Leave it to Africa

Not the continent, the song, "Africa", by the band, Tutu, circa my childhood. I've loved it pretty much forever and just finally last week got around to downloading it (thanks for those iTunes gift cards at Christmas). I have a bunch of new stuff (you should get the new Dave, it's good) on shuffle play on my iPod and during my train ride home this evening it happened to come on. It broke me from my Blackberry-Facebook-app-induced stupor to look up and catch what must have unequivocally been the best sunset so far of 2010. Yeah, isn't that just a revelation? The sun has decided to bless us here in Chicago with something other than below 10 degree temperatures (you know that whole clouds are a blanket theory, it's true, so the sun is my mortal enemy during Chicity winters and the sun sets at oh, around 3:30 p.m. so sunsets just plain suck).

But back to tonight, it was beautiful and I am so glad that Africa awoke my senses and I was able to enjoy it. I wish I had a picture for you but do a mental one of the brightest pink color reflecting on the high rises. On the elevated train, I had a pretty sweet bird's eye view. It was enough to fill my heart and soul and at that moment I needed it. Today has been a roller coaster. After a long weekend, I had a couple of pieces of mail that upset me a bit and also got some other not-bad-just-kind-of-annoying-and-out-of-my-control news that had me in a bit of a tizzy. I got a couple of pieces of great news too, so don't think it was all doom and gloom but the day was crazy in that it culminated in me falling down half a flight of stairs. Not to worry, I fell on my butt and mostly slid. My left side wrist and shin aren't feeling 100% but I think my pride was hurt more than any body part. Ug. It was just one of those days, you know? So to stop it all and take a moment to enjoy the city, enjoy the hope of spring, and just be filled with that bright pink sunset was just what I needed.

A Great Day!

Yesterday was wonderful. It was exactly the way that I've always dreamed of spending my birthday. I woke up and started getting phone calls and text messages from all of my family and friends. As soon as Adam woke up, he started bugging me about opening my presents (technically, he started bugging me on Friday night). He got me almost everything I wanted and truthfully, I've already received for my birthday most of the stuff I wanted for the whole "birthmas" season so Christmas is just going to be an exciting bonus! One of my presents (and I have been asking for this all year) was a mini cookie cake and OMG was it ever delicious!!!!!

We went to Subway to pick up lunch, and yes, I realize I am sort of a weirdo for wanting Subway for lunch but just go with it. We have two locations that are probably within 4 blocks from our house. Basically, there is a major L station in our neighborhood and there is one location on each side. So we go to the closest one and they don't have Honey Oat bread. I ordered the wheat but while I was waiting for someone to start loading the veggies on, I realize two things. The wheat bread is the same points as the Honey Oat only not nearly as good and gosh darn it, it's my birthday and I want Honey Oat. So I tell the sandwich artist that I no longer want the sandwich (and the guy behind us in line thought I was probably the biggest B in the universe but who cares?) and we walked to the second location, which had what I wanted. Glorious!

We were kind of lazy watching some of the college football games and didn't accomplish an outing to the gym but that was ok because I did the 30 Day Shred and let Jillian kick my butt instead. It felt nice to get a little sweat in after eating cookie cake :)

After showering and getting a little more dressed up than normal, we set out to find a craft fair that I wanted to go to. We never ended up getting there because we walked almost a mile and it was FREEZING! We did get some nice shopping time in on our way back from our long walk.

We had a fantastic dinner at PF Chang's. I felt a little silly going to a chain restaurant when we have so many fantastic smaller places here but it's been almost a year since I'd had Chang's Chinese goodness and dinner was everything I wanted it to be. I can feel my mouthwatering now just thinking about it. It was worth every last point as I ate it.

The best part of the day was going to see the musical Jersey Boys. It's the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and it was up there with Wicked as one of my very favorites of all times. I had no idea The Four Seasons had so many hits! My favorite song is "Oh What A Night (1963)!" and the cast came out and sang it one more time as an encore. It's been on an open run here in Chicago for more than two years but the final performance will be in January. I'm so sad about that! I wish I had seen it earlier because now I want to see it again before it leaves town.

Best. Concert. Ever.

I have no voice today because I spent so many hours yelling and screaming (especially the wooo-oooo-oooo parts in Elevation) at U2. Run, don't walk, if they come to your town. They played every song you would have wanted to hear, including that Joshua Tree stuff that I loved in elementary school.


The view of the skyline (funny, I don't remember it being cloudy...) during Snow Patrol. Who were also awesome, by the way. I had no idea they were Irish too!



The Field Museum during the concert... yeah, we were kinda far so no close ups of Bono, sorry ladies.

I wish the pictures came out better because the stage was phenomenal. It looked like a gigantic alien.

See, scary alien tentacles!

The highlight of our tailgating experience was when we got to meet the Guiness beer bottle and draft man. I chased after them and brought them back to our area with promises of beer and Cheetos. Yes, Mr. Bottleman reached his hand down his bottle/skirt and I fed him Cheetos. Because I know what it's like to be hot in a giant mascot suit.

"So happy I just ate some Cheetos!"

This is pretty much why I've been running...

I have been wanting to post about the Lakefront Path for awhile now and yesterday the weather was nice enough to cooperate with me long enough to take some pictures.



This is about 2 miles in and the first time you can get a really good view of downtown. The tall one is the Hancock building, by the way.

The Lakefront Path is about 18.5 miles of marked running, jogging, bike trails from the farther Northside to the Southside of the city. There are tons of beaches along the way, beach volleyball courts, Lincoln Park runs right along the west side here at this point and Lakeshore Drive runs along the side.

Did you know there are beaches in Chicago? Because I didn't before I lived here.

Almost to downtown!

One of the harbors on the lake. This was my turnaround point last week on my 12 miler.

Beautiful downtown Chicago!

Depending on the routing I take, I usually go just past the Navy Pier.

As you can see, my runs are usually a place for awesome people watching and I never get bored on the Lakefront Path. It's awesome to just put my iPod on, jam out, and enjoy the awesome views that I get on the entire trail.

This is one of the mile markers that are throughout. I have a love/hate relationship with the markers. Somedays I'm so happy to see them, other days they taunt me!

Choices

So a couple of days ago I was watching American Eats on the History Channel. I originally started with the soda episode and semi-watched the beer episode while on the phone with my Grandmother. After we got off the phone I was concentrating a little bit more and one of the "experts" said something to the effect of, "for years in America we had one beer, one type of bread and about three types of cheese. everyone ate relatively the same thing and we didn't have much to say about it."

That struck me as so interesting. Considering that I love unique, local, craft brews, I realized just how fortunate we are to have as many choices as we do today. I can walk out of the condo and within a mile in any direction there are hundreds of bars and restaurants for me to choose from. Even when you go to the grocery store, it's hard to find one now that doesn't have a phenomenal cheese section and rockin' bakery, not to mention the regular varieties in the dairy case or bread aisle. I'm so glad that we live in an era where the world is small enough for us to have such choices, both made locally and imported from around the world. Hey, I even find Big Red here in Chicago from time to time! That is amazing!

One of my favorite things about Chicago is the lack of chain restaurants. Really, there is only one Chili's that I can think of within city limits and there are no Olive Gardens or Applebee's. There are so many different mom & pop restaurants here that I constantly have a list going in my head of places that I want to try. There is also a huge BYOB restaurant population, which is fab for recessionistas like me. So, tonight I will raise my glass to Chicago for being an awesome city of not-chain-restraurant eating!

Training Away...

For the first time, I am starting to feel better about my marathon training. I slacked off for almost two weeks around our Boston trip and I was getting behind and overwhelmed. I was able to get some really good runs in over the last week. My pacing has stayed the same, but I'm starting not to worry about it. I'm also freaking out less about the bad days and the bad runs and learning what my body is willing take in the way of punishment from me (the key to this? rest days!). My goal is just to finish and I know that it will take me close to five hours. The battle at this point is going to start getting mental and as long as I can look at it as taking five hours completely to myself to listen to my music and enjoy the scenery of Chicago, I think I'll be just fine....

Easier said than done but I think I'm getting my mind in the right place a little more each day, although 26 miles is so SCARY!

I am sore like no other because we rode bikes all over town yesterday (in addition to my nine miler) and I wasn't used to being in the saddle because missed our normal Thursday night ride for two weeks in a row.

You'd never have known it's July here yesterday, I had a jacket on at the beach!

One of my vistas from yesterday's run. I assume that part of my exorbitant tax dollars paid to this city gives me the privilege to run along the 18 miles of Lakefront bike and jog paths. More on the Lakefront path to come!

Go Cubbies!

So today we were walking to Dairy Queen for some much needed Blizzard treats and we were on Addison only about 5 blocks from Wrigley Field. There was a dude on the corner asking if anyone wanted tickets for tonights game. I told Adam that we'd check with him on our way back from DQ and if he was still there (and had a decent price) that we'd know it was fate. Of course he was gone after our 30 minute walk, treat break, and trip to CVS.

Now I am sitting here watching the game on Sunday night baseball and it looks amazing. I totally wish I were there. The irony? I am 99% sure that I will have a 5 a.m. check in tomorrow, which means I have to get up a little before 3:00. Which I've had to do the past two days already. I am exhausted but that is how much I love summer and baseball. Oh well, another game perhaps?

Currently...

I saw this on another blog and thought it was cool... especially since I am sitting in Caribu coffee feeling over-caffeinated nervous...

excited about the summer, the beach, marathon training in this beautiful city
worried about the economy and now how that's consequently affecting me and my loved ones and worried that it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better
reading trying to finish One Day at Fenway and my overgrown magazine collection
creating more photos for the walls of the condo
loving the time I get to spend with Adam, work has been getting in the way of that more than ever lately so I feel like our time together is more precious now and it just gets better and better (and OMG I am becoming a mushy person... SICK!)
hating people on the bus... seriously, today was one of those days that makes me want to get a car, like, tomorrow
wondering what the future holds for me... I will have major decisions to make soon and it feels so weird to not be able to really make long-term plans right now
craving some coffee but I know I will have an early work morning tomorrow so that is completely out but this Caribu smells delicious, oh and I'm starving so any food at this point
listening to a great mix of stuff that they are playing here, I think I heard Dave Matthew's new song and I liked it
watching this summer? bachelorette, so you think you can dance, trying to get into america's got talent but we'll see, I usually try to catch the today show, I love Natalie Morales
netflix-ing Confessions of a Shopaholic! and I've had it for more than a week but haven't watched it yet! Blast!
wishing that I could take a camera with me on my runs, I get to see some awesome scenery when I'm traipsing around
hoping for some answers and looking to God for some guidance right now

The Buckingham Fountain 5K

Right before our wedding extravaganza (3 weddings in 7 days!) week started, Adam and I ran a 5K downtown in Grant Park. I had been flying the day before and we got delayed in Washington DC at Reagan National. Reagan has, in my experienced opinion, some of the best airport food out there. There is Auntie Anne's, Dunkin Donuts, Potbelly's, Panda Express, Cosi, a Sbarro-type pizza place, there is rumored to be a Legal Seafoods in another part of the airport but I have never confirmed that, but my personal favorite is Fuddrucker's.

I have been a lover of the Fudd or Fuddy's, as I used to call it, since the days that I would spend my holidays from school working downtown at my mom's store. Her full time employee, Rebecca, and I would spend the entire morning discussing our lunch plans. Fuddy's was definitely in the rotation. My favorite thing would be to get the kid's hot dog meal (mainly because the Fudd Dawg was a half pound, grotesquely too big hot dog) and we'd split an order of Fudd Fries. I'd get about 10 cups for the jalapeno cheese sauce and ketchup and we'd eat about 50 pickles each. Sometimes I'd dip the pickles in the cheese sauce, but I digress. Anyway, I love Fuddy's... a lot. So of course since we were delayed and I would be missing dinner time I decided to eat there. They had this sweet employee meal deal where you could get a burger, fries and a soda for around $7, which I think is a great deal for Fuddrucker's and an especially great deal for any type of airport food. Why am I telling you all of this? Well, it was probably the worst dinner possible for someone who would be running a 5K the next morning.

I slept the night before the race on the most uncomfortable bed in the world (which has since been thrown over the balcony and into the dumpster!) so I wasn't exactly feeling my best come race time. The race itself was very cool though. It was benefitting the restoration project of the Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park. For those of you non-Chicagoans, it's the fountain at the beginning of Married with Children.

Yeah, that picture did not come from race day, it was definitely a little bit drizzly and not as pretty out. The race wound around the park and through the museum campus, which was really fun. I was huffing and puffing and thinking about ralphing up my Fudd's the whole time, which infuriated me because I wanted to beat Adam. We finished in 30 minutes, 33 seconds, which means that we kept better than 10 minute mile pace! Remember, I am super slow so it's the little victories that count. We got pretty nice shirts from the race that are made by American Apparel, which is a GREAT store for t-shirts (and 80's Fame-type outfits, if you are in to that sort of thing).

This week also officially marks 16 weeks until the marathon!! I have done absolutely nothing since the beginning of June so it's time to get cracking and get the mileage up. I got some awesome new shoes to break in when we were in San Antonio from my brother's gf's store (Run Wild Sports, it's at the Pearl Brewery so check it out when you go down to get your fresh veggies at the farmer's market!).

Water Station 101

I think everyone who regularly runs races should have to volunteer at least once at the water station. Last night, Adam ran in the Chase Corporate Challenge downtown and I got an email from one of my running groups looking for volunteers. They promised a free t-shirt, which I knew would be a nice one because these people are serious runners, and you know I am never one to turn down free swag. The original email said they were looking for people to do water station and finish line volunteering but it turned out we were doing the only aid/water station instead. I showed up at my assigned place, met the coordinator and started pouring.

With typical Chicago weather, it was so funny because you couldn't get too many cups lined up or they'd all blow off your table. We would fill the entire first layer of a table with cups of water and then put posterboards on top of that before starting a second layer. A really nice girl was helping me hold down my posterboards until we got enough cups set up to hold it down and I'd help her with her table. We kind of stuck together because neither one of us had ever done a water station before and we're both running the same ten-miler this weekend.

Now, the Corporate Challenge is kind of a big deal in downtown Chicago. The whole time we were filling cups for the 2 hours prior to the race, we kept seeing droves of people headed to the start/finish line. Adam ran it last year and he'd warned me that it's the kind of race where you are in a crowd the entire time and it never thins out. Kind of reminds me of the Trail of Lights 5K in Austin. It was cute though because most of the companies had team shirts made. Adam's company had fancy tech shirts.

After the starting bell rang, which we could hear faintly, is when it got scary. Imagine 25,000 people barreling toward you. It's a completely different way to experience a race. The "elite" runners just sprinted by us. Turns out the girl who won the women's division works at Adam's company. Then once some of the slower (and by slower I mean still sprinting) came by, they were looking for water. Women aren't so bad. They will usually make eye contact with you and slow down just a tad to take the water. Men. Not so much. They would run at me full speed and knock my arm and the water and you'd hear a splat as they spilled probably half of it. I got to the point where I would flinch when someone came to get water from me. Becuase there were so many people, the race spilled over onto the sidewalks so I had people coming at me from both sides. I learned a lot about being a little more courteous to the volunteers manning the water stations at my races.

After the last finishers passed us by, we were supposed to move what water we had left on our tables across the street where the second half of the race would again pass our aid station. At one point, we were trying to move (me and another girl, mind you) a table with three layers of water but the curb was actually about 2 inches higher than the side walk and the corners of the table got caught on it. It took a very timely rescue from one of the guys or we would have spilled the whole bloody table and hundreds of glasses of water. I even heard one of the racers shout, "Oh, I've GOT to stop and see this." Haha. I'm proud that I was comic relief for a small group of runners. Round 2 of handing out water went much better except for the one girl who threw hers and it went right up my legs and all over my crotch. You just have to expect things like that when you are a water station person, I guess.

All in all, it was pretty fun. I have to say that I normally prefer to be on the streets and running, it was great learning experience. There are 5 (woo hoo- 5!?!?) water stations at the 10 miler on Saturday so you better believe I will be thanking them as they cheer us on.

I've been a bad, bad girl...

The Wii Fit officially hates me. I haven't done a weigh-in in over 10 days. My mysterious illness and a visit from Dad and Mikey have seriously thrown my routine. After this weekend, I think I also need detox both from alcohol and bad food. My stomach is very angry with me.

I have to get back on the fitness train now because I have the Soldier Field 10 miler this weekend. I can't wait, you get to finish on the field that the Bears play on and have your name in lights on the jumbotron. They also promise nice Adidas shirts.

As soon as I get pictures ready, I will post about the Cubs game we went to on Saturday. It was awesome, the Cubbies won and the weather was absolutely perfect. I love Wrigley.

Chicago has officially given birth to spring and soon we'll be into full-force summer. It's a blast to walk down the street because nearly every bar and restaurant is open and you can sit in the window and people watch. I love it because it's as nice as eating outside but you also get that fun bar feel and can watch sports games on TV.

After my friend Tracee gets married the first weekend in June, I'm going to officially start a marathon training program. I'm still in the research phase but I will probably end up doing one from Runner's World. That will be the 16 week mark until my race!! YIKES!! :) I am also going to get back into my tracking on Gyminee. I've been very neglectful lately but I figure you have to have the "bad" weeks now and then to give yourself something to work toward. I hope everyone had just as much fun on their weekend as I did!

Fantastic Weekend

The stars actually aligned for me this weekend. I made it home (ON TIME!) from my trip on Saturday a little before noon. When I came up the stairs from the train tunnel and stepped outside, I was so happy. The weather was awesome! It was probably around 70 both Saturday and yesterday and perfectly sunny and beautiful.

Watching the city come alive is truly amazing. Trees are blooming, plants are turning green again, restaurants have their entire front wall windows open, bars have their patios open... it's impossible to be sad. Just walking around in the neighborhood on Saturday night, there are times when I think I could live here forever (which, that feeling will last until, oh... next December when we have the first of our few fabulous days where the temperature never gets above zero). Even sitting around the house with all the windows open is just nice. I'm even appreciating the smell of fresh fertilizer and mulch, haha!

Saturday was a Chicago sports day of the ages. The Cubs played in the afternoon (and won!), the Bulls were playing in a Game 7 versus the Celtics, the white sox played (not that we really cared), and the Blackhawks had a playoff game vs. the Vancouver Canuks. We had an adventure trying to find a good bar to watch the Bulls and Hawks in. It ended up being so perfect though, we sat so close to the patio and the entire area behind our table was open so it felt like being outside, complete with the roar of the L every few minutes. We went 1 for 2, with a Blackhawks win and a Bulls loss. There's something really cool about actually getting to spend a peaceful Saturday night with your boyfriend. For those of you with "regular people jobs", don't ever take those normal weekends for granted!

Adam's dad was in town so we got to have a couple of really nice meals and some fun shopping time with him. We got Mario Kart for the Wii, which I really suck at, that dang wheel is a piece of work! I need practice. We even watched one of the Netflix movies together for the first time in a really long time! It was such a great weekend that I was really sad that it was over.