Anyway, instead of giving excuses, I'll give a quick update on what I've been up to so at least anyone who reads this knows I've been doing SOMETHING, even if it hasn't been hardcore race training (more on that in a bit). December was a fairly busy month for a lot of reasons. Not the least of which being the fact that Ashley and I are newly engaged and she decided (a decision which I fully support), she wanted to get married pretty much as soon as possible and also with the least amount of stress involved. We settled on May 3rd, which is great because it is her parents anniversary as well, and the place we wanted to get married, The Herrington Inn in Geneva, had that date open. Well even with our "simple" and stress-free as possible wedding there is a lot to do! And it needed to be started right away. So we've been busy picking food, DJs, musicians, colors, invitation, flowers, rings, cakes, etc. etc. the list goes on. I'm incredibly lucky and proud to be marrying a woman who is going through this process w/ an open mind yet is helping me to make good, quick decisions without dwelling on every little detail. I've heard some wedding horror stories and I think by getting things done early we'll avoid some stress and still have a really awesome wedding. So thats been taking some time.
Another project has been a lot of fun but was also a lot of work leading up to Christmas. My dad recently showed me how to make small wooden "Christmas" trees like these:
They are really fun to make and not too difficult. Well I made a batch of around 10 or 15 and took them in to work. I thought I'd see if I could raise some money for charity (and myself) by selling a few trees to people that needed last minute or unique gifts for the holidays and decided I'd sell a set of three trees for $12 and give 25% of anything I made to the Central Asia Institute. On that first day, I sold out by 11:00 a.m.!! So one thing led to another and I spend about two week every day after work making as many trees as my energy level and bandsaw blades would allow. To make a long story short, I know have my trees for sale in an art gallery in Naperville (The Beat of my Art), made over $500 in about 2 weeks, and donated over $125 to the Central Asia Institute. I also made trees (and collapsible castles, click HERE for my parent's website) for a lot of close friends and family for holiday presents and they went over great. None of this was planned as of December 10th and took a lot of time - but it was fun. People really like these little trees (if you're interested in trees or castles, just shoot me an email at tylerjhicks@gmail.com and I can hook you up w/ a custom design)!
Obviously the holidays kept us busy as well. We had the traditional Dempsey family tree-trimming and dinner w/ the 5 Catholic Priests, several family and work holiday gatherings, and a trip to Iowa with the dogs to celebrate Christmas with Ben, Lee, and my parents.
We did have a nice break from work for New Year's as well, but Ashley wasn't feeling great so we didn't to do much. We did get a bunch of stuff done around the house though which was good, and had fun seeing some friends, and a great new movie: Juno.
OK... but T.J. - what about the RUNNING??? Isn't that what this blog is all about! You don't want to die on the top of Bordeoux Mountain do you?? So the god's honest truth. I didn't do much in December. Not much at all. I didn't run outside once and made it to the gym a few times but not on a consistent basis. I've never been great at long term goal-setting and then continued hard work to reach those goals (a big reason I'm taking on 8 tuff miles), and I think I certainly struggled for a month or so there (and have yet to prove myself in the 50 short days leading up to the big race!). To dwell on that would probably not help me move forward towards the goal I WILL complete, however, so I think it's best to move on. I do want to say thanks to all those that continue to support me, ask about the race, and encourage me to run. Especially my family (even if they just make fun of me that I never update the blog), the posters to this blog, Peter Alter the race director, my running partners Brian and Brett, and most of all my fiance Ashley.
So there IS some good progress to report on over the last week or so. I've been getting into the Y consistently and am back up and running on the treadmill. I ran Wed, Friday, and yesterday, and am upping my distance a bit each time. Before I started slacking in December I was running 3-5 miles a night pretty comfortably. I hope to be back up to that in the next week to 10 days. My last two runs have been great, are fun, and have me pushing at the end but really feeling like I'm getting a good workout. I will probably start trying to mix in some swimming/biking at the Y a few days a week to change things up and work all my muscles. Also, while I haven't lost a significant amount yet - I'm about 8-10 pounds lighter than I was when I first started running last fall. I took today off and may actually try to get in two workout sessions tomorrow and into this week depending on how I'm feeling. I haven't drank any "real" pop in a few weeks and am slowly weaning myself off diet pop again. I made a deal with Ash - she can't buy bottled water (bad for the environment!!!!), and I'll quit diet pop. This will be hard for me!
I'll include in my next post distance ran, time, etc. since I'm pretty much running on the treadmill all the time now. As soon as I find that tiny little piece of technological magic I call my ipod I'll start updating my stats w/ the graph from each run as well.
On a final note, Ashley's pet rat, Tater, is super sick and looks like he's in the process of passing away this weekend. It's been a hard couple days for her (I know, he's a rat - but my girl loves animals - in fact click HERE to find out just how much!). So if you have a second say a little prayer or or send good wishes out that Tater is peaceful. I can assure you he lived a VERY good rat life! Well I have laundry to do, 60 minutes to watch, and need to pack up my running stuff for tomorrow's workout. g'night and Happy 2008!
No comments:
Post a Comment