Fill in the Blank Friday

Courtesy of The Little Things We Do

1.   The holiday season is    a time to spend with family and friends. And to hang shiny things everywhere.

2.   Snow makes me   incredibly happy. It's so beautiful, down to every last snowflake.

3.  The best comfort food to eat when it's cold out is    soup or chili. Boring response but it's the truth. I'll probably try this recipe next: White Bean and Bacon Soup.

4. Winter is the best time for    being snowed in though that really never happens. I want to get into some winter sports this year so I hope we get some snow soon!

5.  I can hardly wait for    Christmas! I'm excited to see family and to bake and eat some Christmas cookies.

6.  When it comes to holiday gifts I prefer to    give, I like shopping for others and watching them open presents. Not saying I won't enjoy unwrapping a gift or two myself.  :)

7.  If I were to rate my excitement about the holiday season on a scale from 1-10, I would say I am at about a    7. They are fun but a little hectic and go by way too fast .

Injured Reserve: Add Me to the List

Injuries suck, especially when you are in the running groove. Most of this was written a few  weeks ago but I'm finally getting around to posting it. It helps that I'm over the worst of my 'no-running allowed' blues. For real though, I wasn't any fun to be around when I got that news.


But since I suck at blogging let's recap how my injuries (yes plural) came to be. Well there were some of these: Freihofer's Run for Women, Father's Day 5K, Warrior Dash, and a few others that didn't get blogged about.

Old vs. New. Heel strike much?

More specifically before I even began running this spring I did something to my hip on an elliptical machine. I saw my Doctor and we did X-rays (pointless since I knew I didn’t break my hip), steroids, NSAIDs, muscle relaxers and physical therapy. I took my drugs, went to physical therapy, I start running. No one can tell me exactly what the problem was; narrowed down to either bursitis or IT band issues. Months of physical therapy, naproxen and running and eventually things started to feel better. That lasted a few weeks and then it came back in a mild sort of way. For the most part I ignored it and kept running. 


I built up my mileage and my pace. Hit a PR during almost every race I ran. 5K training was in the books and decided to tackle a 10K. I trained and hit those miles faster than I thought and ran the inaugural Fall Frun 10K in November. It was epic and I felt so good. I hit a 5K PR by a minute on the second 5K. Highest of Runner’s High.

As shown, picture stolen from Greg. Sorry Greg. 

The next day I woke up to some soreness in my foot and it didn't go away. I took most of the week off from running with no improvement. I bought new shoes which also didn't help. Here we go again. Saw my Doctor, got x-rays, yadda yadda. I also decided to see a Sports Medicine Doctor for both my hip and foot pain. Basically, he agreed that my bursitis was back in the hip (greater trochanteric bursitis) and had some tenonitis in my foot (peroneal tendonitis). Joy. And he advised me to back off from running and the bootcamp class I've been taking and to go back to Physical Therapy. 


So that's where I'm at. I had some awesome races planned but now I'm mostly couch bound. I'm bummed but hopefully I'll be back pounding the pavement soon. I'll keep ya posted! 

Potter Kill Preserve and Pizza - A fun day in Schenectady County

*Sorry if this is a double post for you... somehow reverted to draft status? No idea...

Last Sunday a friend and I decided to go hiking and I finally got a chance to check out the Plotter Kill Preserve in Rotterdam. 

It's such a beautiful place, I need to kick myself for waiting so long to check it out.

We were rewarded with plenty of gorgeous fall colors. The sun came out on the last 10 minutes of our hike (of course) but it was still gorgeous fall day. 

This is apparently an active landslide. It was a mess in this area. 

I borrowed this map from here but added the purple box to indicate the landslide/wash out area. Status as of October 2011.

I suspect that the hurricanes did some damage along this section of the trail. All the other water crossings had bridges but there was none to be found here. Eventually I saw a sign across the water that indicated where we needed to head and we were able to cross without too much trouble. 

I'll hike anywhere with a good waterfall so this hike was certainly rewarding. If you check out the trail map (you can get it here and I'd recommend you bring it along) you'll see that if you park at the Mariaville Rd. entrance you don't have far to go to see the waterfalls. Afterwards there are plenty of trails to check out before swinging by the falls again on a return trail.

There is an alternate trail map here that contains an orange trail not found on the map hosted by Schenectady County. It also links to a great blog all about this Preserve. We took the orange trail so it certainly exists but I'm not sure why it's not featured on the county map. Take at your own risk I suppose.

After our hike, clearly we needed to refuel. We just happened to be near 5th and 50 Pizzeria in Scotia, the winner of the 2011 Tournament of Pizza organized by All Over Albany. We placed an order as we left the trail head and 15 minutes later we arrived to this! 

This was some good pizza and I could certainly taste why they won. If I had to pretend to be a food critic, my only nitpick would be that there was a bit too much sauce for my taste. Just a minor critic to a delicious pizza. I wish I lived a little closer to try some of their specialty pizzas but you can never go wrong sampling an original cheese pizza.

If you are looking to maximize your time out in Schenectady County I don't think you can go wrong with pairing the Plotter Kill Preserve and pizza (alliterations for the win). 

Warrior Dash: The Sequel

3.2 miles, 12 obstacles, 1 mountain.

Saturday was the second Warrior Dash held at the Windham Mountain Ski Resort in Windham, NY. The obstacles were just a bit crazier, the crowds just a bit bigger and the mountain... well it seemed as big as last time.

Keeping it classy at the Dash.

We had great weather. I have to be honest, when I heard it was in August this year I had visions of 90 degree weather and having to park myself in the first water/mud pit to cool off. Mild temps and slightly overcast skies made for perfect Warrior conditions.

Clean feet. Clearly a before.

There were some repeat obstacles with a new twist (i.e. logs to swim over, barbed wire to crawl under) and a few new obstacles to battle.

The hill goes up and up and up...

Looking back at the Barricade Breakdown

About to enter Road Rage

Katie and I on top of a snazzy junker car

Teetering Traverse. Sort of scary and required excellent balance.

Dead Weight Drifter. May look gross, but one
of my favorite obstacles for the cool down factor. 

Missing a picture of the Cliffhanger. Picture running through a muddy pit as above, then climbing out of it using some ropes. Ta da.

Dead Mans Drop.
Climb up, drop down. Sure, sounds easy enough.

Rubber Ricochet.

Cargo Climb.
Climb up, carefully (!) turn around, and climb back down.

Chaotic Crossover.
Horizontal cargo nets are hard to climb across.
I'm sure I looked extremely awkward.

Petrifying Plunge.
I had no momentum (since I stopped to snap a pic)
 and this was much more tame than last year.

Warrior Roast (near the top) and Muddy Mayhem, both very fun.

The End. Find a drink (water), shower, and find a drink (beer).

Before and After. Amazingly enough the shirt resembles the before after a bunch of washing.

Well worth it!

A little less classy 'after'. 

Shoes ready to be cleaned and donated.

Warrior Results.

Another great Warrior Dash day! I'm sure I'll be back next year... if my legs stop hurting by then.

Warrior Dash 2010 recap.

Garden Update!

Things are coming along nicely. Here is a bit of a photo update!

The Garden

Marigolds

Green beans

Baby basil

Eggplant flowers (with spikes??)

Golden beet!

Lettuce mix

Baby tomatoes

Looks like chard right? I'm pretty sure I didn't plant this! :)

Carrots!

Baby peppers. Many of the pepper plants are dying but a few look okay.

Textify.it - My new favorite thing

http://textify.it/


"Textify.it visualizes images using text. Lots of text. Drag and drop images on to the page to start, every image produces a unique result!"


Results:

Text = Harris (my cat)

Text = Vacation (and can I please go back to this moment?)

Original photo, wanted something with lots of color

Text = Fall

Text = Fall, using 'Preset" - "Stich"

Text = Fall, using 'source image' as 'background' I sort of like this effect.

It's a time waster...
... you're welcome!