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Archive of ‘Personal’ category

The Blog

Well. I haven’t blogged in three weeks – right before I started my new job. And as week after week goes by and I fall further behind in writing my weekly Bellingham Bay Marathon training posts, the thought becomes more and more overwhelming.

When I started this blog in November, 2007, my life was very different. This blog was very different. I was very different. And even up until a few months ago, I had blog goals and plans and found a new theme and installed a new theme and felt really fucking proud of myself for doing all that. And I still am. But my goals are not the same.

Right now, I care about running and marathon training. I care about spending as much time as possible with my husband and my puppy. I care about taking my puppy to his therapy dog assignments. I care about binge watching Revenge (or, in the past, 90210, Party Down, Childrens Hospital, The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, Arrested Development, Scandal, Breaking Bad, Sex and the City and a number of other shows that have glued me and Andy to the couch for absurd amounts of time). I care about cuddling my sweet, funny puppy and even though you couldn’t tell by looking at it, I do kinda care about finishing organizing the new apartment we moved into. In June.

When I get home from work after an hour (on a good day) drive, I am exhausted. All I want is to collapse on the couch – and that’s just on days I don’t have evening appointments or commitments. I wake up at 4:45 to run (and this is after asking Coach Abby to change my weekday runs so none are longer than an hour), and on days I don’t run, I want to sleep. My weekends are for relaxing, family, laziness and whatever else we do. I don’t want to spend my precious free time blogging unless it is TRULY what I want to do. And usually, it isn’t.

And it’s hard to really, fully enjoy doing these things I care about when I have THE BLOG hanging over me. Feeling like I “have” to blog this week or getting stressed that I will fall behind. And the pictures. The pictures take SO LONG to upload and format and blah blah blah. Meh.

Image of Larry Gary the Ratcha pup

Larry and his ears

I’m not quitting this blog. But I am changing how it fits into my life. I will absolutely write race recaps (I LOVE being able to go back and read those because I’d never remember most of my racing experiences if I didn’t write it all) and anything else that I want to blog, only when I really want to blog it. I have two big races coming up:

I am SO EXCITED about these races and I want to document these experiences. At Bellingham, a weekend with my family, racing in a new state, attempting to break that 4:00 barrier and my first marathon as a Oiselle team runner. In NYC, getting redemption on a race I never finished, getting the real NYCM experience, wearing my Aunt Dale’s name on my American Cancer Society Team DetermiNation singlet, running for a cause greater than me or my goals.

Dori and Ashley running race

JackRabbit Battle of Brooklyn 10 Miler with Ashley Runningbun

And I will. But I won’t let myself ever feel stressed about this blog again. Growing an audience isn’t my goal. Writing regularly isn’t my goal. Taking an hour to get a few pictures in is a waste of my time. Worrying about the right tags, SEO metadata, categories – exhausting.

Not worth it for me. This blog is for me. It exists so I can have an account of my experiences, so I don’t forget them. I am all about nostalgia (if you follow me on Twitter you’re probably sick of all my Timehop tweets by now).

Having a blog feeds right into that – I can bring myself back to any race and remember what it was like to be there. That’s not stopping – at least, not for the big races. I love my race recap page because it lays out just how far I’ve come – in both running and blogging. And if reading my blog resonates with you, or helps you, or makes you happy or angry or whatever – good. This blog is for me and it is also a way for me to connect with you, with others who care about the same things.

Anyway, I’m just here to say that I am so glad I was able to recap my weekly marathon training for 11 weeks, but it doesn’t look like I’ll be continuing with the last 8 weeks. The last time I ran a marathon but didn’t blog about every detail, I was publicly accused of not training. I assure you that wasn’t the case then and it most certainly isn’t the case now, when I am working harder than I ever have because I chose an aggressive goal. I feel like I am naturally slower than many people who try to run a marathon in under 4:00, so I’m giving training everything I have – but I don’t need to write about it to prove it happened.

And if you enjoy following my training, or want proof, or whatever, I log it all on dailymile – so you can check me out there at any time.

This blog has brought countless opportunities (and wonderful friends) to my life and I am so grateful and happy for that. But I’m OK without those opportunities. I am at the point where I like the brands I like and don’t want to try and review new things. I like working out at Refine. I like wearing Oiselle. I like drinking Ultima. I like Injinji socks and Hoka shoes and no, I do not want to try your sneakers/socks/workout class.

Image of hoka sneakers in blue

Breaking in the marathon Hokas!

And that is OK. I don’t want new opportunities, I just want to share the big races, the injuries, the whatever-else-I-truly-want-to-blog-about-without-a-schedule. And if I disappear for months at a time, that’s fine too. Enough rambling. I’ve got one month to goal-marathon day. I’ve got work to do!

Thanks for reading for this long and I hope you stick around because I do love this community. And I post often on Twitter and Instagram because that doesn’t take up any time, so you can always keep up with my training and Jersey City things and puppy cuteness and all there. Because I should have been cleaning/organizing this whole time but even this one post took fucking FOREVER.

Dori and Andy - Jersey City Disco

Me and Andy at Van Vorst Disco Night in Jersey City – I learned the hustle!

TL;DR – I will blog when I want to but not all the time, and I won’t get stressed anymore. But I will always blog the big races because nostalgia.

 

 

Life Updates in Bullet Form (And A Brooklyn Race Discount)

I’ve been devoting my weekly blog post to marathon training weekly recaps. They take a lot of time, and it takes everything I have to even get those up. So, I haven’t really been blogging about anything else and I imagine some of you are bored by me. Others might be confused because I blogged just one time in April of this year, where I mentioned my incredibly long work days and wondering how I’d even fit marathon training in. And yet here I am, very clearly training and making no mention of how I’m managing my time. In bulleted form, I will explain what’s going on in my life along with other related thoughts:

  • I’m no longer at the job I had when I wrote that post. Some of you left comments saying I could wake up at 3 am to train for my marathon and others said that you make exercising work on 70 hour work weeks even though you’re tired. Neither of those were good for me. I need more sleep than that while training, and also I need weekends. Or early mornings. Or evenings. Any one of those would have helped, but I didn’t have any. Exercise aside, I missed my husband and my dog. I am a hard worker, but this was not my dream job (nor was it a permanent role – it was contract) and it was killing me. Sitting for 12+ hours a day with no breaks even fucked up my back, and I did not want that to turn into yet another injury. SOMETHING had to give, and in the end, a job where I had to work 7 days a week (with 12 hour days during the week) was not the right job for me.
  • I’m starting a new job on Monday.  As much as I love not working, I love being able to pay my rent even more. I think.
  • When I go back to work, I will miss: spending time with my dog, waking up and leisurely getting ready to run, my dog park friends, going to the dentist/doctors/physical therapist/Refine during the day, and making semi-elaborate breakfasts every single day.
    Dori's Eggs

    My semi-elaborate daily breakfasts. You will be missed.

  • My old job was in a field I felt pigeon-holed in. My new job is in a field I used to work in and have been wanting for so long to get back into. I’m really glad because I fucking hate social.
  • My dog has an amazing sixth sense. Larry indicates to me when he doesn’t want to go into the dog park because he can sense a bad situation. I’ve seen firsthand how accurate he is, twice. After taking a dog (not mine) to the vet who was attacked today (because his dog walker needed an ambulance for himself), I will never ignore Larry’s signals again. I wish I could devote my entire life to protecting him and making him happy.
  • I love Larry Gary so much it makes my heart hurt.
    Larry on couch

    Daytime dog, you will be missed.

  • I want so much to be a person who has an uncluttered, neat, almost bare. I am not that person. 
  • We moved on June 30 and I still don’t have a place for everything in my new apartment. I want to get rid of more but don’t know how. Every time I try to begin, I feel overwhelmed and then I sit down. And stay there.
  • Can someone with no emotional attachment to my shit please come over and throw away everything?
  • My friend Lindsay from Happy Herbivore has a rule when it comes to getting rid of shit, and that rule is this: If this item was destroyed in a fire, would I replace it? That’s been helping a lot more than thinking about the last time you wore/used something or the next time you might.
  • I love my new apartment and its location so, so, so much. I feel happy every time I come home.
  • I like wasting time on the couch. I don’t like getting nothing done. But the couch usually wins.
  • I joined the Oiselle Volée Team. You might how much I love Oiselle after my NYFW experience last year. Good people, great shorts.
  • Fun fact: My first encounter with Oiselle CEO Sally was her informing me my skirt was tucked into my underwear. At the fashion week show.
  • Missing from my Oiselle profile (because I was so excited to write my answers I sent it in quickly without thinking) in the favorite gear section is the fact that I CANNOT run without my Hokas and Injinji toe socks. I’m in PT for foot pain that’s caused by my pelvis, and I had two PTs in two different offices tell me that wearing the right shoes literally saved my foot. As for the socks, I would be a walking blister without them. Try them. You are welcome.
  • None of those are affiliate links. Click away!
  • Just being on the team for a little while, I already love the camaraderie, the knowledge that if I travel somewhere I’ll probably find a running buddy, access to a community of women to talk running with, insight into all different races and experiences, and supporting a brand I already loved.
  • I’m running the JackRabbit Battle of Brooklyn 10 Mile Race on Sunday, August 17. It will be part of my 20-22 mile run. If you’d like to join, you can use code battledori for $10 off your registration! It will be my first time running in Brooklyn.
  • For two years, I thought my chronic left foot aching and swelling was because of my bunion. I accepted it as something I could no nothing about and would have to just live with. During my time off, I went to see a new podiatrist and he sent me to physical therapy. I never considered PT for what I thought was a bunion, and I was excited about the prospect of free foot massages. As it turns out, my foot pains have nothing at all to do with my bunion (aside from possibly starting because I adjusted my gait when I initially had bunion issues and then my body adapted to this new way of walking and standing). The pain is actually from my pelvis, which is turned in on the left side. My left leg appears longer than my right, even though it is not. My running shoes show more wear on the left toes. At PT, we work on fixing that. All good news except that this means I don’t get free foot massages. Instead I get butt massages, which is not nearly as fun as it sounds.

That’s what’s been going on here. I’m going to do my best to get my weekly training recaps up when I start working, though (unfortunately for me) I’ll probably have to do them on Sundays. My new job involves a driving commute. And maybe traffic. And weather. And is nowhere near NYC. Let’s see if I can get myself to open my computer on Sundays. As the Ander and I always say, TWT (time will tell).

Are you the type of person I want to be – a home without crap everywhere? Almost bare looking? SHARE YOUR SECRETS.

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