Christmas, Christmas Time is Here

  I mean, sure, it's like, 60 degrees out, there's barely any lights around the neighborhood, and our tree is a little bit of a reject, but still, it's Christmastime.  That means it's almost Christmas vacation, which means it's almost time for the 20 miler.  Because what better use of vacation time than to run 20 miles.  There's not much else happening in the running world right now, but I do need to order more Tailwind stat.  Unrelated to anything happening here, I'm watching last weeks Saturday Night Live and I really have to say, Ryan Gosling is not a great live actor.  He's funny enough, but he can't keep it together very well.  But, more than I could do, so way to go you.  Plus, I suppose if you look like Ryan Gosling, you don't necessarily need to be good at what you're doing, you just have to look it.
Back to running now, I took a week off because I thought I had a broken toe.  Upon further review, it may have just been super bruised, but I don't really know.  It hurt for a while and was all purple but now it's just kind of red and doesn't hurt anymore.  So, back to running like nothing happened on that front.  I ran 5 today at an 8:04 pace and no water.  I clearly made a judgement error on that one, but it worked out fine.  I'd also like to take a moment to note how hard it is to keep a sentence flowing with Weekend Update on in the background.
Let's see, so aside from running, I've been sort of feeling a little bored of my workouts.  Here's the thing.  I'm Facebook friends with a lot of people that go to the boxing club and I constantly see updates about how hard the workout was.  Yet, I don't really feel like the workouts are that hard whenever I'm there.  Maybe it's because the workouts have to be beginner ready and I'm really past that stage.  Or maybe it's because I've spent so much time running that the short, hour long classes, just aren't enough.  Whatever the reason is, I figured that I needed to get some answers/results.  Doing what any good athlete would do, I went to the trainers and asked what I should be doing differently to get better results.  Smart move, really.  This was my answer: Climb the rope 3 times, run a fast mile before class, and add push-ups to the mountain climbers.  So, like any good athlete, I did that.  The rope climb was definitely the hardest, but I made it up.  Turns out that wasn't enough though.  Instead of doing a first round, I got bombarded by trainers and was told to do push-ups for 3 minutes instead of doing the actual round.  That was a lot of fun.  Until I couldn't do push-ups anymore and then still had to do them during the mountain climber active rest later in the class.  Today, after I ran 5 miles I was going to do uphill/sprint repeats on the treadmill.  Unfortunately, both treadmills were being utilized during the time I had, so I was instructed to do the row machine for 5 minutes instead.  Way harder than I thought it was.  Seriously, have you ever used a rowing machine and tried to keep it in the 2:00/500m range for 5 minutes? I have no idea what that means, but it was super hard.  I actually never got it down to 2:00, but I managed to hold it steady at 2:30, so I figured that was close enough.  Then I did a mile of uphills and was basically dead, so I wrapped it up and left.  But, I have to say, after all that, it was definitely worth it.  I actually feel like I did something again.  My legs are little tight, my arms are sore, and I have a giant blister on my left palm. A perfect ending.
In case you're wondering, I haven't run any new races lately, and probably won't run any before Louisiana, so you'll just have to put up with my mess of poorly flowing paragraphs and not very informative running information until then.  I'm sure I'll have a great update after Louisiana but sadly, probably not 26 selfies this time.  Don't be too disappointed, I just really want to get in under that 4:00 mark, and I don't think the selfies helped.  While you're waiting patiently for new running information though, enjoy some pictures from Winter Wonderland, the school's winter open house that held last night. It was a big hit.  And of course, I'm still taking donations for Morty.  As always, click here to donate

I was recruited to draw a Christmas theme at the Saugus Title.  For those of you reading this from out of state, or even out of the North Shore, there used to be a mini-golf course right down the street on Rt 1 that had a giant orange dinosaur visible to people driving by.  The orange dinosaur is well known around these parts, so if you're from here, it's kind of funny. If you're not, it probably doesn't make a lot of sense.  Don't worry, my January board will be better, if I'm still allowed to do it!

Got myself the Harry Potter coloring book and I love it.  Plus I made that little canvas, just because

Last weekend while I was babysitting I had to come up with a creative way to move the Elf on the Shelf.  Since the little girl I was watching wrote a letter to Santa, I made the elf a mail-box out of an empty Kleenex box. Of course I had to decorate the box to make it more Christmas friendly.

Boxing selfie with the other Ali and Brian.  

Santaaaaaa!

I feel like through this picture, you can really tell how well squats work. 

Our little Christmas tree.  The Nexus really does take good pictures for a phone.

Oh look, the end of May

I've been  little busy, so I let this fall to the wayside.  Nothing too much more exciting has happened since we bought the house anyways.  Track is over, which really helps with the whole being busy aspect.  It was fun, but I'm glad to have some time to do other stuff. Running has been going well, I signed up for the Chicago marathon, so I'll be working on that now.  I'm going to try and get my time down to BQ standards, but we'll see how that actually ends up going.  Right now it seems like a long and crazy road.  However, I did do the Run to Remember half marathon on Sunday and finished in 1:49.  That's a new PR and it gives me a little bit of hope that I can actually make it to the BQ time eventually. Even if I did almost puke at the end of the race.  What counts is that I didn't though, so boom.  School is still going strong too, just under a month left until summer vacation.  But, I don't have a summer job, or any form of income for the next two months, so I'm not overly pumped about that.  Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of vacation, but I hate not getting paid.  So that's it in a neat little package.  Now, enjoy these billion pictures from the past month.

The Blue Angels were doing some sort of photo shoot over Boston Harbor today, and we happened to be at the Children's Museum on a field trip as it happened.

Cod-zilla boat ride

Run to Remember post race photo with some police.

BOOM. Suns out, guns out.

1:49. Two thumbs up.

New shoes for a new race

That's me

Our back walkway

Photo wall

10 Mile Tuesday

Wild Rover Series 2015 medals

Backyard

Backyard

Anniversary

Kitchen

Bedroom

So much room for activities!

Apparently I have a race on Sunday. We'll start there.  I signed up for the Wild Rover series again this year and didn't pay much attention to the dates.  I knew the first one was the weekend of Hyannis, and that the rest were the following weekends, but I didn't give it much thought.  Then they postponed the first one and I really forgot about the dates.  Until I got the email that it's Sunday.  Cool.  Don't get me wrong, it's only 4 miles, I'm ready to do it, I just don't particularly WANT to do it.  It's still fairly cold out and a lot snowy out.  Although the temperature for Sunday is looking pretty good, so that's a plus.  This will be my first run outside since the marathon though.  I think it's more the fact that the race is in Lowell, which is feeling kind of far at the moment.  At least it's a late start, 11:00 a.m., so I have plenty of time to get there.
Aside from the running, which is back on now that I don't have a choice, I just have miscellaneous subjects to talk about.  We'll start with motivation.  Usually I'm pretty good at going hard and fast during the 8 rounds of boxing, but I always, always get bored during abs and 9 times out of 10, don't put in my best effort.  Part of it is that it hurts and part of it is that looking at the lights on the ceiling is the most boring thing I can think of, outside of watching paint dry.  I got so sick and tired of looking at the ceiling and the black steel beams holding up the bag system that I decided to brighten up my little area.  Now, there's technically no assigned bags or anything like that, but generally the regulars have a favorite bag, myself included.  I've been using this bag for the past year or so now and it's really broken in to my specifications.  So when I go, this is my general area.  To brighten it up, I made some posters that I can look at while I'm doing abs.  This seemed like a good idea because it would distract me from the abs and maybe motivate the people around me too.  Plus, when I get bored with them, I can bring them to school and hang them up in the room to motivate the kids for MCAS. After all, it's all about reuseability.  Which is a word I just made up, so enjoy that.  I'll stick up some pictures of the posters after this next paragraph.
Speaking of MCAS, because that was the closest I could come to transitioning that paragraph smoothly, I've decided to offer tutoring services for MCAS/summer work.  Nothing fancy, but I figured I could help out the parents who want their students to get some extra help.  I'm also offering to teach the parents how to do Common Core math, which I feel is a service that should be utilized.  A lot of the math can be confusing if you're used to doing math the way we learned it in school, so this could help a lot of parents help their students! Right now I'm only really offering services on the North Shore area of Massachusetts.  However, I do have teacher friends in other areas, so if you want a tutor but don't live on the North Shore, feel free to let me know and I'll pass your information onto those teachers. For more information on my tutoring services, visit Gibbs Tutoring. You can see pictures of my classroom and watch a short video clip of a first grade class in action.

And now for those pictures! If you're interested in my posters, but not in my tutoring, you can always contact me about these.  I love to draw and would be open to drawing/making personalized posters, for a small fee.  *These particular posters are not for sale, they are for personal use*

The great Muhammed Ali.

This is actually my favorite, I really like the way Huntress came out. This was made almost completely with oil based sharpie pens and I really like the effect they made.

Hercules, Hercules!

Wonder Woman hanging out between the bags. 

And so starts the taper.

Today was my last long run before the Louisiana Marathon. I just love that sentence.  Except for the part that includes the word marathon, since I know I still have to do the ultimate long run. BUT, for now, I'm pumped.  Taper time is the best.  And the worst, because literally as soon as I stopped running I started panicking about all the different things that could go wrong in the next two - three weeks.  Figures.
Before my taper could officially begin though, I had to do the 20 miler.  Well, technically, the second 20 miler.  My first round of 20 was split up though, so this one counted more as the full 20.  Of course it was something that I didn't really WANT to do, but something I HAD to do.  Originally I planned on taking today as a rest day and running it tomorrow.  After seeing the weather report for both days though, I decided to scrap that plan and get it done today.  There's a 10 degree temperature difference, which might not seem like a lot, but trust me when I say there's a huge difference between running in 40 degrees and 30 degrees.  As you may be aware, my goal is to run the Louisiana marathon in 4 hours, or slightly under 4 if I'm feeling really awesome that day. In order to do this, I know there is a pace I have to keep and a way to fuel properly during the run.  So really today was my trial run.  I figured if I could do the 20 miles in 3 hours, then I could do the 26.2 in 4, giving myself an extra few minutes for those last 6 miles if necessary.  I am happy to say that after my run today I am 99% sure I can run it in 4 or less.  My 20 miler today clocked in at 2:56:04. That's right.  You saw that. UNDER THREE HOURS! With hills! I actually set new PRs for a 10K and a half marathon today. So, sure, I'm a little worried that maybe I over extended myself today and that I can't match that on marathon day.  On the other hand, I don't see why I can't match that.  It didn't feel like a mistake on my part.  I knew what pace I had to keep and I basically managed to hold around that pace for the entire run.  Sure I lost my running partner around mile 14.  And by lost I mean abandoned.  So, no man left behind clearly means nothing to me when it comes to smashing personal records.  I suppose that says something about me as a person but I really don't want to delve into that right now. By now I'm sure you're dying of curiosity to see my route. Don't worry, it's coming.  Be aware that I miscalculated though, so I had to walk/run an extra mile back to my car at the end.  Which is why the start and the finish are not quite next to each other.   Sure I COULD have run the last mile, but I just felt like that was pushing it.  So, here it is.

Besides this lovely run, I had a nice Christmas, in case you were wondering. We went to NYC for the night, just because we can. I love to look at the window displays and see the giant decorations. Plus the shops at Bryant Park are always good for a little trinket or gift if you want something different/locally made.  Of course all we got was some Max Brenner chocolate, which is neither different nor local, but it was so worth it.  Here are some pictures of NYC and some pictures of when we got back and spent time with our lovely puppies again. Oh, and some more Disney pictures I drew. Still can't get that princess face right. Oh well.  Enjoy it.

Stella hates the paparazzi.

The planet windows are Macy's, the library window was my favorite display at Lord and Taylor's.