Oh my Wii muscles!

Ok Megan, you were right. You're not a wimp. You not only can cream me in bowling and boxing, but you can also make competitive Joy come out, leaving me incredibly sore from all the ineffective right hooks that did not keep me from KO after KO.

My boxing gloves are still on, and I'm gearing up for a repeat tomorrow.

My Mii's nose is totally cuter than yours, even after you punched it repeatedly. I'm still smiling too.

Ahh Soreness

I'm incredibly sore from my Sunday long run. The soreness comes not from the running hiatus of late, or from the sprinting and stopping that goes along with two taking dogs (who must pee on designated trees) along. No, this soreness is very specific to one particular moment of that run. Not two minutes after I jinxed myself by expressing my amazement to Laura that neither of us had tripped and fallen, I did it. I knew the moment the thought crept into my mind that it was going to happen. It's kind of like those races I used to attend with Jenny where I'd just feel that I'd be winning a door prize (that's still my only TV). Well, I won the prize yesterday. It really didn't hurt so bad when I landed, probably because it all happened in slow motion. Luckily my running group and I had been so intertwined that they immediately came to my rescue. I was comforted by Gabby's licking of my face. Today my left hand can barely make it to the top of my head for hairbrushing purposes. Opening doors with that arm is not happening. But I came away lucky. Poor Gabby had a great time running with her big brother Latte, but last night was not able to put weight on one of her back feet. It wasn't a result of the trail run, but most likely the roughhousing that took place in the backyard afterward. It's a good thing she made it to visit Santa before the injury. X-rays are coming this afternoon. We'll keep hoping for a good prognosis!

Hibernation Time

Excerpt from my recent Goal Setting sheet for Liz:

"List your top 3 goals for the 2009 season:
1. Not suck so bad in Kona. Oh wait, that’s not realistic. I mean specific."

I think it may be the coldness of the last few days, along with the ice on my windshield, and the endless cloudy skies. I'm just not that enthusiastic about the upcoming triathlon season yet. Should I be? I know lots of people were motivated by watching the NBC coverage of this past October's Ironman, but maybe the pain is still too fresh in my mind. Or maybe it's the stuffy head and cough I've had this past week. Oh, the inevitables of winter! A yucky cold, a lack of training, the urge to hibernate after eating large meals. I figure I have only so many days that I can make myself swim, bike, or run when I don't want to. Like Get Out of Jail Free passes, they're in limited supply. I'm holding on to them for now. Maybe they'll multiply.

My latest purchase was made to fend off some of the blah-ness. It came complete with Hawaiian-ish flowers all over it, just to get me in the mood. Now one of these days I'll stop just wearing it around the house and get to the pool in it.

There is a bright side

I took a few art classes in high school, and have always loved drawing and painting. Give me a photo and I'll draw it, but don't ask me to come up with any designs from my head. I know I'm not creative and will be the first to admit it.

So lately I've been doing activities that require this creativity that I'm lacking. First, with Laura, I went to Sweet to paint a martini glass. You might've seen the results of that experiment on her blog. Mine's the ugly, uncreative one. I'm embarrassed to even admit it. And no, I don't know what those green seaweed-looking things between the suns are supposed to be.

Then yesterday for our work group's Christmas party, we went to Seize the Clay to paint pottery. Mine's not done yet, but it's completely unimaginative and not a thing of beauty (yet, I hold out hope). I was late enough to Sweet last night that a couple other girlfriends had already painted their glasses, therefore I was not required to publicly display my lack of creativity twice in one day.

Feeling bad about my creativity and artistic skills, I was excited to read in a New York Times article that there is a fine, often blurry line between creativity and mental illness. Specifically, researchers have found many personality traits shared by graduate students in creative disciplines and bipolar patients. It's possible that art is a natural therapy for individuals with mental illness, or mabye a way to express themselves.

Back in my undergraduate years when I studied psychology, I remember the examples of Louis Wain's cats. As his symptoms of schizophrenia worsened, his cats became increasingly abstract. It's pretty fascinating. And beautiful.

I'm no abstract artist for sure. I'm ok with that now.

Goals

This past weekend was filled with all things marathon. First I met up with fellow blogger chicks for some pre-race (or pre-spectating) carb loading at the warehouse of spaghetti on Friday. Angie left before the picture to get Duane home for a pre-marathon sleep. We didn't forget her, and held a sign up for representation. Here we have Damie, Mira, me, Laura, and Sam.


Saturday was a long day of bike riding, cheering, chasing Olaf around town, shivering in the cold, more cheering, riding with marathoners to the finish, and a little more shivering. It was fun watching Olaf, Sam, Laura, Gina, Lindsay, Steve, Layla, Cayce, Duane, Lisa, Casey, Rachel, Carolyn and the other 10,000 runners strive to meet their goals. The goals ranged from a 2:50 marathon, to PRing in the half despite sickness, to finishing a first full marathon. It seems to me that just about everyone whose goals I knew of met them.

That got me to thinking about my athletic goals. I'm scared to admit them most of the time. If I have a real, true, deep-down dream goal, I almost never say it aloud. If I do verbalize a goal to anybody, it's a goal that I'm pretty sure I can hit. I'm not pessimistic about my abilities, I try to be more realistic. Why is it that most people are not scared to share a dream goal that they may fail at meeting? What's so hard about letting people know that I am disappointed in myself sometimes? And what's wrong with being disappointed sometimes?

At work we teach about setting SMART goals: goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Rewarding, and Time-oriented. If you don't make goals attainable, then you'll end up disappointing yourself when you don't reach them, right? But in running, is this really a bad thing? Maybe sharing goals will keep me accountable for actually training to meet those goals.

I mentioned to Damie last time we were at track and running a 7:00 pace that I'd like to run a marathon at that pace. But I think I'm scared to actually try. I know it's a way-out-there goal for me, but if I really worked for it, I don't see why I couldn't do it. Come to think of it, I just might be scared to run another flat out, stand alone marathon. I'm pretty sure I could run faster than the only one I've done, which was 8 years ago, and is now only 3 minutes faster than my Ironman best marathon. But how much faster? 5 minutes? 20 minutes? Oh it sounds so painful!

Thanks to everyone who shared their true goals this weekend. I'm getting my motivation back thanks to you.

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done. ~Samuel Johnson, in Boswell's Life of Johnson, 1770

The Bee-Gull

Poor tortured Megan can't get away from it. We still treat her like she's our baby sister, even though today she turns 26. Jenny and I remember things that she did and said well over 20 years ago, like when we would call her a baby, she would reply, "I'm not a baby, I'm a bee-gull!" When she was first learning to write in cursive, she signed what looked like Mergon Johnison, and we've not let her forget it. She got called the dog's name (Merrigold), the horse's name (Mystic--in Mom's defense, they all start with M), and now her 6-year-old niece's name. We associate them all.

She favors Mom,

and maybe even me, if we both look down and you can't see our eyes or the shape of our heads. She has a normal-shaped one.

Mine has lumps and bumps that can fuel conversation at parties.

But anyway. She's definitely the kind, calm, patient, generous, talented sister in the family (you know I'm right, Jenny!), and I can't imagine having grown up without her (although I'm sure at times she would have preferred growing up without me)! Happy Birthday little DookeyFactory with the ChickenLegsandDuckFeet!

I was honored to be called Other Megan!

For more Dalgo family excitement, visit her husband Austin's blog here. Now maybe he'll update it.