Top of the day to ya

Twas a fine St. Patty's Day, lads and lassies, at the O'Jill's house today. Mr. Lucky Leprechaun came again last night and despite making our annual leprechaun trap, we were not able to catch him. He is sneaky - and fast! In true annual tradition, he didn't let us down by turning our milk green, our toilet water green, and even left a trail of green powdered sugar for french toast toppings this morning. Unfortunately, he did NOT leave us that heavy pot of gold; apparently my house is NOT at the end of the rainbow. Dangit. I sported my florescent green Park City Marathon shirt today and couldn't wait to get home from work and watch my favorite of all green traditions: watching Lord of the Dance on dvd. Ah, don't you be laughing, this is pure athleticism at it finest. We as runners would surely twist an ankle and be outta marathon commission but I seriously doubt any of us could get our heart rates up as high either. My kiddos used to watch this with me, but this year they all scurried when I put that puppy in. Hum....they're grounded! Well, since I was left alone with my own viewing pleasure, I at least did my 50 crunches Katie guilted me into followed by 50 (each leg, mind you!) glute pullbacks with my resistance band while watching. Yeah, I knocked off TWO (count them....one...TWO) of my goals for the week! I rock!!! I didn't get to watch then entire video for lack of time but I did fast forward to all the "good" parts. Anyhoo, attaching a great piece above; maybe you, too, will get the the Michael Flatley bug and make this awesome dvd part of your annual St. Patty's Day tradition! I will add that the males of the blog world may actually enjoy this ... especially about half way through. If you want to view the entire dvd after viewing this small snippet, just email me and I'll get you a copy....I'm certain my comments will be flooded by mid-morning with inquiries :). Btw, I saw them live not once, but twice. Once in Denver about ...oh...8 years ago?? And then about 6 months later when they were part of the Vegas show circuit. I don't believe they are in Vegas any longer but they still do tour. If they ever make it to Denver again, I'm going. Twice.

So now you know another one of my quirks. No Orange shorts in a race. No hotel room on the 13th floor. And I love Lord of the Dance. I also get a moment about once a year where I have to listen to my John Denver CD. I bawled at his televised funeral. I believe my friend, Meg M-T in Iowa, still have my John Denver book.....

Well, it was a given this week my legs would not work. Last week they were flying, this week they've back to leadville. My weight is up and my running sucks and I have a 1/2 marathon in 4 days and a big marathon in 4 1/2 weeks. YEAH! I think I'm going to take up knitting. I ran twice today just because run #1 totally was worthless. My Garmin was "frozen" when I set off to do a few miles at 1/2 MP. It's a little hard to run exactly 1/2 MP without my watch telling me what my pace was, I'm not the best at effort-based pacing. When I hit the 2.65 mile turn around point, I was at 19:43, which I think is a course PR ... um, 7:26 would be my dream 1/2 MP - that ain't ever going to happen. Sooooo, that freaked me out and my mind decided I was dead, when really I wasn't, but decided to slow the pace down to a crawl on the way back. Which frustrated me. Which frustrated me that I was frustrated. Round two today, I'm back at the same park, on the same trail, but my friend, Matt, met me after his coaching job at the school near my house. This run went a lot better because Matt just talked and I just listened to something other than the voices in my head telling me I was a complete running failure and could not run. Matt just finished a 50K trail run in Alabama a couple weeks ago so he filled me in on all the details. The run felt effortless, and I know we were cruising along at a great clip! Yea, I have some mental issues going on right now. Atlanta will be interesting, to say the least. BTW, I googled and found out if your Garmin is "Frozen" hold the two buttons on the side together for 8 seconds and it resets. Hum. So it's happy. For now.

Speaking of which, I have not packed a single thing and I'm already 25 minutes behind my "goal" bedtime (and have not done 2nd round of my glute pullbacks nor my 50 ab crunches...how's that for failure?? I do, however, have my boys panned out for the weekend. Though that didn't all fall into place until today...so I guess that was a failure, too. Eat perfectly this week? Fail. Ironed the night before? Fail. I did do a great weight training session yesterday at the gym so yeah, that weighs out all the other failures! I love it when I get to make my own rules.); so I must close and get moving on the packing. I'm heading out tomorrow to Alabama, where I served my time for a few years. One positive out of that is that I still have some great friends there and can't wait to see them and spend some girly time together. I head to Atlanta on Saturday, race on Sunday, return to Alabama on Sunday after race and then back to Denver on Monday. So what I'm really saying here is that I will be absent from computer world for a few days ... please don't think I'm ignoring ya, but I won't have Internet (eeks!).

I picked Univ Northern Iowa to win the whole shibang NCAA National Championships in my basketball pool...complete underdog upset coming, beware! GO PANTHERS!

So I will close today's Irish blog with: May the Road Rise to Meet You--From the Gaelic, which means may success be with you!