Running Along the Beach - Ahhhh!

(Kitty) Today I didn't have to get up early to run in order to beat the heat. After all, I'm in the coldest summer in the country if rumors are to be believed. Today's high (July 29th, keep in mind!) was 59 degrees! So I finally got around to getting my running shoes on at about 9:30, maybe 10am. It was AWESOME! Pretty cold even with a sweatshirt because of the wind coming off the ocean, but it was beautiful running on the path along the beach. John and I run along a beach path in Santa Monica, too, but the terrain and beauty are different here in San Francisco. It was a beautiful 6 miles!

Going to San Francisco

(Kitty) I've been too busy to post lately because I'm on my way to San Francisco in a few hours. I'm getting pretty excited about it. Not only will I get to spend time with friends, but the reason for the trip is to attend the Romance Writers of America National Conference. I've been to a lot of conferences before but not this one. Over 2000 writers will be there, plus agents, editors, and more! It's going to be very exciting, a lot of fun, and seriously exhausting!

What's more, I've told myself that hills or not, I AM going to keep up my running while I'm there. Eek! I hope I can make it without John - we run so much better when we run together.

I'll be gone for ten days, so unless John has time to post - or I have time to post from the conference - we'll talk to you again in about two weeks. Hope you're all having a GREAT summer!!

7 Miles!

(Kitty) I can hardly believe it but we did it! We ran SEVEN MILES today. I was so tired the last half mile. All I could think of was, "I have to walk home if I stop running, so I might as well just keep running and I'll get home quicker." LOL! Then the next several hours I was soooo hungry! LOL!

The thing is, John is a much better athlete than I'll ever be. He runs ahead for a while, then turns around and comes back to me, then runs ahead again. So I figure he runs maybe a mile or more longer than I do! We started running almost four months ago today. The first day I could hardly run more than a block, and today I ran 7 miles! And that made our week's total 21 miles! Wow! Kinda says what you can do when you put your mind to it!

Riding My Bike

(Kitty) - So my first ride was with John last Sunday, but I had to go out on my own at some point. So Friday I decided to take my bike to the library and the credit union. I made it without any problems - and I wasn't even scared! I could hardly believe it! By the time I got back, I checked the mileage - I rode 6 miles by myself!

Today, we went out before church again (the idea being there are fewer cars on the road for me to deal with) and this time I rode all around Santa Monica - 16 miles! I was a little nervous sometimes when I had to ride on a 4-lane street and switch lanes. John is still rolling his eyes that I'm not up to the speed limit all the time, but it's getting better! And today - only my third ride on my bike! - I got up to 40 mph!! Woo-hooo!! And I didn't even feel like I was going to go flying off!

I still like 2-lane streets better right now - no worries about people trying to pass me or hit me when they change lanes, but I'm really going to have to make sure I'm "up to speed"! And in LA, being up to speed means going 10 miles over the speed limit! LOL! I'll keep you updated!

From Waiting to Riding

(Kitty) Here is the pictorial tour of me getting my very first motorcycle! I bought a 2008 Yamaha V Star 250. It used to be called the Yamaha Virago 250 from 2007 and before. It is the smallest version of John's bike, a V Star Classic 650. I am soooooo happy!!!!!


My first view of my new bike! The guys are filling the tires and checking all the - whatever it is they check! The one I sat on in the showroom was sold before I came back, so this one came from the warehouse. I am one of the only people to even sit on my bike!!



And in fact - here is a picture of me the very first time I got to sit on it. I'm waiting for the guys to take it out on it's test drive before they hand over the keys.



John thought I was so silly, but I was just so excited!!! I couldn't help myself - I had to hug my new bike! LOL!!


The side view of Kitty's new motorcycle. The paint job is called Black Cherry - and it's beautiful! John named his first car, so I decided not to feel silly naming my first bike. Due to American slang uses of the word "cherry" I decided not to use that as part of the name. But my middle name is Rose, and the color is a shade of red, so I named her Rosie! The funny thing is that we had a horse named Rosie, one of the first I ever rode. Hmm...wonder if there is some hidden meaning in there... LOL!!



This is Billy, handing me the keys to my new bike! I think he thought I was a little silly for taking a picture of every little thing - including him - but he was a good sport about it. He said he loves to ride, and he understands the excitement of buying a new bike. :)




John, on the other hand, teasingly made a point of letting me know how embarrassing it was for him to have to ride my little bike home for me. When he got home, he told me I'd succeeded in fully emasculating him - he'd pulled up to a stoplight and looked over and there was a beautiful blonde at the wheel of a BMW. She just looked at him and looked away. John said he wanted to yell, "No, no, this isn't mine! I have a real motorcycle at home! Really!" LOL!!



Getting ready for my very first ride on my new bike! I'm taking off the lock on the front wheel. My friend Milissa, who also rides, told me a long time ago - if you have long hair and you ride, be sure to braid it back or you'll never be able to get the tangles out. Thus - me in a braid.



Gearing up for my first ride - helmet, gloves, nylon mesh jacket (it's like air conditioning when you're riding and the wind is whipping through, much cooler than leather), jeans, Kevlar boots. I jokingly asked my friend Janice who used to be a police officer if my boots are bulletproof. You know, 'cause they're Kevlar. :)



You can't tell, but I'm grinning like a kid in a candy store!!



Pulling out into the alley - my first ride! I'm pretty sure the butterflies in my stomach were more excitement than fear.



My first run down the alley behind our apartment! I did it!

I drove up and down the alley a few times, then asked John if he wanted to take his bike and follow me out onto the street. It was Sunday morning and hardly anyone was out yet, so I wasn't too nervous. Better to get out there and see how I felt when no cars were around! So John followed me as I made a few loops around the couple of residential streets we live near. Then I took it on a couple bigger streets. Basically, I kept making ever-widening circles around our apartment! LOL!

John was my guarding my back so I wasn't afraid of any cars getting too close. And I only stalled once! But I also only made it up to the speed limit twice!! LOL!! And the speed limit was 30 on one street, and 35 on the other! (Come to think of it, I think it was 45 on the second one - which means I was going way too slow!) The first time I got up to 30, I thought I was going to blow off the back of my bike!

Eventually I looked at my watch and realized we needed to get back and shower for church. But I was so excited about my first ride. And even more so when I looked at the odometer and realized my first ride was 10 MILES!!! Woo-hooooo!!!

Best Times Ever!

(Kitty) What did we do on 4th of July? We got up at 5:30 and drove down to Redondo Beach (about half an hour away with no traffic) and ran a 5K race with our friends Dwight and Jill. It was ridiculously hot while we were running, then about an hour after we were done, "normal" weather returned with a nice breeze. Ah well.

The point is we ran in some heat and John and I still beat our best times! John ran the race in 27 minutes 50 seconds, coming in 91st out of 134 in his category. I ran it in 39 minutes 14 seconds (shaving off more than 5 minutes!), 93 out of 141 in my category.

Next stop - the Santa Barbara 10K in August!

New Haircut

As some of you know, I was going to try and grow my hair long again. I got a pretty good start on it, then we started running. Well, I found it a hassle more and more so I got it cut short again. Now the summer is fast approaching, I'm really glad for the short hair!

Motorcycle awareness ads

I found these on-line the other day and thought I would post them with the news that Kitty just bought her own motorcycle! Her bike is kinda a smaller version of my Yamaha 650 (her's is only a 250.) As soon as she gets back into town, we're picking it up from the Yamaha dealer and she starts riding! We'll be posing pictures of it soon!

It's a Southern Thing

(Kitty) I'm out visiting my brother Michael and my sister-in-law Kristy and having a great time with them! This is the first time I've seen Michael since he gave me away at my wedding 18 years ago! And I've never met Kristy - even though they're about to celebrate their 11th wedding anniversary! It's also the first time I've been back in South Carolina since I left Parris Island and the Marine Corps in the fall of 1987.

On every trip, you need at least one small souvenir, and Saturday night the three of us found the perfect one for me. Michael and Kristy really enjoy stock car racing and they took me to a local race on Saturday night. I told my Bible study before I left California that I was going to a stock car race and they just laughed - it's so outside any of our experiences! So on Saturday, Kristy bought Moon Pies that we ate after lunch - the wrappers got us $3 off the race admission. (They're soft cookies with marshmallow covered in chocolate. Yum!) Then at the race we saw a t-shirt - Moon Pies and RC Cola, It's a Southern Thing, Y'all Wouldn't Understand. LOL!!! So I bought the t-shirt, and we decided I'd wear it to Bible study on Wednesday and bring along enough Moon Pies for everyone!

The Beach Boys!!

(Kitty) Last night, I went with my friends Doug and Marlene to see The Beach Boys live in concert! What great fun! It was fantastic to see the real, live Beach Boys perform just a hundred or so feet away, playing a ton of songs I know by heart. But there was something kind of strange and vastly amusing about seeing a gray-haired 60+ year old man flirting with dyed-haired 50+ year old women crowding the base of the stage. LOL!

There were a total of seven people in the band last night, one of which I think is a son of one of the Beach Boys, but only two of the guys were originals. Didn't matter that much to me because they were good - and one guy sounded sooo much like one of the missing originals! In any case, they all looked like they were having a great time, and Doug and Marlene and I were having a great time, so I guess that makes it a success! LOL!

Here are some pictures I found on the Internet since we weren't allowed to bring cameras.

NOW

THEN

Comments

(Kitty) Hi everyone! I just wanted to let you know that I made some changes to the blog so that you can post comments easier now. I didn't realize that the earlier settings made it impossible to post a comment if you weren't a Google user. To avoid spam, I changed it so anyone can post a comment (I can't remember but you still might have to type in the strange verification letters), but then I see the comments before they are posted and I have to accept or deny the post. This way, hopefully we can have a little bit more of a two-way conversation but without the extra comments posted by strangers about erectile dysfunction and winning the Irish National Lottery. LOL!

Hope you're all having a great weekend!

Race Pictures

(Kitty) Here are the pictures we took after our Memorial Day 5K race. We actually look pretty good for after our first race. It's not even been 10 days since then and already John ran his first 10K today. Not a race though. We're training now to run a 10K (6.2 miles) in mid-August in Santa Barbara, and then the Pasadena Half Marathon (13.1 miles) in mid-November, and according to our training schedule we're already supposed to start running 5 miles on our "long" day. Today we did it! Hurray! But because John is taller and faster and in better shape, he still runs ahead, then back to me, then runs ahead, then back, the whole time. So he figures he definitely ran at least 6 miles today! LOL!!

Kitty and John after The Brentwood Run, Sunday, May 25, 2008


Dwight and John after The Brentwood Run

©2008 ~TheDragoness1992

Our First Race!

(Kitty) We did it! Step 1 of getting ready to run a marathon - run a 5K. Check!

On Sunday, May 25, John and I ran our first race, along with our friend Dwight. We all ran the 5K (3.1 miles) portion of The Brentwood Run. It's only a few miles from where we live in Santa Monica, so we were quite happy to not have to get up early and drive somewhere. But we were all so excited that we got an early start. Turns out that was a good thing as it took us forever to find a parking spot!

There were booths set up advertising local health and fitness organizations (I'm going to try two free weeks of a martial arts self-defense course!), as well as booths with free food and drinks. Advertising, of course. The food and drinks were mostly of a sports nature - Clif bars, energy drinks, etc.

Before the race, a woman from the local YMCA got on stage and took us through an aerobics-style warmup. I stopped about half-way through. I had visions of me using up the energy I needed to complete the race because of the warmup!

Finally it was time to run! I went to the back, right in front of the people pushing strollers, and John and Dwight stood in the middle. I kept reminding myself to start slow, think Tortoise and the Hare, make sure you can make it to the end. I was pleased that I found a pace and stayed with it! But I was shocked to see John running down the other side of the road when I was barely to the 1-mile mark! He'd already passed the half-way point and had turned around with the pack!

Soon Dwight passed me, too. I just kept my eyes on a young woman in her thirties and an old man (who I later learned was 89!!) because the three of us kept passing each other, so we must've been running around the same pace. Nearing the 2-mile mark the fairly flat road went slightly downhill so I picked up my pace a bit. At the 3-mile mark, with the Finish Line in sight, I picked it up again. As I passed him, I told the old man thanks for being my pace-man! He laughed!

Then I heard my name and looked to my right. There was John and Dwight as well as our friends Len and Bobbi cheering me on! I called out, "Well, if I've got an audience..." and sprinted as fast as I could to the Finish Line! What great fun! Well, it was more fun about 2 minutes later when I could breathe again! LOL!!

John finished in 28 minutes, 17 seconds, 37 out of 54 in his gender/age category, 402 out of 827 overall. Dwight did his best time ever (he's run two 5K's already) in 33 minutes, 47 seconds, 51 out of 56 in his category, and 594 overall. And I finished in 44 minutes, 22 seconds, 45 out of 56 in my category, and 752 overall.

Overall, we're all pretty happy with our experience. In fact, John and I want to do it again. I'll let you know how that goes. Meanwhile, on Tuesday we started the next step in training to run a marathon - training to run a 10K. There's one we'd all really like to run in Santa Barbara in August. It'll be a 1.5 - 2 hour drive to get there, but it's a beautiful city on the ocean - and there's an ice cream social afterward! LOL!

We'll try to remember to load our pictures from the race tomorrow. But if you want to look at the one Dwight took of us afterward, it's at his blog. And if you have any advice, let us know! It's amazing how many people you run into who have run a marathon - but you'd never know it till it comes up in conversation. Have you run one?

Riding in the Rain

(John) I have been trying to decide what other exercise I should do when cross training with the marathon running. My friend Dwight invited me to go for a bike ride on Saturday, the day before Kitty's and my first 5K race. He lent me his old Specialized while he rode one he had just bought on eBay. We went to a park that we have ridden at before and spent the morning riding through a light drizzle. We both had mud on us when we were finished, but we got some great exercise and some great pictures.

BANANAS are Your Friend!

(Kitty) Only a few more days until John and I run our first race with our friend Dwight! John and I are finally getting excited about it. Why only now? Because last Saturday when we were supposed to running a "long" run, we totally broke down, practically before we got started. We did our 5-minute brisk walk to warm up, then started jogging. My muscles began to ache from the very start. About 16 minutes in, I finally broke down into a near-limping walk. How embarrassing!

Then John jogged back to me and I told him I didn't know why, but everything from my hips down hurt and I was just going to walk while he ran ahead. About 5 minutes later, he was toast, too!

When we got home, the first thing we did was go to the store and buy some bananas. I remembered feeling this kind of muscle ache on a lesser scale in the past, and eating bananas always made it go away (potassium, you know). Then I Googled running muscle pain and found out a lot of things can cause it including poor nutrition and dehydration. So we spent the weekend eating a lot of bananas and drinking a lot of water!

Monday, our run went much better. Wednesday, I ran longer than I have so far in all our training (and I think in all my life!) and could've kept going! (Also, a first for me!) We run again on Friday and finish the "Couch to 5K" 9-week program, then our first race is Sunday! We're running in The Brentwood Run 5K, not far from where we live. Our friend Dwight is coming down to run it, too. (He turned us on to the "Couch to 5K" program. This will be his third race.)

We'll let you know how it all goes. And feel free to give us any advice! :)

AMAZING Conference!

(Kitty) I just got back from Austin, Texas (where I wish I'd had more time to look around - beautiful place). My friends Lauraine and Bonnie and I went to a writer's conference by Donald Maass called the High Tension Workshop. It was perhaps the best writer's conference I've ever been to! You know how you go to a conference for either your business or one of your hobbies or interests and there is so much going on you can barely process it all? Not this time. At this conference we studied one thing for four days! By the time we left, we really knew what we were talking about when it came to tension in novels. My brain was so tired I had to take a long nap after I got off the plane! LOL!

In other news, John and I are eagerly pursuing our marathon training. Yesterday morning, and then again this morning, I broke my personal best records for speed over a 2-mile run! Woo-hooo! By the end of May, we'll have completed our "Couch to 5K" training. On Sunday, May 25 (Memorial Day weekend), we will be running our first race! It's a 5K - about 3 miles - and we're feeling very good about it. Only six more months until we run our first half marathon at the Pasadena Marathon! We'll tell you all about it as things progress!

P.S. If you haven't seen the movie Iron Man, you've got to go! It's awesome!!

Kitty has her motorcycle license!

Kitty just called me from outside the DMV and told me she passed her written motorcycle DMV test! She will have her official motorcycle license in a couple of weeks! A few of you knew that Kitty took the motorcycle course a couple of weeks ago and passed with flying colors. She called the DMV earlier this week and made an appointment to take the written test early this morning. She got the maximum allowed number wrong (you only allowed 4 wrong on the test,) but passed! We won't be rushing out to buy her a motorcycle yet, she will be sharing my bike when I don't drive it to work.
Don't worry, pictures of Kitty on my bike will be hitting the web as soon as possible!

Again baby, CONGRATULATIONS!