Rest

5 April

Rest
------------------------------------------------------
Rest--Getting ready for the thesis defense which meant: Costco, Target, BX, grocery store! The key to an awesome oral defense is to distract them with delicious food. They LOVED Joan's chocolate toffee matzah!

Rest

4 April

Rest
------------------------------------------------------
Rest--Joan and I wandered around downtown DC for a while: Freer Gallery, Native American Museum, Botanic Garden, Postal Museum. In the PM we had boba and watched Mean Girls.

Rest

3 April

Rest
------------------------------------------------------
Rest--Read Torah in the AM at services, prepared ALL DAY with Joan for the second night seder at my apartment... with NO water! Yes, we're that good. And we were panicking. But everything turned out ok. We weren't tired of matzah, the taste of freedom, just yet.

Rest

2 April

Rest
------------------------------------------------------
Rest--The entire day was spent preparing for Passover! And one of my best friends Joan came from South Dakota to visit!!! This was the beginning to a loooooong week...

Run

1 April

.

Run: Cherry Blossom 10 Mile Run

------------------------------------------------------

Run--1:13:12 total time, 7:19 total pace. Frustrated is a good word for how I feel about this race. I just started way too far in the back of my corral. BUT it was GREAT to meet up with a fellow MCRRC runner and blogger! Give him a huge shout-out!

.

Lessons from the Cherry Blossom 10 Mile Run

1) If the corral is huge (i.e. 4000 people), start at the FRONT

2) Assume people are too stupid to seed themselves in the corral (including myself)

3) Being patient really isn't efficient for a 10 mile race--too short of a distance

4) It's really, really, really hard to make up time in a 10 mile race

5) Eat more for breakfast

6) Bring an extra shirt for after the race--brrrr!

7) If you start too far back, you'll be passing people continuously for 8 miles in a 10 mile race

.

Splits
7:59

7:35

8:06 (1.1 mi, 5K split 23:42)

6:24 (0.9 mi)

7:09

7:10

1:29 (0.2 mi, 10K split 45:56)

5:59 (0.8 mi or 7:28 mi, not sure why this mile was slow)

7:04

7:08

7:03

Get psyched for the race!

Run

31 March

Run: 2+ mi
------------------------------------------------------
Run--A short prep for the race the next morning. Strides make a WORLD of difference. It feels like all the kinks are worked out of my entire body when I do strides all over the place. It's beautiful.

Rest

30 March

Rest
------------------------------------------------------
Rest--Spent the day working on the thesis and prepping for Pesach! Ritual for Sunday race: rest on Friday, short run on Saturday, RACE on Sunday! Yessssss!

Run

29 March

Run: 3.2 mi
------------------------------------------------------
Run--The most beautiful run of the year so far. A nice short ditty through Bethesda in the late afternoon. Wow, I have never experienced more beautiful weather in my life. Perhaps Boston will be this beautiful??

Thesis--Almost done! A week from Friday, and grad school is OVER! I am 20 miles into my marathon of grad school. I've trained for this. The last 10K is the best part of the race.

Run

28 March

Run: 7.25 mi
------------------------------------------------------
Run--Wed night track workout with MCRRC. I'm stupid and had a big lunch and I didn't drink nearly enough. My workout was 8 x 400m at 5K pace (w/ 400m recovery). Not a huge confidence builder for the 10 miler this weekend...

Splits (in sec)
86
91
90
90
87
93
92
86

Ouch... Next time I do this workout, they will all be 86 seconds or faster!

Bike

27 March

Bike: 19 mi (15 mph)
------------------------------------------------------
Bike--Longer ride out on LUCKY. Hopefully made a deposit into the bank of karma when I gave a nice man with a flat one of my spare tubes. I am totally itching to do a tri!!!

Bike

26 March

Bike: 7 mi (30 min)
------------------------------------------------------
Bike--First outdoor ride on LUCKY this season! Didn't have much time, so I just rode around the neighborhood. The legs are STRONG! Yay for trainer workouts!

Run

25 March

Run: 9.5 mi
------------------------------------------------------
Run--Again, I just wanted my body to remember what it's like to run, and today was MUCH better than yesterday! Total time 1:14:46, total pace 7:52. Must keep sucking down liquids! I am going to CRUSH the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler next week!!!

Pesach--Passover starts on 2 April.

Friend--Joan is coming to visit on 2 April.

Thesis--Oral defense on 5 April. Yikes. Grad school will be OVER!

Birthday--9 April, quarter century in age. Old lady.

Test--Physical Fitness Test on 12 April (moving up an age group = slower times!)

Boston Marathon-- 16 April.

Whew.

Run

24 March

Run: 5.4 mi
------------------------------------------------------
Run--The purpose of this run was for my legs to remember what it's like to run. My legs remembered. My lungs and heart apparently forgot. Not to mention I am probably still only 20% water at this point. That trip dried my body out. I had to walk a bunch of times, and I stopped at a playground to swing on the swings for about a half hour or so, perfect for Shabbat!

Rest

23 March

Rest
------------------------------------------------------
Rest--I returned home sometime on Friday, which didn't leave much time for Shabbat prep. I was soooooooooooooooo tired from the trip, which didn't help my internal clock! I cannot wait to go back to Israel (and take Colin). Working the soil, talking with our Jewish community across the ocean, and leaving a piece of ourselves in our spiritual homeland will forever leave an imprint in my heart.

Rest

22 March

Rest
------------------------------------------------------
Rest--Woke up ridiculously early to catch our flight back to the good ol' US of A. I wasn't sure if we'd make it home that day due to the airport strike earlier. Our flight out of Israel was fine; the flights out of JFK in NYC were ridiculously late and/or cancelled. Go figure! It didn't matter to me. I went to Israel!

X-Train

21 March

X-Train: Hauling trees (4 hrs)

------------------------------------------------------

X-train--We went to a different part of the forest where we saw even more burnt trees, which we promptly cut down. (Hebrew lesson: l'horit = cut down, l'hashir = save it!) Then we performed skits at the JNF kibbutz (funniest part of the ENTIRE trip). Afterward, we headed back toward Jerusalem to wrap up our trip.

Greg (triathlete!!) covered in forest soot and ash

Cutting down burnt trees, teamwork in action

Most beautiful, amazing city in the world--Jerusalem

Standing on the Promenade in Jerusalem on our last night

Trying to fulfill my dream of being the first white, Jewish rapper military officer future rabbi from South Dakota

Bike

20 March

Bike: 5 mi(?)

------------------------------------------------------

Trip--Tour of the northern border, painting bomb shelters in a moshav near Malkiya, bike tour of the Hula Valley, then fun at a pub Pitriya at Kibbutz Dan! Dancing is so fun!

On the Lebanon border

Hisbollah watches Israel from the top of the hill

Security fence on the border

Alien tree!!!

Who is awesome? We are!

We rode this 7-person bicycle

Sunset in the Hula Valley

X-Train

19 March

X-Train: Hauling trees (7+ hr)

------------------------------------------------------

X-train--Most exhausting day of the trip, as we chopped down trees in the Birya Forest that had been burned by the katusha rockets from the war last summer. I have never seen so many dedicated people who poured their entire heart, soul, and being into such work. At the end of the day, I could faithfully say I could not have worked any harder. My efforts and labor made Eretz Yisrael a better, more beautiful place. Triathlon definitely helped prepare me for the work!!! After working, we visited an old synagogue from the year 440 CE and an Army base in the north. We stayed at Kibbutz Malkiya right on the northern border with Lebanon.

Flora and Steph during a break

The "after" picture of the Birya Forest

HUGE pile of dead trees we chopped down, a few miles along the road

"Forest-made" pita on a weird shield burning trees!

My Israeli military brethren

X-Train

18 March

X-Train: Hauling trees

------------------------------------------------------

X-Train--We went to Modi'in to plant some trees (can't go on a JNF trip without planting some trees!). Fledgling town not too far outside of Jerusalem, and we did our part to help them in a small way. Then we went to the Birya Forest in the north to do some MAJOR forestry, which would become our primary project for the week.

JNF Rules!

The perfect pine tree

We did this for 4 hours on this day

Rest

17 March

Rest

------------------------------------------------------

Rest--Shabbat in Jerusalem. No better place in the world to be. Perfectly magical!

Ben Yehuda Street in a rain jacket

Whoa, Shwarma and a shady hostel in Jerusalem!