Monday Mario

What are you looking at? Never seen a bunny on a box before?

Pride Rock, take two. Not as good of a pose as the first one, but a much better "rock" choice.

Everyone always comments on how white Mario keeps the bottom of his feet. Here is Mr. OCD in action:

A clean bunny's work is never done.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanks, everyone for the encouraging comments and advice after my last post. My legs have been coming back and I had a really good 9 miler with some speed work this week that has me feeling better. I may still readjust my January goals, but am not really thinking about that too much at this point.

This morning Boyfriend and I got up to run the Turkey Trail Trot in Golden Gate Park. I figured we'd run to the race and back from home to add on some extra distance. The race itself was 5 miles and though I haven't downloaded the Garmin data, we probably ran 8.25 miles total. We kept joking that we had "Pulled a Dean" (of Dean Karnazes fame, an ultrarunner who often runs a hundred miles to the start of the race or sometimes runs a hundred miles home from the finish -- or both). Granted our "Dean" was only an extra 1.6 miles both ways, but whatever.

I volunteered at this race a couple of years ago and this was the first time I was running. The majority of the race is on trails or grass which was really challenging for me. I was really afraid I would twist an ankle. I kept giving mad props to cross-country runners who clearly have more mettle than I do. We stopped to get photo-ops with the Turkey both during and after the race.

The Turkey

The Bay Area is in a bit of a "cold snap" which is a real treat for this former East coast runner. There was even frost on the grass this morning!

Bad photo, but you can see the frost on the grass.

We were taking things really easy what with our "Dean," the terrain, and my having a 16 mile run tomorrow. Boyfriend kept gobbling at other runners and it was a lot of fun.

The best part of this race is the shirts. Every year they come up with a new graphic and word.

I had wanted to knit one of these snazzy hats for the race:

Image pulled from the awesome knit/crochet site, Ravelry

But I didn't have quite the right color yarn. I had some dark brown yarn and thought maybe I'd just make the legs and pin them onto my running hat. But people thought it sort of defeated the effect and would make it hard to tell what I was trying to do. So I scrapped that idea. Maybe next year. There were a few people with cool Turkey hats at the race:

A hand knit one would have been cooler!

So in the end I gave Mario the one leg I had knit to use as a prop to wish all of you a very Happy Thanksgiving!! I'm so grateful for all of you that I've either met through this blog or feel like we've already met. I hope you're all having a great holiday. The Stove Top stuffing just hit the stove so I am pretty happy over here!

You do know I'm vegan, right?

Running Update

I apologize for the lack of running updates over here. Truth be told, my body has been in a major running funk the last two months. It is a strange disconnect because my mind is still raring to go with all of the races I have coming up.

It isn't a secret that the last three marathons were hard. After getting my speed honed for Santa Rosa in August I fully expected the most recent marathons to finish up in the 4:30 time zone. Instead my times drifted into the 4:40+ and I suffered a bit of marathon burnout at the time.

Recovery after Humboldt was slow and tedious. I took an entire week off, a second week of easy short runs, a third week of marathon training plan mileage with no intensity, and then the fourth week tried to follow the program. My legs have been trying to keep up but have been slow to come around.

Just last week I was getting sort of down about how my paces have been lately. But I stopped and realized that in the last month from that day I had run two marathons. Of course my legs were going to be a little off. I keep trying to preach patience to myself but have been getting a little down. This has definitely been the most difficult recovery period of the year. Perhaps a sign of the accumulated fatigue over the last 12 months.

There is still a bit of time before the Texas Marathon on Jan 1, but I am not feeling as PR-chasing as I thought I might at this point. My paces for all types of runs are 10-20 seconds slower than they were when I was Santa Rosa training.

While I'd love to be in shape for a good effort in January I am not opposed to taking the fun approach, either. I'm going to keep on training over here, though. Every week I get a little more zip back and we'll see how this shapes up.

Monday Mario

Lettuce Tongue!

Wednesday Wings

Wings having her bucket of grain.

My pal, Cliff, has some good ideas and some not so good ideas (read his comment on the last "Monday Mario"). He requested "Wednesday Wings" a while back and I promptly shot him down. This will not be a regular thing since I rarely take my camera out to the stable with me. But she is a love of a horse and if I snap photos I'll share them.

It hasn't gone unnoticed that I've done a solid month of just "Monday Marios." While it is obvious Mario has stolen this blog's show, I originally started it as a running blog and I do plan to get back to that channel. So yes, I have been running quite a bit and will have lots to say about it soon.

Monday Mario

Mario smooshes his face through the bars to get pets on his own.

I may or may not have pulled his ears through to up the cute factor.

Monday Mario

I saw Mario chewing on a huge piece of hay last night and had to capture it on video.

Bunny mastication = Squee!

Sorry about the poor video quality as the lights were down pretty low.

Monday Mario

Audrey was over a few weeks ago and commented that she was so surprised that Mario had furry feet. A few days later Boyfriend (who has lived with Mario for years) also commented, "Wow! Rabbits have fur on the bottom of their feet?!" And then Audrey also requested a picture of said furry feet.

So this is for all you non-rabbit owners:

Rabbits don't have pads on the bottom of their paws. Just fur. Which is why it is so hilarious to see a bunny navigate hardwood floors.

And now you know.