"Eyes on the prize, reboot the mission"

With it being marathon season again, I feel as if all the blogs I read are chock full of challenges and proud moments of accomplishments. I'm a bit envious. I've not really had anything big accomplished, (well, yes, the wedding and all) but nothing big for me personally. I've been cooking more but I'm not 100% sure how to morph that into a challenge. Something about making a challenge out of making more vegan dinners and delicious healthy meals just feels a bit blah right now. If I weren't worried about us both ballooning up I'd do a Julie & Julia-esqe challenge involving our Eric Ripert or Voltaggio brothers book. Food does not seem to be the way to go. 

I do have more races coming up... this past weekend was a 5k where I did decidedly not awesome 38mins or so, but I had fun and it was my best time in awhile. In December there is the trail 10k in the mountains. I'm very nervous about that but glad that it's not about my time, just about surviving. I'm really enjoying the onset of Northern California's rainy winter season and the Los Gatos Creek Trail near us.

Los Gatos Trail and also the scene of the crime for the 5k

Ed loves pictures pre-race

 You should have seen how excited I was for rain the other night. Ed looked at me like I was insane. I do enjoy training so I thought maybe I could do a challenge involving activities. Some sound a little intimidating (i.e. 1000 push-ups in a week) but I think maybe I can make it work for me. So for the month of November I'm going to pick one or two exercises per week and see how many I can do that week:

1st Week (1st-8th): Running & Walking (essentially on-foot travel)
2nd Week (8th-15th): Visiting Ck in L.A. so squats and lunges. Doesn't require much space!
3rd Week (15th-22nd): Push-ups. This exercise needs no partner the way I struggle with it.
4th Week (22nd-29th): Right over Thanksgiving time, so I'll go for planks and crunches this week.

The rule of thumb I was given was to take the most you can do in one set and multiply it by 35 and there's your number for the week. 

1st- Current longest distance ~ 3.5 miles so let's just say at least 3.5 miles traveled each day = 24.5 miles
2nd- 40ish for both probably = 1400 of each
3rd- Real push-ups? 5. On my knees? 10. So let's start low and hope for high results = 175 - 350
4th- Sadly, I can probably only do about 35 crunches and my planks only last 60 seconds = 1225 crunches and 2100 seconds of planking.

I'm just guesstimating/modifying the numbers and rules. I mean obviously I could NOT run 122.5 miles in a week. I'm hoping actually that I'll be surprised at how low these numbers are compared to what actually gets done. Wouldn't that be nice?

Another challenge I've found to balance out the activity is Deepak Chopra's 21-day Meditation Challenge.

Anyone else have any favorite challenges they want to share or want to join in on this one?

Update wise, Ed's birthday is this Friday and we're off to Yosemite with Dad and Debbie! I'm pretty excited. Ed bought a new bike since his was stolen a week or so ago. I'm getting twitchy about the holidays. Missing family and friends and excited for all the holiday festivities.

I finished three more books:

- Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness: the second book in her trilogy about supernatural beings with a heavy dose of the historical. It follows a romantic relationship between a witch and a vampire and I cannot get enough. They are looooong books though so prepare to settle in. They aren't hard to read, but there are tons of characters and back story to keep straight.

- Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes: NOT for the faint of heart. It is frightening and graphic and intense. Frankly, it's 'unputdownable.' But yes, very graphic violence and sexual situations, but they are separated by long tortured moments of psychological terror. I love a good scary book (P.S. Kindle readers, as I'm posting this, it's only 2 bucks on amazon! I still wait for all my books to come thru the library but for those of you that buy, that's a great deal)

- Why Have Kids? by Jessica Valenti: This book about modern motherhood and the push for 'natural' parenting is also terrifying and yet for me, reassuring. It's terrifying because a lot of things I was taking for granted are rooted in not so great things, like tying women to homes and children and pushing them away from the workplace. Subverting women's happiness for the happiness of the child (or - even scarier - for the happiness of a possible future child). I'm glad things like this are being talked about. I think this is a really good book for every woman and man to read about what is happening with motherhood and parenting.

And last but not least, I joined a new roundtable! This is for The Walking Dead on AMC. I'll post links to it when it goes up. :)