Moving Out

It looks like Friday will be the day the lease is officially signed to the BF and I's first place together. I'm excited, yet nervous all at once. In much less substantial moving news, I'm investigating another site on which to host my blog. Apparently some folks are having trouble with the commenting thing and Google not recognizing usernames (plus, I think it's silly that anyone who wants to comment MUST have a Google or related account). I will let you all know if or when I find a suitable place and the new blog address. A bit sad though as I do like blogspot the best, but over the past few years, it's seemed to have taken the corporate monopoly thing a bit too far.

I officially paid my $25 to run in the Green Brook Thanksgiving Trot this year. I'm having a slight case of buyer's remorse as I noticed it was the first annual race meaning two things: organizational issues and chip-less timing are likely. Luckily the race is put together by a group that does other races in the area, so I'm hoping that it'll encourage people to come out, but non-precise times bug me when I'm trying to PR! The chances of a PR are slim to none at the moment anyway because of my surgery recovery, but if I beat my PR by a second, that is something I would like to brag about thank you very much! Even if I time myself from start to finish and it's a PR on my watch, unless it's an official result, I don't really feel so great about it. Even chipped races can be dodgy sometimes. In my last race, the time as I crossed the finish line said 28:46, but the official time was 28:52. Hmph.

I adapted a Hal Higdon 5K program for this race. It's very spotty training as I have 4 weeks vs. 8 weeks. I'm only doing the first 4 weeks of the training cycle and on the day the 5K time trial is scheduled, I will be running my actual race. I doubt this will result in much improvement, but who knows. Because the race is a Thursday versus the normal Sat/Sun race days, the schedule is a bit wonky with my long runs taking place on Thursdays and rest days on weekends. This does sort of work out for my travel-heavy schedule though.

In a build up to my first week of training, I've been hitting the court. I have a membership to a badminton club in Kanata and haven't had the chance to go as the first week of training was the week of my surgery. I made my first court appearance since Grade 11 girls doubles with Rosalie. The court dynamics of a doubles game still throw me off as, for the most part, I was a singles player, but I'm getting the hang of things. My techniques are still pretty decent and it didn't take me long to do backhand and forehand drives with ease. Luckily a lot of the people there are very patient with idiots like me who never play doubles and they were awesome at helping me out. Despite its questionable lighting for badminton purposes, I'll probably stick to Mondays and Thursdays at Earl of March HS in Kanata as it's a 6 court facility. Wednesdays potentially as well.

With all that being said, I am SO sore! I was using muscles I haven't used for a while and my delts know that they're around. Same with my glutes. The height advantage in badminton isn't as great as in tennis so I go into a deep lunge every time I go for a lift. It makes for great x-training though!

Well, another failure of getting to bed early, but I've created a good schedule for keeping on track until schoolwork and such settles down, so hopefully in the coming weeks I can be a bit more disciplined. An 11:30 pm bedtime tonight is still better than a 12:30 am one after all.

Tomorrow is another x-training day for badminton and then I believe its' a 3-miler on Friday. E and D will not be pleased that I'm bailing on yet another run tomorrow at work... though even if I was going to go running, it certainly wouldn't be outside! It's less than 10C out now... no way am I venturing into the tundra to run.

-A