The Time I Became An Artist for a Night

A few weeks ago, my friend Lacey IMed me.

“I’m thinking of doing a painting class for my birthday–is that weird?”

“NO! That sounds like so much fun.”

Something other than dinner and drinks for a birthday? Sign me up! (To give credit where credit’s due, I think Lacey might have read Casey’s post about the class.)

And so I did sign myself up.

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Before I continue, let’s keep in mind my lack of artistic ability. When I was little, I told my parents I wanted to be a writer and illustrator when I grew up.

By the time I was six or so, I realized I was going to have to have someone else illustrate my book. (At that time, I obviously wanted to be a children’s book author, since, what else would a six year old think they could write?) By middle school, I realized that while I was in the A-track academic classes, that wasn’t going to apply to art. Or music. I was going to have to stick to the words.

So walking into this class the other night, nearly 30, I wondered how the hell I was going to paint something I’d be happy to bring home.

We were provided with three brushes, 10 paint colors and the blank canvas.

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And Lacey provided us with champagne in a can.

We started with painting the right of the canvas the deep blue, and then moved left with lighter blues.

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We then added some white lines for what would eventually become the sun…

…and then I stopped taking pictures, but the instructor guided us through layering the yellow on top, then painting on small orbs that would turn into poppies and adding their stems…

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Finished product! Picasso, I am not, but I will hang this on my wall.

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Everyone’s finished products.

What’s the most interesting way you’ve ever celebrated a birthday? (Yours or someone else’s.) Do you have any artistic talent, or do you stick to the words, too?

MCM Training Week 5: Lessons in Flexibility

Along with becoming the kind of person who works out in the morning, I became the kind of person who can function during the week on six hours of sleep sometimes.

In the past, if it looked like a workout would compromise my eight hours of snooze time, I snoozed on the workout. Well, there’s no time for snoozing when you have an aggressive marathon goal to pursue, and so I’ve sacrificed blogging in favor of sleep. Hey, the less I blog, the more I have to blog about, right?

So let’s talk about my Week 5 of marathon training.

I give it a solid A-.

On paper, it was great. I got in every single mile, my five scheduled runs, a session with my new trainer and learned how to be flexible in my training.

Mentally, it wasn’t the best. Sticking 100% to my mileage meant a bit of a jump from previous weeks, and that definitely showed in my pace and how easy my runs felt. (Spoiler: not easy.)

Tuesday: Personal training session with Jaz + 4-mile run. My quads and glutes were SHOT from the training session, but they loosened up as I shuffled along.

Wednesday: I had 7 miles of hills on my schedule, but for myriad reasons–starting late, not wanting to completely drench the heart monitor in sweat, not wanting to go back up to the park–I did 5 miles tempo instead.

Thursday: Rest day on my plan, which is awesome, because I have an early meeting every Thursday.

Friday: My schedule called for 4 miles, with 2 at marathon goal pace, which is a scary 9:09. How the hell am I going to do that for 26.2 miles? I now completely understand the idea of MGP runs–it’s pretty hard to hold one pace consistently, but training my body to know what 9:09 feels like will help when I’m trying to stay around that pace for three hours and fifty-nine minutes. As I looked at my Garmin, the pace for the MGP miles kept bouncing anywhere between 8:40 and 9:20. So I have no idea what MGP feels like yet. I was also sick to my stomach for whatever reason and had to stop at the awesome Chelsea Piers bathroom both before and after those two miles. I don’t envy Ali’s life.

Saturday: Woke up too late, decided to swap my long run with Sunday’s run and did six. I had four on the schedule, but I did two miles to make up for Wednesday’s run. It was hot and I felt sluggish the entire time.

Sunday: 13 miles done in sunny, hilly Franklin Lakes, NJ. As Kimra and I discussed, running in a place you don’t usually run in requires a bit more alertness to figure out where to turn and face whatever changes in terrain may come, so I never really got “in the zone.” Unless that zone was at CVS and Starbucks, where I stopped to get water (at mile 4 and then at mile 11.) My pace (10:04) was a bit slower than it had been on previous runs, but it was hot and hilly, so that makes sense, frustrating as it may be.

So, this week’s lessons learned: even though sometimes you really need to sleep in (Saturday), don’t do it both days if you don’t want your runs to suck in the summer; strength training is good for you; flexibility is key in marathon training if you want to get all your damn miles in. That’s both the legs-that-aren’t-as-tight-as-rubber-bands flexibility and the juggling-things-around flexibility.

How is your training going? How do you fit your training in around a busy schedule?