Legs. Hating. Me.

This morning I did my farthest long run -- 11 miles. That is the farthest I will go until the day of the half-marathon. Until then, I'll be tapering with next Saturday 10 miles, and 8 miles the Saturday after that and so on. But my quads/thighs got so tired and achy the last stretch. I swear I could hear them yelling at me to stop putting them through such pain. Not sure how I will get through the 13 mile race. And I'm really not sure how I'll fare after when my feet and upper legs will be throbbing like they are now. I just want to sit on my ass all day but you are supposed to move around throughout the day so you don't have a build-up of lactic acid in your upper legs--whatever that means. All I can say is thank goodness I am NOT doing a full 26.2-mile marathon. Phew!

Christmas cupcakes

Not many things give me little moments of giddiness. But there's just something about making cupcakes that show some thought and a tad bit more artistry than your supermarket cupcake that makes me excited. We had an office potluck today. I thought about making something more food-ish like potstickers or a salad. But come on! It's Christmas--a time to be festive. So, of course I picked a time-consuming recipe in terms of the effort and money that would go into decorating it. Plus, last night I still went to a friend's for an impromptu dinner party though I hadn't decorated any of the cupcakes yet. Well, I thought I was going to find the decorating really tiresome but it was so much fun! Very therapeutic too. And the cupcakes turned out so much better than I thought. I think they look better in person than in my pictures.





I got the idea from a recipe book and decided to make my forest look as wintry as I could. I dusted them with powdered sugar, edible glitter and rainbow non-pareils (sprinkles) to look kind of like lights. One of my co-workers wants to "commission" me to make some for her Christmas gathering. I thought she was kidding. But she's serious. Asking me for something like that is definitely one way to flatter me quickly. Anyway, I'm probably going to do it as soon as I figure out how to budget my time. Good thing I'm training for this half marathon. It's the only way I can survive baking so much with a less guilty conscience.

P.S. Forgot to explain that I made the trees by frosting around an ice cream cone. That isn't all frosting!

5K results are in!

I can't believe I've been up since 5:30 a.m. and going to a funeral post-race was just weird. But I don't want to dwell on that. I just checked how I did on my 5K (3 miles). The assigned race number you wear comes with a perforated tag. The tag has a bar code. I was told there was a machine that scans it as you cross the finish line. You hand off your tag and they post the results online. I just checked...and...

Drum Roll please....


I finished in 28:34...and I get an award for placing third in my age group (25-29).
Females 25-29 results

However, I'm sure in another age group, I would've placed like seventh or something. But whatever. I shall bask in the glory of this small achievement for a bit. I can't wait for this half-marathon to come...only because I miss the junk food.

And it's only Wednesday!

I still feel like I have a whole week's worth of stuff ahead of me. I found out on Monday that a distant uncle of mine (one of my mom's second cousins) who lives here in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale passed away last Saturday from a sudden heart attack. :( I only met him a few times but he seemed nice, though extremely quiet. He owned a small Chinese restaurant in a Glendale strip mall. Even though I didn't interact with him much, I want to go to the funeral. It's more about being there for the family and showing that I care. The service is this Sunday at 9 a.m. in Scottsdale. I found this out the day after I registered for a competitive 5K that morning in another part of Scottsdale. The start time is 7:35 a.m. Luckily, my friend Alyson, who doesn't live too far from the mortuary, graciously told me to come and use her house as a stop to freshen up, shower, change, etc. So...I am going to try and run 5K or 3ish miles in less than an hour which I'm sure I can do and then high-tail it from Alyson's.

I really do not like going to funerals. In some ways, I dislike going to Chinese funerals even more. They are really superstitious and I have a feeling if you tried to insert a little humor in a eulogy to relieve tension, the older folks would throw a fit. Everything has to maintain a certain decorum and trying to relieve the tension would probably jeopardize the deceased person's chances of going to the next world. I just think it's ok to crack a smile if it pertains to remembering good things about the person.

Tomorrow, I have to go to the VA Medical Center and interview two survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack. Actually, I'm looking forward to that. It should be interesting, talking to people who witnessed such a catastrophic and unbelievable event. The hard part is running back to the office to write it all up in one afternoon. I'll be adding what I get to what I have from my phone interview with another survivor today. Gosh, someday, some young journalist is going to be interviewing elderly folks who survived the attacks on the World Trade Center and like me, he/she will have no inkling of what it was like that day.

Well, gotta go wrap a gift. I have a holiday party at a friend's tomorrow after work. She and her fiance are doing one of those white elephant gift exchanges. I'll just be gifting what I received last year. :P