Friday Fav's

TGIF, it has been a loooooooong week!
I have lot's of things to be happy about though and in the spirit of being thankful, here goes:


Preschool! not for me, for him.  It gives him a chance to burn off some energy and he learns a lot of new things.  My daughter gets to play with toys without them constantly being snatched away and I get 3 1/2 hours of uninterrupted work. 

Smoothies! Especially when I get to drink them out of my Atlanta Marathon cup!  It's really cold so I have on a sweater, jacket, and scarf so I can drink it and not freeze! Weird?

 And remember how I wanted to bake something sweet? Well that very day my neighbor brought over these babies!  Amazing! She makes the most amazing cakes and cupcakes, I am such a cake snob now and cannot eat anything but her cakes!  They're gorgeous too... she is super talented.  She has a cake business Cake's Caboodle

 She did my son's and daughter's birthday cakes:

Aren't they amazing?!?!?!  You like the the shadow of me standing over the cake taking a picture!

I've got ridic photography skills (with my iphone)

Anyways she is local to Atlanta, too bad for you guys!  I've got all of my friends hooked.  Since I only have 2 kids and that means cake like this only twice a year I had to make sure all of my friends with kids got cakes from them too.  So now it works out that I get to eat it at least once a month! #winning.

I plan of running 15 miles tomorrow... My longest run in 2 weeks.

Happy Friday!

An extra hour of sleep it is not...

Fall back has not been good to me.
Although my kids still goto sleep at the same time each night they have been waking up exactly one hour earlier every day.
I like waking up and having it actually be light out, but I hate that it's dark by 6 pm, it really shortens the day. 

I've been running almost my normal running schedule. I have noticed that after some longer runs I get sore, that didn't used to happen. I am assuming it is because I didn't allow enough rest time after the marathon.  I just don't know how I'll feel to run a half two weeks from now. 
I ran Saturday morning on a beautiful trail that follows the Chattahoochee River, it was cold but warmed up nicely after about an hour.  The fall leaves were beautiful and littered the and the river had a light fog over it. I wish I would have remembered to take pictures. This one is from the Silver Come Trail. 

Where did the Year go?

Seriously, where is it?
The older I get the faster time goes by.
I cannot believe it is already November. I'm excited for the Holiday's they seem to take on new meaning once you have kids. Right now my kids are young enough that it's still enjoyable.

I've been consistently running for a little over a year now, I know to most of you that's nothing, but prior to this I literally couldn't run more than a mile at a time (I was a walk/run girl/ elliptical lover). I'm so excited for the future as far as running goes I can't wait to see more progress and get more and more races under my belt. I have a lot to learn as far as running goes, I'm still navigating race day fueling (I suck at it right now), speedwork (I hate it right now), finding the perfect shoe (maybe next pair?), and actually sticking to a training schedule.

I ran 4 miles on Wednesday at a 9 min pace and felt great, ab work too. I did a circuit training exercise video and ran 5.5 miles at an 8:40 pace and am really hurting today. I don't know if it was the running or the jump squats but my knees are just not happy. I'm going to take today off from running, I'm running with my running group on Saturday morning and I need fresh legs.
Atlanta has a Thanksgiving half marathon and I REALLY want to run it. I've got a couple things holding me back though:

1. price. It's $75 and I don't know if it's worth it.
2. It's Thanksgiving and I don't know if I want to drag my poor family out (plus it could be super duper cold)
3. My husband is having a procedure on his leg on Tuesday, It's outpatient, no biggie, but who knows how he will feel.

I'm really unsure, but I think if I don't do that I at least want to do a 5k or 10k.

What are your plans for the weekend?
I don't have any (except for my Saturday run) I'm thinking a day trip, but where???

Do you love Christmas music?
I LOVE it. I adore Trans Siberian Railroad and I actually had some on my playlist for my marathon.

Have a great weekend! Good luck to those running RnR Savannah and NYC!

Atlanta Marathon Recap

The race started at 7:00 am. and as I said earlier I woke up at 5:30, that was not the start to race morning I was hoping for. I had coffee and nothing else (not a good fueling plan) my stomach just wasn't up to it, not eating seemed like the lesser of 2 evils. It was cold and I was glad to arrive late because that meant less time standing around in the cold. I wore shorts, compression socks, a long sleeve dri-fit, with a sports bra and sleeveless tank underneath (just in case I got hot). Once we started running I warmed up pretty quickly, except for my hands. My hands were cold for most of the race. They were red and swollen and completely numb. I think I have bad circulation.
The first few miles were a blur. It was dark, I hadn't really grasped that I was running 26.2 miles yet.
I had no plan as far as paces or a goal time. My training didn't go as planned and my paces were all over the place. I planned to run by feel and just hope for the best.
I hit the half way mark at 1:57, but it was all down hill from there (time wise). I stopped to use the bathroom at mile 16 and lost a ton of time. Between trying to rush, my handheld, my head phones that kept falling out of my ears, I was a mess. I was trying to be quick and ended up taking like 3 minutes. I didn't want to put my hand held down!
I took gels at mile 5, 9, 14, and 20. But, I didn't eat breakfast or a whole lot the night before and I think it really affected how I felt. I've really never felt so fatigued, I wanted to sit down and rest!
After the 18 mile mark I got very emotional. Someone in the cheer zone was speaking and he said:
"This isn't your first run, you've been training for months. It's not easy, it hurts, but today
YOU will finish a marathon!"

That's the first time I realized I was going to finish a marathon! I didn't care about the time, I just wanted to finish!
I started to get very emotional the rest of the way. I went back and forth between wanting to cry because I was tired to being excited about finishing a marathon.
My right knee and ankle really started to hurt the last few miles. All of that treadmill training did not adequately prepare my body for running 26.2 miles on the road. The soft surface of the treadmill is great and I love it, but I think when I run outside it really takes a greater toll on my body. I did most of my long runs outside, but my last 20 miler was at the Silver comet trail and there are no hills there!
As I was rounding the last corner to the finish my hubby and kids were there cheering me on. It was a great surprise I gave them high five's and finished my first marathon in 4:18:21.
Here are the stats:
Overall Place
483 of 1124
Gender Place
138 of 427
Age Division Place
35 of 86

I'm still on a runner's high and can't wait to run another race. It was a great experience and I wouldn't change anything about it. I learned a lot and know training wise I have a lot of room for improvement and that's exciting, I can't wait till the next one!
I'm already signed up for the Publix Georgia marathon in March and I think I'm going to do the St. Louis one in April. We have a half for Thanksgiving, I would love to run it, but I'm not sure what our Thanksgiving plans are yet.

I'm so thankful for all of the blogger's out there. I love reading the race recaps and I am so motivated by everyone's honesty and running talents.
I don't have any race day photos. Well actually I do, but I don't plan on buying them and I can't save them to the pc. Oh well...

I can't wait to read everyone's (who's running it) NY reacap!!!

My First Marathon (Reflections)

It's Fall, that means I dye my hair darker. I'm just festive like that.

Sunday 10/30, I ran my first marathon.
I'll post a recap later, but I want to get down ALL of the events leading up to it before I forget.
The week leading up to the marathon was supposed to be relaxation and carb loading, with a couple easy runs peppered in. It was anything but.
We had two pretty major family things happen, one on my side and one on my husbands, that kind of left the marathon in the back of my mind, with so much else to focus on.
I didn't really intend to carb load, as in I wasn't going to do difficult math problems calculating carb ratios etc...
I did plan to eat more carbs a couple days leading up to the race though. What actually happened is all of the stress really did a number on my appetite and I had to force myself to eat the little bit that I did.
Race morning was COLD. I had set my alarm for 4:45 am with intentions to leave around 5:45 for the 7 am start time. I overslept. I woke up and my phone said it was 5:27, I almost died!
I drank my coffee threw on my clothes and got to the race. I waited in the (thankfully not too long line) for the port-o-potty and had to hop one of those barriers to get to the start.
I didn't feel like running. I wasn't nervous, excited, or even tired. I just didn't want to run. I think all of the emotionally draining events from the week just left too mentally tired to think about running 26.2 miles.
I got it together though and started feeling pretty good a few miles in.
More on that when I do the recap.

After the race I left pretty quickly, I had to take my son to a birthday party.
I was sore and I'm still sore. I have never been in so much pain from running.
My right knee hurts, when I bend it, it takes a couple minutes to straighten it back out. My ankles hurt, even my wrist hurts from the way I was carrying my water bottle the whole time.
I definitely did not anticipate hurting this much. Trick-or-Treating with the kids will definitely be a "treat" for me later on. Having kids is awesome, it means I get to trick-or-treat again and I get to dress them up however I want!


Happy Halloween!

Less Than a Week To Go!!!!

Yep, I have less than a week to marathon #1.
Just 3 more runs...
So far the weather looks perfect.
It's funny it seems that everything falls on the same weekend. We can go an entire month without any weekend plans and than one weekend we have a ton of stuff to cram in. I should have expected it this time, Halloween is Monday so there are lots of things to be done. (besides a marathon).

Last weeks runs were more of the same:
Monday - 4.5 miles (8 min pace) + abs
Tuesday - 4 miles (8:44) + strength
Wednesday - 7.13 (8:25)
Thursday - 5.47 (8:25) + strength
Saturday - 8.04 (8:27)

The "vegan" week went well. I even made vegan pumpkin bars.
I don't eat a lot of meat and don't think I am going to cut it out permanently.
I don't think my body reacts well to dairy. It's hard to completely cut out dairy because it is in so many things. However, I don't drink cow's milk and will continue with that and I've stopped eating yogurt (I was never a big yogurt fan anyway).
Cheese is tough because I LOVE pizza. So I'm not willing to cut that out... maybe cut it down, but not out.

All of this food talk is making me hungry!
I can't believe I'm going to run a marathon this weekend!!!! It's the waking up at 4:30 am part that's hard for me! I'm always so scared of over sleeping!

Have a happy Monday!

Vegan for a week?

Can we do it?
Over the past 6 months we've cut down on meat. We would eat fish and chicken once a week and vegetarian the rest of the time. We never eat meat at breakfast or dinner. For the past month or 2 I've been trying to cut down on dairy (mostly for my kids) because hubby and I aren't milk drinker's or yogurt eater's. So the next step is to completely cut out meat and dairy this week and to see how we do. I also want to try and cut out gluten, but one thing at a time. I want to say this is a lifestyle change, however, I doubt that this will be permanent. I want to see if we feel different
Last night we had salad, parsnip fries, roasted turnips, and asparagus. It was great, these are all foods we eat regardless. I'm not going to try anything new just more of the veggies we currently eat and none of the meat or dairy.
I think lunches will be the most difficult because the kids usually eat yogurt and a cheese sandwich for lunch... so any ideas would be great!!!

Moving on....

Last week was my first week of taper and I can honestly say it was the best week of running I've had in months.
I was excited about the 4 mile weekday runs instead of dreading the 9 mile weekday runs from before.
This weekend was only 12 miles... ONLY! I can't believe 12 miles seems like a short run.
Here's the breakdown:
Monday - 4 miles (8:07 avg pace) + abs + 30 day shred
Tuesday - 4 miles (8:05 avg pace) + upper boday
Wednesday - 7.10 miles (8:27 avg pace)
Thursday - 3.56 miles (8:26 avg pace) + full body
Saturday - 12.61 miles (8:48 avg pace)

This week will be similar to last week.
I'm craving pizza.

Questions:
What do you eat?

Do you like to taper?
This is my first time, but I think I like it!!!