Hello there!  I am finally on Winter Break!  How is it that I made it through almost 4 months of teaching online (again)?  I’ve had some great but also horrible moments.  We’re supposed to head back on January 11th so we’ll see how it will be like with a hybrid schedule.

This week was a blur because the days went by fast.   My goal was to make it to Friday.  🙂

I went to school on Monday morning so I had to get out earlier than usual.  It was dark but not too bad.  The next day I went out again while it was dark and didn’t like what I saw.  Ice!  Dang, it freaked me out because I am always afraid of falling.  I did see a pretty sunrise!

Thursday morning I slept in again and just had time to run 20 minutes instead of 3 miles.  It’s weird how sometimes I have no problem waking up at 5am but then struggle to get up at 7am.

Saturday was 6 miles with the last 2 at a faster pace (11:00-11:15).  Mile splits were 11:11 and 11:08.  It made me happy that I ran the last two miles without stopping but just quickly slowed down a little bit to cross the street.  I was surprised at how warm it felt – almost 40 degrees.  Well, to me that feels warm for December.  🙂

This week we had different themes to get into the holiday spirit.  I don’t have pictures for all of them but just the “fun” ones.  It was fun to see the students get into the spirit too.  You can tell that in the last photo (Thursday) I look very TIRED.  Or is it the camera?

I applied again to be on the Brooks Team and was rejected again.  I also applied to be a Oiselle Volée Leader and was not accepted.  I am bummed about it but am happy with the two ambassadorships I did receive (Koala Clip and PickyBars).  Hopefully I will get good news about Nuun.

Any fans of “The West Wing”?  I am on season 7 and really like the show.  I still cannot believe I never watched it when it was on regular TV.  There were a few episodes that were boring and/or I was lost because I had no idea what they were talking about – politics is UGLY.  The best part is seeing a Latino candidate for the presidency and winning.  Yes, I did read about it.  Next show to watch is “Selena” though I’ve been hearing positive and negative reviews.

Pleased with how my running went this week.  Except for switching my workouts on Thursday and Friday, I did just what my coach asked me to do.  So far the weather hasn’t been too bad and I am really hoping it stays like that a bit longer..or at least till Spring.

My sister sent this to me and it brought a HUGE smile to my face.  So many emotions.  The past couple of months have been rough.  I have struggled but also know that I have done the best I can.  No matter what, I know my kids like my class and care about me just like I care about them.  Believe it or not, but I will miss them during break.

Thank you teacher!  See you tomorrow!

Linking up with Kim and Deborah for the Weekly Run Down.

Well, here we go again.  I finished training for a 5k and proudly met my goal.  With no live races on my schedule, now I am going to train for a 10k and run my own race.  The goal is somewhere between 1:05-1:06.  Excited and looking forward to it!

This week went by fast and it was really a blur.  The weather was pretty good for December.  It wasn’t that cold which I am happy about.    

Wednesday morning I slept in and it was 7 when I got up.  By this time I am out running.  I knew I didn’t have enough time to do my workout (1/2 mile repeats for a total of 4 miles) so I ran for 20 minutes.  I made it home in time to shower and get ready, quickly do my hair for crazy hair day, and log in for my students.

Friday morning I was excited to see a sunrise and stopped to take a picture.  However, I am not sure what exactly happened but I took out my phone from my Koala Clip and dropped it.  I have a case and a screen protector but I can still see a crack.  I was hoping it was the screen protector but it looks like it is the actual screen.  Ugh, I hate to have to pay over $100 to fix it.  I am not going to do it now since it isn’t that noticeable.

I don’t remember the last time I ran in the rain.  It was raining yesterday in the mid 40s with barely any wind.  I was supposed to run 5 miles with the last 2 miles at a faster pace.  I told my coach that I wasn’t sure how many I would do.  I ended up with 4 miles and the last mile was nowhere near my target pace.  Honestly I didn’t care.  I was glad to be home because by then I was very cold.  

This past week was all MAP testing for my kids.  Remember, my students take 4 tests in Reading and Math in both English and Spanish.  It went a lot better than expected but towards the end they were all tired.  One of them was in tears and I felt so bad for her.  I hate that they have to take these tests during this time.

Also, we got an email that teachers are to return to the classroom on January 11th and students on the 25th.  It will be interesting to see if that actually happens.

Just one more week!

Overall it was another good week of running.  I decided to pause my Peloton membership because I have not been taking advantage of it.  However, now I am wondering if I should just downgrade to the Digital Membership.  I know I should be doing more than just running but haven’t been able to figure out how to schedule it and make it work.

Linking up with Kim and Deborah for the Weekly Run Down.

Can you believe today is my 100th day of my running streak?  I can hardly believe it myself.  No way did I think it would go this long.  How much longer will I keep doing it?  Who knows. 

Monday was the last day in November and I ran 2.67 miles.  I was supposed to do 4 but it was very windy and the wind wore me out.  I did some quick math and knew that I’d met my goal to run more miles than I did in October.  I ended up with 104.71 miles.

The most exciting thing happened on Wednesday.  So for the past 9 weeks I have been training for a 5k.  My goal was to finish it in 33:30.  I’ve had some great workouts and have done much better than expected (i.e., I’ve run 3 miles without stopping and have done many runs with negative splits.) 

My coach had set up my 5k race for Saturday.  Last week on Sunday we talked about it more and while I was excited about it, I was also nervous.  What if I didn’t meet my goal?  I was also worried about the wind.  Well, at that point I couldn’t worry about it too much since there was nothing I could do about it.  I was running 3.10 miles on Saturday no matter what.

Fast forward to Wednesday and I went out for my run.  I was supposed to run a progressive run of 3 miles with the first mile between 11:30-11:45 pace.  I didn’t feel like I was going that “fast” but when I looked at my watch I was running at a 10:30 pace.  It wasn’t cold nor windy.  I kept going and just went with the flow.  I finished my first mile in 10:37.  It was faster than I was supposed to but kept going.  Halfway through the second mile I was in the 10:20s.  I had to make a decision.  Could I keep running at this pace?  Could I run 3.10 miles in 33:30 or faster?  There was only one way to find out.  I kept going.   I finished mile 2 in 10:30.  Mile 3 is when it started to feel hard.  I wanted to stop just for a few seconds.  But I was so close and while I was breathing hard and it was feeling hard, I kept running.  I finished mile 3 in 10:19 which is the fastest mile in this training cycle.  I had programmed my regular 3 mile run in my Garmin with the specified paces, so of course it stopped at the end of mile 3.  I stopped running and then pressed the resume button to run .10 miles.  Finally done!  Finish time is 32:22.  I had met my goal!!!  I was so happy and could not believe it.  By then it was about 8am so I had to quickly get home to shower and get ready for school.  It wasn’t until later in the day that it really hit me what I had done.  My PR is 29:48 from May 2011.  I have never trained for a 5k and while it wasn’t an official PR nor an actual race, I am very pleased with how I did.

So what’s next?  Train for a 10K.  My PR is 1:04:02 from September 2010.  My coach told me my goal will be around 1:05-1:06.  Excited to see how I do!

In the school department, Friday afternoon I found out I got a new student.  She is a transfer from a GE classroom in my school.  You can just imagine how I felt that day.  I was annoyed and frustrated, but mostly angry.  I cannot believe that a District will allow that many students in a classroom.  It may be fine during a regular school year (one year I had 29), but definitely NOT during virtual learning.  There are just so many other things I want to say and write here (I am sure you can imagine), but I will not because, well, it won’t be appropriate.

Saw a cute friend this morning while out on my run.  🙂

Linking up with Kim and Deborah for the Weekly Run Down.

How is it that it is already Sunday and I am going back to work tomorrow?  I worked Monday and Tuesday and then was off the rest of the week.  It was lovely!  My mom was here so it was nice to spend time with her.  I watched a few episodes of The West Wing (I need to hurry up because they won’t be available after December 24th).  Thanks to Janelle’s Holiday Gift Ideas post,  I signed up for a one month free trial of Audibles and am listening to A Promised Land by Barack Obama.  I love Barack’s voice!  So far I am liking it.

We got a little bit of snow this week.  Not a big deal.  Let’s hope we don’t get more of that ugly, white stuff.  I don’t like snow at all.  I hate it. 

It was another good week of running.  I did all of my runs and hit the required paces.  Saturday morning it was cold (for me) and I struggled during my 3 mile run.  I was feeling a bit more tired than usual.  Sunday was a little cold too with some wind.  I ran almost 5 miles.  I did good but the wind wore me out.

Next Saturday is when I will “race” and run my own 5k.  The goal is to finish it in 33:30.  I think it is doable but a part of me is also nervous and scared.  Since I began training for the 5k, the closest I’ve come to that goal was on 11/6 when I finished in 34:24.  Prior to that it was 34:40 on 10/29.

Thanksgiving was very low key.  My mother made pozole and my sister and nephew came over for lunch.  They stayed a few hours and left after 6pm.  It was very different than previous years.  I am sure that’s how it will be for Christmas too.

My goal for November was to run more miles than October (103.71).  As of today I have run 102.03 miles.  I am pleased that I will make that goal.  So far total for this year is 754.45 miles.  In 2019 I finished the year with 730.71 miles.  I had a rocky start to 2020 with running but it has been going so well these past few months.  Excited for 2021!

I had lunch with my students on Tuesday.  Only 5 girls showed up.  I was happy but also a little disappointed because I thought more students would show up.  I mean, it’s not like they had to be somewhere else for lunch.  The girls and I had a good time anyway.  I was thinking that maybe I could have lunch with them on a weekly or bimonthly basis.  Maybe it could be a reward for those that do the assignments, participate, behave in class, etc.  I need to think about it some more.

Linking up with Kim and Deborah for the Weekly Run Down.

How is it that the days/weeks are going by so fast?   Every day it is the same routine.  Get up, drink coffee, go run, and start work.  As much as I am tired of working from home, gosh, I am also saving so much time and money.  

This week I got my new watch.  I thought the paces were off in my 225 so I ordered the 235 from Amazon.  It turns out the paces were correct.  This new watch gives me new features such as race predictors, run indoors, and VO2 Max.  I love the color too.  Not sure how accurate the race predictors are but they gave me hope for some nice PRs next year.

This week I had some easy runs along with a mix of half mile intervals and another progressive run.  Oh and I ran 4.8 miles on Friday for my birthday.  It was actually warm on Friday and I even ran in shorts.  In previous years it’s either been cold or I’ve run in the snow.  My coach left it up to me to do whatever workout I wanted to do.  I just chose to run easy and by feel.  

Today’s 4.5 miles went well.  It wasn’t cold and I did get a little too warm.  These past few days I’ve noticed some tightness in my chest which is mostly likely due to anxiety.  I’ve never had this happen to me.  At least I don’t remember.  Let’s hope I can relax and take it easy this week.

Of course this does not help.

Just want to share these pictures because it makes me smile.  I rarely see them together because Lola cannot stand Mateo.  She is always growling and hissing when he comes near her.

Oh and no school drama.  Whew, what a relief.  I kept reminding my students that we only have school on Monday and Tuesday and then we will be off the rest of the week for Thanksgiving.  They had asked me if one day we could have lunch together.  Isn’t that sweet?  So, that is what we will be doing on Tuesday.  We will have lunch together, watch a movie, and play some games.

That is all for this week. The most exciting things were my new watch and my birthday!

If you have not entered my birthday giveaway, do it right now.   There will be one prize for a $48 gift card to one of the following stores: Zappos, Dunkin’ Donuts, Running Warehouse, Amazon, or Starbucks.

Please use the Rafflecopter below to enter.  This giveaway will run until November 24 at 11:59 pm.  The winner will be selected on November 25th. The giveaway is open to US residents only.  All entries are verified, so please be sure to complete them or a new, random winner will be selected.  GOOD LUCK!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Linking up with Kim and Deborah for the Weekly Run Down.