Boricua en la Lima

When Lima is so quiet I cannot sleep When the kids are neatly tucked in bed Waiting for the tooth fairy to brighten their day And my husband's breathing is even and stead And the sky's pinkish hue overpowers the gray That will cover the sun come the next day When no car, bird or dog makes their maddening noise When runners find that perfect peace, out on the streets with just their feet And it's only me in my bed and my running thoughts And Lima's my lover and we get along But then I'm jolted out of bed by the sound of an alarm that rings too soon Thrown into the chaos of traffic lights and honking cars And Lima and I are enemies for the day Each one struggling in the crowd of unproductive people trying to look busy So take me back to that morning glory When everything is quiet except for my head And Lima once again becomes my lover, though I cannot wed When Lima is so quiet I cannot sleep I need the chaos to fall asleep Yet I cannot stand it duri...

It has been a whirlwind of a month! First Mom came to visit for about a month and that usually coincides with one of our kid´s birthdays (this time it was Sebas´ turn). So there was a lot of running around in the beginning of April to create the most magical of Star Wars birthday parties! Except if you´re a girl or a boy under the age of 6 and then you pretty much hated the party because Darth Vader and Darth Maul were the scariest things you had ever seen in your life. Then Mom left right after the birthday party and Dad came with his wife about 2 days later to spend Easter weekend with us. It was a great visit, we did a lot of touristy things that I don´t normally get to do with Mom.   We went to the Ballesta Isles in Paracas to see the wildlife, we went to pisco tours to learn about that whole process, and we went to do the sand buggies in the Ica dessert, something I had never done before which was really cool and highly recommended, except a little scary much like this...

I can't write anything about the Newton school tragedy because it still hurts to even think about it. I've been trying to avoid the news and Facebook because every time I hear about one of the children or one of the teachers who died helping save children my heart breaks all over again.  I was literally sick to my stomach all day Friday and I cried at all hours of the day in the most inconvenient places.  I drank half a bottle of wine to numb the pain and cried myself to sleep.  And I'm just a spectator in this whole big mess, I can't even imagine the pain the parents are going through right now. So instead I'll just write about the last race we did which included Sebas and had a very festive Holiday feel to it so those were my two favorite things about it.  I did 8 Km (5 miles) in 45:54 which is a personal best for me but it was also hard because I was trying to keep up with my husband the whole time.  Then towards the end when we wanted me to go faster becau...

This weekend I had signed up for another 10K , this time I signed up to do my first race with my husband.  We "trained" one time which basically meant running five miles the Sunday before.  During training we started off really fast (like (8.5 minutes per mile, fast for ME!) and I quickly realized I wasn't going to be able to keep up that pace.  So once we hit the half way point I told my husband to go back on his own so that I could run/walk.  I had no energy that day but I chalked it up to "it happens" -- some days you just don't have as much energy as others.  What I didn't realize is that night I was going to get the stomach bug from hell which would put me in bed for the next 48 hours. So to run a 10K "competitively" 3 days later was kind of a daunting thing. So as much as yesterday I wanted to run WITH my husband (not in the same race as him!) I told him at the beginning "you do your own thing I'll do mine".  While there...

Yesterday I did my first race as a resident of Peru!  Hadn't trained for squat because between my mom's visit and the kids' ongoing sickness I haven't had much time for exercise.  Definitely don't want my mom to leave (which she does tomorrow) but hopefully once I'm back to a "normal" routine I can fit exercise into my day a little bit better. I was scheduled to run with two of Jose's cousins, although one of the cousins we couldn't find at the start of the race so it was just Marco and me.  Marco doesn't run often but he does other types of exercises pretty much every day so he's fit (not to mention much younger than me!).  So he went in with a goal of doing 10K in 45 minutes and all I wanted to do was less than 1 hour.  Although once I started and I realized how humid it was and how out of breath I was (and out of shape!) all I wanted to do was finish.  I tried to keep up with Marco but around the 7th Km when we opened a gap betwee...