be a bit undertrained for it. I don't expect this one to be a PR and, unless the stars align unexpectedly, I don't anticipate that it will be a PR effort for me. In all likelihood, this one will be for fun and to celebrate my birthday. More than anything, though, I hope that half-marathon #8 will mark another year of knowing that running is fun.

Valentine

To celebrate Valentine's Day -- or alternatively El Día del Amor y la Amistad -- I'm drinking coffee out of a pink elephant mug with hearts on it, letting Bailey have an extra Milkbone, wearing red and pink, lecturing to one of my classes about Bad Romance in the Middle Ages (it's like a Lady Gaga video that's set in the twelfth century featuring feudalism, secret marriage, scholasticism, and castration), and eating sugary confections. Candy Hearts shall be broken and consumed today.

Shirt - ???, Skirt - J. Crew (thrifted), Blazer - H&M, Tights - We Love Colors, Scarf - from another shirt,  Boots - Ugg 

I hope your day is full of love and friendship - or at least coffee and chocolate. Thanks for reading, friends. I really do ♥ you.

Writing Streak

I have worked on my writing every day since last Monday. Indeed I've been on a veritable writing streak that has produced 4,400 words on paper and has moved a draft of a text that I've been working on for awhile off my desk and to my co-editor for feedback.

Having concrete deadlines is definitely motivating me. To be perfectly honest, the fact that I publicly announced that I would be writing every single day for a week has also been a major motivating factor. On Thursday, I got home at around 6:30 after eight hours on campus, holding office hours and teaching. It was the end of my teaching week. I was tired. Normally, I might have said to hell with it and spent the rest of the evening relaxing. Instead, because I didn't want to have to admit that I hadn't written anything that day, while M. made dinner, I sat down with my laptop and cranked out some paragraphs.

I have two more days to go to meet my goal of completing the pilgrim challenge. Today and tomorrow I must write, revise, or modernize at least two pages worth of words. I am weary, but there is a certain momentum that is propelling me forward now. I may have to back track, purge and delete words, reshape sentences, jettison ideas, but in the meantime I will get them on the page.

Have you ever been on a streak of some sort? What is the longest stretch of consecutive days that you have engaged in some activity - going for a run, writing a certain amount, doing yoga?

Pages and Pilgrimages

When I lived in Spain a few years ago, I spent 10 days doing part of the Camino de Santiago. I started in Astorga and waked about 35 km/day until I reached Santiago. A couple of months later, my friend M., who blogs over at An Epic Battle in High Heels and her husband J. visited me in Madrid on their way to undertake the same journey for their honeymoon. Recently M. announced that she doing a writing pilgrimage challenge. Because she is trying to develop consistent daily writing habits, she has set a goal of writing 400 words every day for the next week. She noted that completing the pilgrimage happened one stage and one day at a time and that writing consistently would get her to her goal in a similar way. This struck me forcefully, as I have been trying to cultivate more routine writing habits this year. I have noted in the past that writing and running have a lot of parallels, and in order to get to the finish line, you have to log a lot of miles and time on the road and/or on the page. So I am joining M. in her challenge.

Due to a strange completely normally confluence of events, I have several deadlines rapidly approaching. Not only does this mean that I have to bust out the mad tetris skills that I developed in high school Calculus while playing on my TI 85 in order to manage my time, but that I should also be writing every day for the next little while so that I don't feel overwhelmed and anxious.

I have been diligent about producing a minimum of 3 pages a week since the start of the year, but for the next week I'm going to up my game. I am going to write, revise, or modernize daily and produce at least two pages a day. Since I have written 12 pages since Monday, I'm confident that I can sustain this much needed writing streak for a week. While I won't be rewarding myself with a pilgrimage badge, like M., I will be rewarding myself with a day of rest, novel-reading, and lounging with Netflix once the finish line is behind me.

Anyone want to join in for the next week of writing? For those of you who write, do you have a daily routine?

A Treadmill Running Revo[e]lu[a]tion?

It's no secret I have had a love-hate relationship with my treadmill. I love it because it has made winter running in a part of the world that typically sees a substantial bit of snow and ice between November and April a whole lot easier. When I'm pressed for time, it encourages me to hop on for a quick couple of miles rather than not going for a run at all. It takes the mental work out of trying to do faster intervals. However, I'm not going to lie. Historically, I have not liked using the 'mill for runs of more than five or six miles. It gets monotonous after a few miles even with tunes. Last year I did a 16 miler on the treadmill, but M. had to come into our exercise area several times to give me a pep talk so that I would continue because I was bored out of my mind. I whined about that run for 16 days.

Several years ago, when I first started to get back into running again, I would sometimes go to the gym to run on the treadmill. I realized quickly that I could not watch the televisions at the gym while running. I got dizzy and felt like I was going to fall of the treadmill. Last year I tried to read my Kindle while running on the 'mill, and I'm pretty sure that's how I threw my back out and ended up barely able to move for a couple of days. So for years I have had only the company of my ipod and my thoughts on the treadmill, which admittedly was probably good for building some mental toughness, but some of those miles were mind-numbingly dull.

A couple of weeks ago my neck of the woods had some icy conditions on a day when I needed to get in a long run. I grabbed my ipod and headed for the treadmill only to discover my ipod battery was completely dead. I knew that if I waited until later in the day I would end up skipping my run, so I decided to try watching a dvd on my laptop. I thought that, perhaps, if the screen was directly in front of me and I didn't have to gaze up at it, I might not suffer from dizziness and that feeling of vertigo. It worked! Ninety minutes later, I had run 7 miles and walked a mile to cool down.

While I still strongly prefer doing my long runs outside (and often with company), it's nice to know that I can log the miles and watch Netflix without falling off the side of the treadmill. Winter is currently (weirdly) in abeyance here, but if it returns I have a back up.

How do you feel about the 'mill? Anyone else experience the symptoms of something akin to motion sickness when trying to read or watch tv while on it?

Thursday Threads: Florals, Stripes and Spots

After taking two sick days and several rounds of prescription drugs, I felt human enough to return to teaching today. Because my tonsils were so swollen, I could barely talk for two days - this was a nightmare for someone who a) loves to talk and b) teaches for a living. Fortunately, a cocktail of pharmaceuticals has reduced the number of spots on my throat and the size of my tonsils so that this morning I was operating at about 65% voice capacity.

Shirt - Express, Blazer - Thrifted, Skirt - Vintage via Etsy, Tights - Target, Shoes - John Fluevog

So I put on florals and stripes and headed to campus. Please forgive the fact that I didn't have the time or energy to find a more interesting location for pictures this week.

I'm hoping with a little extra rest this weekend, I'll get back to feeling like my normal self. Hopefully, by Sunday I'll be up for a long run -- although at this point I would settle for all of the spots on my throat being gone and feeling up for running at all.

February Goals

My first priority this month is to get well. I have come down with a case of tonsillitis (apparently I am reverting to age 7). In addition to trying to get well with the help of some physician prescribed extra rest and drugs, I'm trying to set monthly goals that help to break some of my bigger goals for 2012 down into more manageable tasks. I'm carrying some things over from last month that I didn't get accomplished and trying to build on some of January's successes.


Professional/Writing Goals
1. Finish the primary source modernization project that I'm working on. I'll continue to block out time several days a week to work on this. Getting this off my desk is a top priority for February.
2. Get drafts of two grant applications done. In order to get myself moving on this one, I've asked a colleague for some feedback on a very preliminary draft on of these and have set up an appointment with my institution's research center later in the month to get me to crank out the other one in a timely matter.
3. Continue working on the chapter outlines for my book proposal. Again, the other deadlines are a bit more pressing, but I want to continue making progress on this project.

Fitness/Health Goals
1. Run 70 miles in February. I've made some adjustments to my training schedule to account for my lower mileage last month and the fact that I am currently ill, but I still want to challenge myself to get close to the mileage on the original plan. I have two double digit long runs on the docket for this month!
2. Maintain my food journal daily. I want to do as good a job in this category this month as I did last month.
3. Do more yoga. Like last month, I'm going to keep doing shorter practices, but I want to also work in at least two longer practices this month.

Miscellaneous Goals
1. Take a photograph everyday for my 365 project and create a collage at the end of the month. Having this as a goal helped to remind me to take the camera out and experiment on a near-daily basis last month, so I want to keep plugging on with this one.
2. Make time for friendships. It is kind of sad that I have to make this a goal, but I tend to get caught up in projects and ignore the world around me - sometimes too much. So I'm setting the goal to spend some quality time chatting with a friend at least once a week once I have my voice back. I want to keep up my gym dates with my friend Suzie, but also to connect with other friends either in person over a cup of coffee or glass of wine or over the phone or on Skype with those friends who are far away.

What do you have on your agenda for February? Any races? Writing deadlines? I'd love to hear what you'll be focusing your energies on this month!