Oh the things my body can do*

Saturday, after a late night of beer pong and a few too many natty lights**, I went to the running store to stock up on gels, socks, and break down and buy body glide for my fat arms (although I wore a different shirt this time and I think that would have stopped the chaffing anyway). Then I headed to the gym and ran 15 miles. I know! I was as shocked as you! It was 5.0 mph so super slow, but it actually wasn't that difficult. I had the end of Bring it On, then all of Stick It, and the beginning of I Now Pronounce you Chuck and Larry to get me through. I know. I was glad the 15 miles were over too so I could turn that last crap off. There's really nothing like spending an afternoon on the treadmill to make you realize just how stupid the movie Stick It really is. Oh, Jeff Bridges...Why would you agree to do this?

Anyway, I was pretty impressed with myself. I came home and attempted to take an ice bath but all the ice melted in about 30 seconds so it was more of a cold water bath. The rest of the day was great. I went to a beer pong tournament that night and lost miserably. Then here comes Sunday morning and guess who doesn't want to work: my quadriceps. My back is also on the verge of strike if she doesn't get what she wants. Then this morning, after spending the weekend either barefoot or in flip flops, I put on my shoes for work*** and my left foot decided it wanted a 3 day weekend. Get in line, buddy! Now I'm sitting here with a tennis ball under my desk like a fool. I guess my body didn't really want to run 15 miles out of the blue. Oh well. If I can keep this up, I'm now on track with my long runs to make it to the marathon semi-properly trained. I'm not sure how the treadmill running will translate to outdoors, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there and it's not 98 degrees with 80% humidity outside.

Teaser: I cracked open my first homebrew bottle last night. Full details to come later. Maybe if someone would come back from vacation...

*And then make me regret later.

**Easily my favorite thing about gym membership. I can sleep in and start running at 1pm without fear of heat stroke and eventaul death when I realize I'm 7 miles from my house and still have to make it home. That way I can go out Friday nights instead of having to explain 15 times that I really need to get a run in so I should just go home and sleep. I think we all know who wins that battle 9 times out of 10.

***I wear these bad boys.

Not because they actually help tone my legs, but because the men find them so sexy. Now that I'm used to them, my feet actually hurt after standing for long periods if I wear regular shoes, so I'm kind of stuck with them.

Captain's log

It's been a busy few days. I think a captain's log will be the easiest way to recap events. Although, by captain's log, I'm really thinking more along the lines of Doogie Howser's Diary. Just picture a blue screen with typing, slowly backspacing, then re-typing more profound words.

Thursday night: Headed to Mystikal. May have had a couple of drinks before hand and a large daiquiri for the drive (we have to go drinks here and I wasn't driving). The concert was great including the opening dude Y.Luck. There may be a small gap in memory during Mystikal's actual performance, but it was the only memory gap for the entire weekend, so I consider that a success. Unfortunately, the Saints were unable to win their first preseason game, but luckily those don't really count. Mystikal in action:

Friday day: I took off work as a birthday present to myself. Instead of running hungover, I opted to sleep in and catch up on some game shows. I do love me some Feud. I had lunch with friends at a sushi place. I drank Sapporo light (because I'm watching my weight clearly) and found a new favorite: coconut lemongrass sake. Yum!! After that, my friend and I (her birthday is the day before mine so we both took off work) went to my favorite bar and got drinks on the house. Score! I had Shiner Bock there because it's my favorite. Then I went home and napped.

Friday night: Dinner with other friends. I had Nola Hopitoulas with my red beans and rice. Nola is a New Orleans Brewery that is only a few years old. The Hopitoulas (a play on the NO street name Tchoupitoulas) is my favorite of their brews. It's an ipa and has a lot more flavor than their main brews: the blonde and the brown. Then we went back to my favorite bar and I switched to Magic Hat #9 on tap. It's a good beer, not great. It's a little sweet, but still has a good beer flavor.

Saturday day: Off to New Orleans again at the crack of dawn for the Red Dress Run. It's not so much of a run as a 2 mile pub crawl with free beer along Bourbon Street. I stuck to Miller Lite because I was hungover and it was eleventy billion degrees. My other free option was Abita Amber, which is usually a favorite, but was too much that day. Here's me on a balcony overlooking bourbon during the RDR:

Saturday night: Dinner at Port of Call. Yum! Cheeseburger with a fully loaded baked potato. No beer since I have to get a Monsoon (aka delicious strong fruity rum drink) at PoC. It's mandatory.

Sunday: No drinking or running. Headed home, took the dogs to the park, and had a double header with my restaurant's softball team. We're awful and have yet to win a game, but we scored 4 runs in the second game (a new record for us!) and I even walked and made it home for one of those runs. It was eleventy trillion degrees that day and since we were on the field for most of those 2 hours and in the dugout usually for 3 up and 3 down, I was too hot to consider a long run.

Monday: Work all day. Home to change clothes and go to night job. Actually made a nice chunk of change for a Monday night. Then-and here's the kicker-went to the gym and ran 10 miles! It took me just shy of 2 hours but I finished and even managed to do negative splits. Of course, my arms are chaffed obviously because of the shirt I was wearing and not because I'm fat. Hello, did you see all the light beer I've been drinking?! I'm going to have to suck it up and buy some body glide. I also didn't bother stretching or an ice bath so I'm a little rickety today.

But, overall, it was a good...backspace, backspace, backspace, backspace....great weekend.

Happy Birthday to me...Tomorrow.

On the running front:

I'm actually a little hopeful. Last night I went to the gym after working both jobs and declining no less than 3 invites to drink (some of them for free) and ran 5 miles on ye ole treadmill. It was actually fairly easy too. I probably could have kept going for a while, but it was almost closing time and I didn't bring any gels or candy to keep the energy up. Plus I was only planning on doing 4.5* so I felt accomplished. It was especially rewarding because Wednesday night is pint night at my favorite bar which happens to be right next to my new gym. I had to see all the drunk people having fun walking by with their free pint glasses and laughing at the poor girl running in place instead of sitting and enjoying one of 81 beers on tap. The run itself was painfully slow, but I'm okay with that. Lord knows I'll never win any awards or such. I'm always just at the race to finish and then drink the beer. Since the Chicago Marathon is exactly 2 months from yesterday, I'm challenging the notion that someone can go from happy to run 5 miles to running a marathon in 2 months. We'll see. It should be interesting at least.





On the drinking front:


Surprisingly little this whole week, but tomorrow is my birthday. It will be my very first 29th birthday. To celebrate, we're going to see Mystikal at the House of Blues in New Orleans tonight. My present to myself is taking a vacation day tomorrow and not coming in to work. Instead of sleeping in (fully, that is. I'll still sleep late), I'm going to go for a genuine long run. I'm hoping for 10 miles, will be happy with 9, and can probably settle for 8. Anything less and I'll be disappointed. After that, I have a day o' drinking planned starting with a sushi lunch and most likely Sapporo sake bombs. Then Saturday, it's off to NOLA again for the red dress run! I somehow talked my dad into going with me. He can't run and probably won't be able to even walk the 6 miles, but we'll certainly drink with our red dresses on! I'll be one of these fools.
Pictures and reports of the weekend to come. I hope to not be blogging again until Monday! Have a great weekend everyone!




*Miles. Not busboys. Clearly you haven't seen the guys I work with.

Some honest to goodness running!

I sucked it up and joined a gym! Possibly because I realized the marathon I'm signed up to run is in a little over 2 months(!! ) and I just can't handle the heat. I ran twice now: 3 miles Wednesday night and 2.5 today. Baby steps. My body is still in shock. It can't really believe I'm doing this again.

After the 3 miles (which came at night after working both jobs), my asthma kicked in and my legs were sore. I thought I was going to die the whole time. It didn't help that the branch of the gym that's open late is right next door to my favorite bar and it was pint night. I was pretty proud of myself for passing that one up.

I managed to fit in 2.5 at lunch today. My lungs and body felt great this time. I think that one run was enough to shock them back into things. No feeling great, however, was my stomach. Things I learned about running on a treadmill: 1) It's nice to be able to hop off and go to the bathroom at any point instead of having to wait until mile 3.4 for the public restroom on my regular run. 2) There's no cropdusting. If you stink up the joint, you just have to keep running in it. There's no moving on. Luckily the gym was fairly empty so no one had to join in that lesson with me. I figure my body should get with the program by this weekend!

All beer, no running

Yeah, so it's been unbearably hot here, I have to find a new gym, and I've been doing a lot of drinking. So let's just keep it going with the beer theme.

I brewed my very own beer last week: a brown ale (name still pending, suggestions appreciated).

I cooked it up last Sunday. It was surprisingly easy and made my house smell like malty goodness instead of dogs.

Mmmm...Malty Goodness

I cooled it down, added the yeast, and set her in the closet for a week. She started gurgling Monday morning and bubbled continually till Tuesday morning. Tuesday, when I got home from work, she had quit and still had bubbles if you pressed on the lid, but nothing like before. I hope that's okay.

Last night, my dad came over with the bottles he sanitized (bonus! I didn't have to do that!), and we bottled her up. Here's what the wort looked like before being siphoned into the bottling bucket. I tasted some of the sludge left at the bottom and it was unidentifiably gross at first with a super hoppy after taste.

Here's my beer pouring into my little bottling bucket:

And here's the finished product (I used one clear bottle just so I could admire my work!).

Now I have to wait 3 weeks to drink it. I've dropped numerous hints that if this goes well, I would like a full kegerator set up for Christmas so I can keg my beer and drink it sooner. Come to think of it, my birthday's in a couple of weeks, so maybe I can make this happen sooner...

Guess who's back!

I decided to change things up a bit this time around. I quit the last blog because, well, I quit running and it was getting old just posting excuses for not running. This time, I've decided to blog about running AND beer. I figure if I'm not running, then I'll be drinking a lot of beer and will therefore still have plenty of blogging material. And let's face it, I've always known a lot more about beer than running. I've signed up for the Chicago Marathon because I'm an idiot, so hopefully there might be some worthwhile running going on in the near future. In the meantime, BEER!

Last night I tried the new S.O.S. from Abita. That's the big 'micro' brew in Louisiana. I think it might be getting too big to call it a microbrew. S.O.S. is their newest beer called Save Our Shores, because they are donating $0.75 for every bottle sold to gulf coast clean up and rebuilding. Unfortunately, it only comes in 22oz bottles so I was forced to drink a little more (I don't know who I can blame for the extra bottles, but it's for charity so I was really just doing my part). Here's what the bottle looked like once the lights were on for closing time.*

This is what the website had to say about it:

This unfiltered Weizen Pils is made with Pilsner and Wheat malts. It is hopped and dry hopped with Sterling and German Perle hops. It has a brilliant gold color, a sweet malt flavor, and a pleasant bitterness and aroma.

Just from tasting it, I thought it was a pale ale. I never would have guessed pils. I looked up Weizen Pils and it appears they may have made that term up. It tasted the most similar to the Jaques-Imo IPA by Abita but lighter and more crisp with a smooth finish. Definitely not as hoppy as the IPA but still has a bite. It might be one of my favorites by Abita. My other is the Restoration Ale which raised money for Katrina relief. Maybe I just love philanthropy...

*Yes. It's been a fun day at work.