Mike Floyd...The Wall

As in: We've almost hit it. The house is almost done. The deck is kicking my ass but turning out great. But I hurt man. Deep down pain you know. I haven't been to the gym in two months. I ran a total of 0 miles last week. Too much to do on the house (we're trying to finish quickly to get our final inspection so we can then get an appraisal for a refi...it's a long story), and work is keeping me really busy. I was down in San Diego last week for Comic-Con (Crazy!) so I wasn't able to do any running. So yesterday was the first day I was able to get up early and actually crank out a measly 3 miles. I swear it's almost like starting all over again. Almost. I can handle the mileage, but my speed and breathing have gone into the crapper. Doesn't matter. I was just glad to pound the pavement.

We are getting our final inspection on the house on Monday. If all goes well (which it should) then there is just a little painting here and there inside and we have to move some furniture around. Give the house an overall cleaning inside and out and spiff up the yard and BOOM. Done. I figure I'll be back to a normal life soon. Fingers crossed. In the meantime RUN ON!

Construction

Haven't been running as much as I'd like to these days. We're adding on to our house so it's total chaos over here and we're doing some of the work ourselves so that's been kicking my ass. I'm sore all over so it makes the idea of going out for a run not as inviting. And since we're spending all our money on the house we haven't had a chance to go out and taste as much wine as we'd like. However, we did manage to break away last Saturday and go to our local tasting room. They served up a series of Malbecs from Argentina. Two brands: Lo Tengo and Kaiken. Both were fantastic so if you happen to see any on the shelves at your local store, give them a try. In the meantime. RUN ON!

Marathon training

The AREC MOB



Kristen and the leaders of the pack.

Well, Saturday marked Day 1 for the AREC training regimen and a record number of people showed up for this run. When Kristen and I signed in we were 83 and 84 and I know several more people showed up after us. Pretty cool. It was just a quick 5 miler to get the new people familiar with the area so we'll see how many stick it out when the miles start to add up later. It's really great to see that many new people join the club and get into running. It makes the whole experience that much better.Oh. by the way, I rock!

Intervals

I decided to start doing intervals once a week now. Baby steps at first. Today I just did a quick maintenance 3 miler with 5 intervals starting at the 2 mile mark. I was just doing a light 9 minute pace and then would run an 8 minute pace for 1 minute and then go back to 9 for a minute and did that 5 times. Felt good when I was done. Hated it while running. Oh, I did it on the dreadmill because it's so friggin' windy in LA today so I didn't feel like adding wind resistance to my run.

Bad Blogger

I'll admit it right off the top. I've been a bad blogger. I've been bad about updating on a regular basis, but sadly I don't think I've had a whole helluva lot to say in regards to running or wine-ing. Kristen and I haven't been running many races because life has gotten a bit hectic lately. Our house is under construction right now because we are adding a dining room, 3rd bedroom and a 2nd bathroom. As a result our money and our time has been gobbled up by the endeavor. That said, Kristen is running as part of a team for a half Ironman Triathlon up at Lake San Antonio this weekend so she's been training as usual. She's an animal and runs 8 to 10 miles a day so she's sure to do a kick ass job. The only other race on our horizon is the San Francisco marathon, but we haven't signed up yet. Again, slackers. I'm still putting my miles in and at the end of May the Long Beach AREC running club is starting their Long Beach Marathon training routine so I'm looking forward to cranking up the miles again. I just hope I don't drop another 12 pounds.

On the wine front we haven't made an cool trips to wine country ANYWHERE so I might want to change the blog's name to "Cheap" Wine and the finish line. We're all about the Trader Joe's and Sprout's Market weekday wine. And before you chuckle, there are some surprisingly inexpensive wines out there for daily consumption. Trader Joe's $4.99 line of wines are pretty damn decent for after work and Sprout's has Crane Lake wines on sale that are pretty tasty. Their Petite Sirah is surprisingly tasty.

So, I'd say that I'll be a better blogger, but then I'd actually have to live up to that and if you're reading this you might be saying to yourself, "Um, Mike, I don't think people really give a shit." Anyway, I hope everyone reading this is doing awesome and I'll hopefully have something interesting to say soon.

Crush!

Kristen and I ran the Seal Beach 10k yesterday and I CRUSHED my old PR by 1:52 seconds coming in at 52:11. Now I know that's not all that great for most runners out there, but I'm stoked. It was a good race, better than last year from what I'm told. They started us in waves (something they didn't do last year) and it made the beginning of the race pretty painless. Kristen ran a 42:19 which isn't a PR, but it's pretty close. She got 5th place overall for women and 3rd place in her age group. Something we found out later was that the overall winner was a woman which is pretty rare at these events. She ran something like a 33 minute 10k! Insane! And she was in Kristen's age group so she was really curious to find out who this woman was. Turns out she's an Olympic athlete living in Hawthorne originally from Nigeria. That made Kristen feel better about her 3rd place finish. I, on the other hand, came in 57th in my age group. I don't see a medal in my future any time soon I guess. Oh well.

Shameless Self Promotion

I (Kristen) have been designing jewelry as a hobby/freelance business for the last several years and just got into it again with the launch of my line of jewelry just for runners (chickie runners) called Aspiration Designs. Just this past weekend I created a site www.aspirationdesigns.etsy.com where you can find my latest creations and would love any word of mouth sharing with your lady runner friends!