First is the support of friends. I’ve made a few friends who want to join me in races and training and for that I am very grateful. Your encouragement has been so valuable to me.

Second is my high energy fool of a dog. Cooper needs the exercise and can be quite “vocal” about his need for speed.

Third is the tracking I’ve been doing. There are several internet resources I have found that have helped me keep track of my training and keep me motivated to keep going further and faster. Here’s a few of the sites I’ve been using lately.

1. SparkPeople - This is pretty much a diet and exercise community. It has food, weight and exercise tracking programs as well as wonderful support communities, diet and exercise plans and plenty of hints and tips.
2. RunningAhead – I find this to be a very powerful program. You can modify it to include pretty much any sport in any category you would like. So you could ad a horseback riding category and have sub-categories for Cross-Country, Jumping and Dressage. It’s a little hard to start off with, but I love it now that I know how to use it. The reports section is great.
3. Active.com – I think an important part of staying motivated is having fitness goals. This is why I keep signing up for small races. I mostly use Active to find races to look forward to, but they have lots of training tips and articles too.
4. CoolRunning.com – Another site with excellent race info. They are the originators of the Couch-To-5K running plan. An excellent training plan if you’ve never run before.

No matter what you believe in, I would like to extend my wishes for a wonderful and happy holiday season.

And I’m posting this on Christmas Eve because it was traditionally when we celebrated Christmas when I was a kid.

So I’ve got a few more posts queued up on this site, but after Christmas I will be posting exclusively to BlondePoodle.com. Please update your bookmarks, feeds, memories etc to that website.

I’ll probably eventually redirect this site to blondepoodle.com but I need to take the time to do that.

Looking forward to getting back into the habit of blogging!

When we brought them in, we had to put them into down stays so that they wouldn’t damage anything. Well Cooper’s idea of a good location to do a down stay was glued right up to Cinder. I think Cinder was a little embarrassed to be seen with a pup with a funny haircut wearing clothes.

Now two months later, I’m running 6 mile training runs. I still have a lot to go to be even considered a recreational athlete, but I’m making progress.

I’ve even been racing a bit. I never raced other than elementary and middle school track and field and cross country. So I’m finding my goals easier to find. It’s not like rowing where I feel a need to return to personal records. Every distance run is a personal record because I never kept tabs when I ran to cross train in college.

My first 5k that mattered was the sunapee turkey trot on Thanksgiving day. Jes joined me for a killer course. I would like to apologize to Jes yet again for the hill climb within the first 1/4 mile, I had no idea. I managed to run the whole distance and finished in just over 10 minute miles.

So when I wanted to visit my parents in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, I felt a need to find a race and bring my brother along. So I actually planned my trip home on the weekend of the Buffalo Freezer 5k this last Sunday.

Costumes were encouraged so my brother wore a set of flannel pajamas with scotty dogs I bought him the day before. And my little brother actually stuck with me while I ran 9 minute miles for more than half the race. I eventually was fed up of a slapfooted runner in front of me so I took off.

I was very proud of myself when I finished the race in just under 9 minute miles. I was very proud of Mike for finishing in under 30 minutes on his very first running race ever that he hadn’t even trained for.

Mike did get a fair bit of attention for his running attire. He kept being recognized and/or cheered on as “pajama man”.

Cooper was so upset with me for having left him behind while I ran, but he was relatively well behaved as a spectator with my parents.

After a lunch with my family I drove straight across New York and Massachusetts to find myself back home. But I was certainly glad to have taken the time and energy to get some exercise in before that long trip.

I’m also hoping to move the blog to a new domain eventually. I don’t really want my town’s name in the title anymore because it’s a small town with a very uncommon name.

So hopefully soon, parts of my life will calm down and I’ll be able to post about my adventures.  Because despite all the drama, the stress and the uncertainty I still try to live my life and have a good time when I can.

In the meantime my husband wrote up a trip report for the trip he did that I posted pictures of in my Wordless Wednesday last week.  So please feel free to visit his rarely updated blog to get the climber’s perspective on the trip.

I first raced the Charles in my first year of rowing in 1998. It was also the only time I was in a crew that won it’s event. I raced two more times in high school, all four years of college and did three stints in the alumni boats for Northeastern. I raced 10 years in a row. I earned 4 medals in that race. And I would have gladly raced another ten years in a row.  But I knew that there was a bigger interest in the Alumni boat this year. So when the e-mail went out asking who wanted to row, I responded that I would love to row but if the interest was great enough, I would gladly bow out and be a cheerleader. And there was enough interest. Two full eights worth of interest. So for the first year ever, I was a spectator.

Being a spectator means that I could take pictures of past teammates heading out to race. It wasn’t bad, but I don’t plan on volunteering to bow out next year just yet.

The bow four (people furthest away from the coxwain, the girl who steers, in the boat) and stern four weren’t exactly coordinated in their pictures.

This is Kelly, she was my double partner for a long time. I once terrified her by calling her “Babe” in a really deep voice in the middle of a race. This was also the race in which we crashed a boat that didn’t belong to us into a men’s boat that we shouldn’t have been able to catch up to.