I felt like something new, so I moved my entire blog to : www.oxidaisy.wordpress.com
Since I don’t have that many regular readers (read: none as far as I know), it really doesn’t matter where I write my blog. Wordpress is supposed to be fun and easy to use, so we’ll see what happens. I can always move back haha.
I am still working on making the new blog look pretty, so nevermind the not-very-me-ish header etc.
Thank you Blogger for opening the world of blogging to me!
Good evening everyone! How are you enjoying your weekend? I am trying to make it as productive as I can. Wednesday and Thursday were regular work days for me, but I took Friday off, because my brother was getting the keys to his first own home. That’s right, my little brother bought his own apartment! He asked me to accompany him to the notary where the house was officially put on his name and the keys were exchanged. after that we went to check out his house and take measurements for some stuff. It is a really nice apartment and I am positive that he will enjoy it. Now my parents get to suffer from empty nest syndrome, because my brother was the last one leaving home. But my mom said it was worse when my sister and I both left at the same time (my sister for college and I for a student exchange year and to college directly after that), so I guess they will be fine. In the evening we went out for dinner to celebrate. We went to a buffet restaurant where they have everything in buffet-style, from starters to deserts. AND, it is very good! Quite a lot of wine was consumed as well.
Therefore I kicked myself out of bed the next morning and shove my bootay in the car to go to the gym to attend my first spinning class in months! Man, o man, it was tough! Count the following factors in:
- The Saturday class is one of the toughest spinning classes
- It is a morning class and I perform better at night
- I didn’t eat well during the previous day and then had a HUGE dinner with a lot of not so super healthy foods
- I drank way too much (for me, at least)
- Though I do enough aerobic exercise, I haven’t been to spinning class for a long time.
And it is no wonder I looked and felt like this after class:
But after a shower and a Green Monster I was feeling great again! We did groceries and then I worked for most of the afternoon. We had pizza for dinner (this week really cannot get a lot worst healthy eating-wise) and I am left to enjoy my evening. The Boyfriend has his last night shift tonight and then his schedule changes to day shifts only, so after tonight there will be no more sleeping alone for a while, yay!
Have a great evening!
Hello everyone! Sorry for having fallen of the earth. I am going through some changes in my life here and somehow the urge and time to blog just disappeared. But I am back! I have decided that I want to have more frequent shorter posts. They are easier to make and easier to read, so I guess it is a win-win (assuming somebody is actually reading my ‘blabbings’.
So, what has been on my mind?
First of all: I have a new job! Somehow, over the course of a week the head of the department I have my desk at (I work there but I am not employed there) told me he was going to suggest my name to another professor looking for a post-doc if I wanted him to do so. Of course I did! After receiving some additional information I found out that the job was actually pretty cool: doing research on an awesome topic AND being kind of an important factor in the whole thing (making decisions etc haha) ! So, I went for a getting-acquainted-talk kind of interview and after 30 min was told that I had the job. The only thing is that I am starting this week already and I still have my PhD to finish as well. This means that I am seriously a busy bee now. To keep my cool a bit (and stay awake during the whole process) I got this:
This would be a Nespresso-cup. You know, the George Clooney kind (dear Google, how many hits will this get me? haha). I was literally getting sick of the disgusting liquid that is supposed to be coffee from our coffee machine that I finally took the time to go downtown to the special Nespresso store (sure, it is totally logical and it makes sense to not sell these things in the supermarket) to get some cups for the Nespresso machine that someone put there. I guess it is a smart idea to just bring your coffee machine to work since some of us practically live there. It’s of better use there. So I am one happy and awake camper now!
Next thing on my mind:
Yes, my friends, Fall has arrived! I am starting to like fall. Since I started working out more, I am not so freaking cold anymore anytime the temperature drops below 15C. Now I really enjoy the colors, the crisp air (goodbye hay fever, see you next season!) and dark cozy evenings curled up on the couch with a blanket. But there are still things I don’t like of course. Rain, first-day-your-car-is-frozen-in-the-morning, anyone? And I notice that my body really reacts to whole seasonal changes. Tiresome. But we went for a walk in the woods the other day and it was lovely!
And a last thing:
Yes, I finally gave in and bought myself some running tights. I like them a lot! They are warm (even a little bit too warm for a sunny 8C) and they are tight so nothing is moving when you are running.
Okay, gonna go now and enjoy a cup of tea and a book before I am off to bed.
And I am back with another race recap! Just over a week ago I participated in the Posbankloop, a tough race. The official course is 15k and it’s known to be very hard. They also have a 6k route, which I did. The course goes uphill for the first half, ending in a, for the Netherlands, nasty hill: 650 upwards with an average incline of 7%. From then it is mainly downhill to the finish. It is a beautiful course, with a big part going through the forest.
At first I did not want to participate, because it is 20% longer than what I train for and I do not practice a lot of hills, even though I should. But after going on a 9k (!) training run with a few friends they convinced me to sign up. I decided just to participate for fun and see what would happen.
After warming up my trusty race buddy and me were all excited to get going:
Lining up at the start:
It really was a hard course. Because we were going uphill, though almost unnoticeably, it was hard to find your rhythm and I kept wondering why I was feeling so out of breath already.
Going up that horrible hill. Really it was like being in hell, man it was tough!
That hill was also a race on its own. It was timed separately and there were prices for the fastest people on just that hill. I did the 650m in 3.57min. At least it was faster than walking. After this, it was downhill and I was able to catch my breath a bit. To my surprise the Boyfriend and my brother showed up right after the evil hill to support me. They then raced back to the finish to encourage me there.
Almost there:
My finish shot. I was looking so angry! I remember feeling only determination. I put on my serious face, made wrists with my hands and just kept running repeating a mantra: must pass the old lady. must pass the old lady. There was a grey-haired lady running in front of me and I gave it all to pass her, and I did!
My time was 38.47 min. I aimed for a sub 40min race, so goal accomplished! I am very proud of this achievement, I couldn’t have done better that day. I spread my energy across the course and finished going all out. AND it was my longest race ever!
I did this race just 2 weeks after the last one, that was also a reason why I didn’t want to do it at first. But I am glad I did. I already signed up for my next race on October 31th, and it’s going to be special. So stay tuned !
I want to change the format of my blog a little bit. I would really like to post more about day to day stuff going on and I am currently figuring out how to do that, because nowhere in the world am I going to have the time to do this the way I would most like to do that.
Ok, I am off I have two birthdays to attend tonight and I still need to have dinner. Bye!
So, ladies and gentlemen, I did another race a while ago. I am a bit behind on blogging about my life, because the vacation posts took so much time to make. It was a fun trip down memory lane though!
A few weeks ago I did the Bridge to Bridge run in my home town. As the name of the race says, you run across two bridges during your run. My distance, 5k was the shortest and the course was basically, go over bridge 1, run across a dyke towards bridge 2, cross bridge 2, do a victory lap across downtown and finish.
Feeling all excited before the race. That is bridge 1 in the background:
Here’s how it really went: Go to bridge 1, while trying not to get run over by other competitors. The start and first k were so busy that we were all tripping over each other. I almost ran into a motor bike that was parked somewhere. In all sharp corners everybody would get stuck and forced to walk. Not so good, that organization. Here’s the start:
We were way in the back and the whole crowd just took off into narrow streets. But okay, I wasn’t running it to set a PR (ok, I was, but my main goal was to finish in 1 piece without the injuries I had been feeling coming up). Then we crossed bridge 1. It was pretty doable and I finally got into some sort of rhythm while I was jumping back and forth to pass people who decided walking would be much nicer. Nothing against walking during a race, but please move to the side if you do so!
When we ran across the dyke, things got better and I was feeling ok. After 3k it was time to go up bridge 2. They made a little hairpin curve before going uphill which completely took me out of my pace because the crowdedness forced me to walk. But, I didn’t let that bother me and kept going. It was a real struggle! Bridge 2 is much taller than bridge 1! Finally coming off bridge 2 after 4k:
From here it was all downhill, literally and metaphorically speaking. I was feeling really tired but was hoping to push through to the finish, 1k to go! Until this point the three of us had run together. But Leonie decided to turn her pace up a notch from there, go Leonie! Jolanda and I struggled along until I got sharp stitched in my stomach. Those evil stitched gave me hard time standing up right, let alone run. So I took a 30sec walking break. The last 400m I started running again.
On my way towards the finish. My stitches were still there but I felt ok enough to squeeze out a print-like running.
The finish was actually almost 100m further than I thought it was. I was feeling só out breath I thought I was going to die! I didn’t cross the finish with a smile but with a groan, hahaha
Right after the finish, I felt awful and could barely stand:
After catching my breath, I felt much better:
Bahaha! I was totally exhausted, but whatever. I had fun and managed to run the race pain-free (aside from the stitches). My time was 30.18 min. So no PR for me, sadly. Jolanda did set a PR AND finished under 30 minutes. Which means that if I didn’t have those annoying stitches, I would have run a sub 30min race! She was in much better shape than I was at the finish line:
I am just going to have to try again. Maybe next time I will reach my goal. I already did another race which I will talk to you about soon. It was my longest race ever.
What is the toughest part of a race for you?
