This is an open thread for those who are training for a race of any shape or kind. Post your training regime for this week and come back to report on your progress. Got a question on training, walking, running, biking, swimming or anything to do with race preparation? Post it here - someone will know the answer!

This is an open thread for those who are training for a race of any shape or kind. Post your training regime for this week and come back to report on your progress. Got a question on training, walking, running, biking, swimming or anything to do with race preparation? Post it here - someone will know the answer!

I've been very mindful the last few weeks of how many people there are on the 0-5k training plan. How are all of you doing with that? How are you feeling now that you've gotten into it? Erin, if you're reading this, how are you doing with the back pain?

In many ways, Carme Chacón is the same as the rest of us mothers or mothers to be who try to balance career and family. Chacón, 37, is seven months pregnant with her first child. Unlike the rest of us (unless there are some very illustrious lurkers out there!), though, she’s having to negotiate maternity leave in headline news, because her job is as Spain’s defence minister.  

There has been no announcement as yet on how long Chacón will take for her maternity leave. At least, none that I can tell from a cursory read from Google.es’s news summations. She has also fulfilled the travel component of her ministerial portfolio – as recently as Tuesday the 29th, she was in Sarajevo, visiting Spanish troops. I feel for her – I was still travelling when I was 7 ½ months along with Jessica, but boy, it wasn’t any fun at all. And having to walk around reviewing the troops while wearing heels, Ministera, se respeto mucho!

Chacón may be the most prominent woman in Spanish politics at this precise moment, but she is not alone in the cabinet  - Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has appointed a majority-women cabinet, the first in Spain’s history, and the first in democratic history, to my knowledge. This is well within his political character, according to this Time article:

It’s a win/win for pregnant ladies, potentially. A Yale University study has found that eating a regular amount of dark chocolate may reduce the risk of preeclampsia, a condition afflicting pregnant women that causes wild spikes of high blood pressure. Elizabeth Triche of the Yale Center for Perinatal, Pediatric and Environmental Epidemiology  headed the study, which found the following, as summed up in this Reuters article:

To investigate whether chocolate's possible cardiovascular benefits also might help prevent preeclampsia, the researchers looked at 2,291 women who delivered a single infant, and asked them about how much chocolate they consumed in their first and third trimesters. The researchers also tested levels of theobromine in infants' umbilical cord blood.

Women who consumed the most chocolate and those whose infants had the highest concentration of theobromine in their cord blood were the least likely to develop preeclampsia. Women in the highest quarter for cord blood theobromine were 69 percent less likely to develop the complication than those in the lowest quarter.

Women who ate five or more servings of chocolate each week in their third trimester of pregnancy were 40 percent less likely to develop preeclampsia than those who ate chocolate less than once a week.

I must note that in other coverage, the numbers of participants is different- this article says there were only 1,681 participants. Of course, I’m counting on our science MTs (Aussieyank? Lyn?) to pipe up with their professional interpretation, however if there are plans for a multi-year, multi-continent study to further analyse this finding, I’ll put my hand up. I’m doing it for the sisterhood, of course. Just pass me the chocolate.

How about it, MTs? Can we pay attention to this week’s study because we like the findings?

This is an open thread for those who are training for a race of any shape or kind. Post your training regime for this week and come back to report on your progress. Got a question on training, walking, running, biking, swimming or anything to do with race preparation? Post it here - someone will know the answer!

So sorry to have flaked out nearly two weeks in a row. It's been kind of grizzly the past 10 days or so between deadlines, illness, "female timing" and all the rest. Thanks to Hillary for giving me a gentle reminder on Elisa's music thread, and my sincerest apologies!

This is not a metaphorical question. Or, maybe it is, but it’s mostly a literal question. I’ve mentioned before, repeatedly, that I garden. Given that I can’t judge my skills, maybe I should say that I mess around in the dirt and nice vegetables are often the result.  Much to my ... shall we say bemusement, I find that I’m not alone – and, in fact, I even be, say it softly, trendy.  At least the New York Times tells me so, and as a child of the east coast, there is always something to that.

Kitchen gardens are as old as the first hunter-gatherers who decided to settle down and watch the seeds grow. Walled medieval gardens protected carefully tended herbs, greens and fruit trees from marauders, both human and animal. The American colonists planted gardens as soon as they could, sowing seeds brought from Europe.

Call them survivor gardens.

Now, they are being discovered by a new generation of people who worry about just what is in that bag of spinach and how much fuel was consumed to grow it and to fly it a thousand miles.

Gardening is something I’ve almost always done; my mother maintained what we called the  “victory garden” – a large rectangle picked out of a jungle-y overgrowth in the  second half of our backyard. We grew a regular selection of summer veg over the years, a project that only died out when I hit, say, 8 or so and my mom’s work hours stepped up. With that experience in my background, it was inevitable that I’d start a garden whenever I ended up with a house with some kind of backyard. Plus, having an active child like Jess means that anything I can do that gets us outside and working is probably going to work very well. The challenge for me here in Melbourne is a.) we live in a townhouse with a 5x7 square metre (16x22 square foot) backyard, most of it paved with garden beds around the edge, giving me probably around 16 square feet of total arable land; b.)we’re in the midst of a multi-year drought with tough water restrictions.

In another symbolic boost for women in leadership positions, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has appointed a woman, fellow Queenslander Quentin Bryce. Bryce will be the first woman in 107 years to take the position. The governor general is the last vestigial reminder that Australia is nominally ruled by the British monarchy – under the 1091 Australian constitution, the governor general is the queen’s representative in the country. From this article in The Age:

QUENTIN BRYCE, who will be Australia's first female governor-general, declared yesterday: "It's a great day for Australian women."

The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said Ms Bryce would capture "the spirit of modern Australia" in the vice-regal position.

Mr Rudd said he expected Ms Bryce would use her role to give a voice to women, people from the bush and indigenous Australians. Asked about the significance of appointing a woman to the position for the first time, he said: "It's taken us 107 years. It's been a while but it's good that it's happened."

This is an open thread for those who are training for a race of any shape or kind. Post your training regime for this week and come back to report on your progress. Got a question on training, walking, running, biking, swimming or anything to do with race preparation? Post it here - someone will know the answer!

Ladies, in addition to the weekly round-up of intended activity, I need your help. My iPod playlist is feeling a tad tired and I need inspiration! What are your top three favs on your list - new music especially appreciated. I've got tons of Madonna, Scissor Sisters, Amy Winehouse, Springsteen, Rolling Stones, Pearl Jam etc., etc. Thanks!

It's the weekend. I'm feeling giddy. And Nerve.com have put out an article called The 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time. Complete with clips from various sources. Hooray!

Consider the list - SNL, Monty Python, French & Saunders, Kids in the Hall and treasure the best that Anglo-American comedy can produce. My favorite five on the list, in no particular order of preference:

The Monty Python stuff - Spanish Inquisition, Ministry of Silly Walks, Dead Parrot... can't go wrong; Celebrity Jeopardy, SNL. Darryl Hammond's Sean Connery imitation? Priceless! "Then I'm cock of the walk!"

I'm a bit miffed that there's not more stuff from Gilda Radner's SNL period - the lady was a comic genius. But all in all, not bad. So ladies, what are your top five favorite comedy sketches? Any that this article missed? Enjoy a good belly laugh and happy weekend!

This is one of those perennial issues in parenting life, and not the first time we’ve addressed it on MT – Erika wrote about a similar incident with little Maya in 2006. So forgive the redundancy, but here goes.

I originally wanted to title this "My Daughter Got Bitten!" because really, that’s what this is all about. Briefly, when I went to pick Jess up from crèche on Thursday afternoon, she was teary-eyed and had an ice pack on her left arm. She ran up to me and announced, "[boy’s name – redacted] bit me, Mummy!" The teacher came up very upset and said that she and Jessica had been sitting on a soft cushion calmly, the teacher got up to check a child, and the instant her back was turned, this kid came up and took a chomp out of Jessica’s upper arm. The skin isn’t broken, but there is a perfect impression of this kid’s upper and lower teeth on her skin, and 12 hours later, it’s become a nasty bruise.  

I was shocked but not surprised at the culprit; Jessica, as verbal as she is, has mentioned two or three times that this particular boy has either pushed or slapped her in the past. I’ve also witnessed this boy’s aggression in the classroom; he has pushed kids around for no apparent reason (ie, the victim wasn’t taking things, or shoving, or whatever) when I’ve picked up or dropped Jessica off.  Each time Jessica has mentioned an incident, I’ve pulled the classroom teacher aside and expressed my concern about this boy’s actions and that I don’t want Jess becoming afraid of this child or learning that aggressive behaviour is acceptable in a group situation.

This is an open thread for those who are training for a race of any shape or kind. Post your training regime for this week and come back to report on your progress. Got a question on training, walking, running, biking, swimming or anything to do with race preparation? Post it here - someone will know the answer!

A number of our dear MTs are expecting babies in April - Littlepear, SwissClogs, Minnmom and Rocky, to name those I'm aware of. How about a baby pool to guess who's having what, when? I know from previous posts that SwissClogs is at 38 weeks with #2, but gave birth to DD at 36 weeks. Littlepear is 37 weeks, but at her last OB appointment, the little fella hadn't gone head down yet. Soooo... based on that, I'll say based on order of who's going to give birth first:

SwissClogs
Littlepear
Rocky
Minnmom

Any takers?! And who else is out there with babies due this month?