Vacation... kinda

Sorry I've been away! I went on a family vacation (without my family). I was invited to go with my best friend and some of her family on a camping weekend. It was a blast! I don't have any pictures though, sad face. I kept forgetting to take them and when I would remember we would be doing something way away from my camera.

My best friend's family, or at least the part that came with us, are major alcoholics. Which calls for a great time. They get up at 8am and open a beer and then drink until the crack of dawn. I tried to keep up but I just can't stay awake that long. I tried a couple times to outlast some people but every time I went to bed, around 2-3 am, there was still at least five other people completely awake.

I'm still finding bug bites on me, last I counted I had 13.

On another subject, I went from being awesome at sticking to my training schedule to not exercising at all. I knew that I was going on this vaca thing and wasn't going to run so I ran everyday last week (nearly). Then I got back and haven't ran at all! I know! I keep telling myself I'm going to but just can't talk myself into it. If my sister was here I would be all over it but trying to motivate myself is not working. I'm going to try for tonight and see what happens.

I also signed up for 2 races in the next couple months. First is the Milestone 10K. They actually made this race specifically for people training for the Savannah Rock N Roll. It is half way though "training" and they have the 10K and a half so whether you are training for the full or the half you have a nice little run to test your training out on.

Then I also signed up for this Gladiator Rock and Run thing.

One of my friends is getting together a team and I decided to join. I did a Muddy Buddy earlier this year and thought it was fun so I figured I would give this a shot. I'm excited and can't wait for all the runninf packed fun I'm going to have!

oh, and I just realized that today is my year anniversary for getting out of the Navy!

New Shoes?

I've been seriously considering going to get my gait checked out. I've never really been a firm believer in needing this done because when I first started running I thought that I wasn't a serious enough runner to do it. Than after running my first half I decided that I had no issues with the shoes I have so obviously it is pointless cause I did fine in my none gait oriented shoes. Lately however I've been having some issues. Mainly blisters. The shoes I've been using are relatively new (as in less than 6 months) so I don't know why I would be getting blisters in them now. It is about time I start considering myself a runner.

I saw this in a postsecret I was looking through and it made me kinda sad.

Running a marathon is no joke (I wouldn't do it). It made me feel bad because doing something like that is amazing. Only 1% of people ever run a marathon and to be so upset about the way you look that you don't wanna share the joy of accomplishing it with people you know is saddening. I really hope that whoever wrote this is in a better place now and can share the story without feeling like people will judge them.

Plank you very much

I was supposed to get up Saturday morning and go running with my American Cancer Society group but, I slept through my alarm.  So I got up this morning (later than I wanted to because again, I slept through my alarm). I made it out to Lake Mayer anyways and started on my what was supposed to be 4 mile run. I don't know what was wrong but I was just not feeling it today. I ended up quitting before I even hit the 1.5 mile mark. I was kinda mad about it so convinced myself to finish 1.5 miles and as soon as I got that went on to convince myself to just go a head and do 2 miles. The last half a mile was not going well. I felt like I was running around 9:30 min/mile but according to my handy dandy Garmin was only going 10:40 min/mile. Which was disappointing because I normally run around 10:20 and I felt like I was going to die doing the 10:40. Oh well, not everyday can be an awesome run. I got out there and tried and that's all that matters. 

On to the important stuff... I bought this the other day...

If you haven't seen it I would recommend it. I'm a huge JenAn fan. It wasn't as funny as 21 Jump Street (if you haven't seen that one, rent it while you're at it), but it was still pretty funny. 

I also started reading this.

I like the movie so I thought I would give the book a try. I know, this is going to sound dumb but I'm going to say it anyways... I think I like the book better than the movie. Yup, I pointed out the obvious. You are welcome. The character Marcus is a lot more likable in the book, which I think makes the story more interesting. 

Back on to the good stuff aka my awesome workout routine. I was this article online the other day about a 6-week plank challenge. I thought, "hey I need to work on my core, I'm going to try it". So Starting today I'm going to be letting y'all into my awesome planking life (sorry Tebow fans, I don't think that counts as exercise). I changed up the rules a little because I didn't quit like what they had going but it's still the same concept. I started by holding a plank as long as I could. This is what I got.

I'm going to be doing 3 sets of planks everyday slowly increasing the seconds I hold until the end of the 6 weeks. At the end I'm going to hold a plank as long as I can and see if my time goes up at all. I'm hoping to get up to 2 minutes. That's my goal. Hopefully along with the extra seconds I'll also have a nicer stomach. I'll post some pictures later on of my abs fat so y'all can see the progress I make. 

Anyone ever try anything like this before? If so, how did it go?

Wish me luck!

Tin Man

Since walking for 8+ hours on Sunday I had decided to take Monday off from running to recover. When Tuesday rolled around however I still wasn't feeling the love from my feet. Yesterday though, I told myself that I would at least try.

It's weird how much you can miss running.

I went out planning on running around 3 miles but quit after 2. My legs were still tight from all the walking I did. When I normally start out running my legs feel a little stiff but loosen up after a minute or two.  Yesterday though, they did not. The whole time I was running I felt like I needed some WD-40 to get everything working properly. 

I plan on running 3 miles today and hopefully since yesterday my legs have decided that they are going to join me for the run.

 On another subject, I was crusing around pintrest and found this awesome reciepe.

Egg Muffins

I was so excited about it that I went right out to Kroger and got all the ingredients and went to work.  They were super easy to make and come out looking really cute. I wouldn't say they taste amazing or anything. They just taste like egg. But they are pretty handy because you can make a bunch at once and than put the rest in the fridge for later. I was a little iffy about this cause I'm kinda picky about what I reheat, but this morning I tried em out for my self and they tasted the same as they did when I made em. 

Give it a try! If you like egg you won't be disappointed!

Walking a Marathon

Thursday I went to Barnes and Noble, which if you know me can get pretty serious. I normally go there for one or two books and end up leaving having spent $100 plus after 5 hours of being there. Well, it happened again. I did impress myself a little though. I put back like 3 books. Go me! When I buy books that have sequels  I try and buy the whole series that way I don't have to worry about going to get the next book when I finish and it not being there. I convinced myself otherwise. I still bought WAY to many books.

I did do a good job of getting a variety. I've been reading tons of good things about Born To Run so I thought I would try it out. My roommate and I were watching Something Borrowed the other day and I thought that the movie was pretty sad and figured the book would be even sadder so decided to torture myself by buying it. Sometimes a good cry over a book is completely necessary. The others were pretty random buys. I just walked around and read a bunch and decided on the others.

Right now I'm reading The Guardian by Nicholas Sparks. I'm about half way through with it and I like it. It hasn't gotten sad or anything yet but the story is interesting enough to keep me wanting to read more. I heard that it was one of his better books. I'll let ya know what I think when I finish. 

Yesterday I was trying to raise money for the American Cancer Society by walking around the park that I run at from sun up to sun down. I got out there at 6:30am and was not doing to hot on getting donations. Most people would wish me luck but not donate. I had an awesome sign that I wore so people would know what I was doing. 

I kept a tally of my laps so people would have an idea plus I had my handy dandy garmin with me. I knew he wasn't going to last that long though, that's another reason why I kept track of my laps, so when he died I would still know about how far I had gone. 

I didn't make it much further than that. I think I did one more lap after this gave out. I had some blisters on my feet and they were causing me to walk funny which made my ankle hurt. I tried to hobble though and actually get to 26 miles but I can up short at 24. I decided that injuring myself and not being able to run would be stupid just to walk a marathon. 

My ankle still hurts but I've been icing it and I don't plan on running on it till it feels better. Hopefully it'll feel fine tomorrow. I don't see how I could've seriously hurt it by just walking. But I guess we'll find out later! 

Did you do anything fun this weekend? Ever wanted to walk a marathon? I wouldn't suggest it.

Kick to the face!

I wish I had an awesome July 4th story to tell but... my life is boring. Where I live there are always TONS MILLIONS a handful of people here for the holidays. I guess Tybee Island is popular or something? News to me. I went down to the beach last year to watch the fireworks but it took us 4 hours to get home. If you have never been to Tybee, there in a 2 lane bridge going on and off the island. So, when holidays come around and everyone wants to go to the beach the road backs up pretty bad. We (my roommates and me) didn't want to put up with that this year so we skipped out on the awesomeness.

My sister and me did go out to the beach the next morning though to help with the beach clean up. It wasn't nearly as dirty as I thought it was going to be. We cleaned it up for a bit and then decided that we were going to go for a nice run along the beach. 

It was sunny so I don't know why it looks overcast in my picture... weird.

The last couple times I've ran I noticed that my calves are not playing nice. That being said, I can up with a sort of solution.

Compression!

I've worn them 2 night in a row and I feel like that are helping. The last time I went to run it took half the time for my calves to join me on my run skip around the park.

The other day after my sister and I finished our run and were getting in the car I noticed this huge slightly smaller than huge spider on the roof of my car. I HATE spiders.

So, I see this spider on the roof of my car and panic. Mainly because I don't want to get bitten and end up like Peter Parker but also because I have an old convertible and I know that the spider can run right under roof and be IN the car. I'm looking around trying to find something to kill this horrible being and there is nothing. The spider starts to run toward the safe haven that is inside my car and I can only do one thing at that point... show that bitch who's boss! I lifted my leg and smashed him with my super awesome kick to his face. My sister watched this whole thing unfold and all she could say afterwards was "I've never seen you kick that high before." yup, what can I say, when my life is in danger, anything can happen.

Did anyone do anything entertaining for the 4th?

Mid Year Resolutions

Geez, I've been meaning to get on here and update but for some reason I just feel like I don't have anytime. But don't worry! With it being the middle of the year, we have Mid Year Resolutions to think about! YAY! I don't actually do this, I just thought that it is half way through the year and people who do make resolutions should be checkin themselves to keep on track. I am not one of those people. Not that I'm better than anyone else but I do know me and I know that making one isn't going to make me try harder to accomplish anything. With that being said... my MYR are as follows:

1. Finish watching the office. I'm on season 5 and think I have a great shot at finishing it this year.

2. Run a half marathon. Half way there... I signed up to run the Rock 'n Roll Savannah half with the American Cancer Society in memory of my Great Aunt Frances. I'm trying to raise money for cancer research so yall should stop by my page and give a little love (aka money).

My American Cancer Society Donation Page

3.  Ride my bike more.

4. Finish the Fifty Shades series. I have about 200 pages left on the last book. Go me!

Man, I know what yall are thinking, this list is crazy hard easy. Yea, that's the point. Why would you make a goal that might not happen. I say, if you are going to make goals, make sure you can accomplish them. Your life will be less depressing if ya do.

Do you have any NYR's that your getting close to finishing?

Good luck to everyone with your resolutions! I'll try and keep ya'll up to date with how mine are going.

Stats + pre-calc = no free time

As I mentioned earlier, I just started my second term of the summer and I have 2 math classes. I didn't think it was going to be a big deal until my pre-calc teacher decided he was going to kill everyone with tons of homework. Every night this week I've spent 5+ hours working on homework, and not even finishing it all! 

Everyone in class cornered him yesterday and he was nice about everything and cut some our homework in half. Thank God. 

I've been running with my sister for the last 2 weeks and it's going awesome. We are keeping our runs around 10 min/mile. Which I love. After training for my half in April I realized that I couldn't run fast at all. So my goal in running lately has been to up my pace. It is working perfectly. When I first started running with my sister I wanted to kill myself and we were hangin' around 10:30 min/mile. Now we run somewhere in between 9:30-10 min/mile. I still wanna kill myself during the run but not until the end of it.

Today is going to be a test for me. My sister is going to a wedding this weekend so I have to run by myself. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up that great pace! 

I ordered a bunch of new running shorts and the best thing is that they were on sale! I like the Nike Tempos but they cost around $32. I found some on the Nike website that were on sale for $20. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance to get em. I decided to get a wider variety of colors and am very happy with the ones I got.

And I still have one more pair coming!

Do you have any running gear that you love? or do you run in whatever is around?

Busy Day

Yesterday was the start of the 2nd summer term and a very busy day for me. I made the awesome decision to take 2 math classes together. So yesterday I pretty much spent all day doing math. It was AWESOME! 

Aside from that, I actually had a list of stuff that I wanted to get done and finished everything. For me, this is a miracle. I normally make to-do lists and then proceed to either lose them or just ignore them.

After class I headed over to Goodwill to drop off some clothes. I am very much attached to clothes and refuse to give them away. I feel like as soon as I give them up, I want to wear them. But I sucked it up and dropped em off.

After that I went to a tattoo shop and got my ear pierced.

I had been wanting another one for some time and finally decided on this one. So instead of putting it off I just went and took care of it. I figured I was out and about anyways.

Next stop was the textbook store. I had been meaning (for the last year) to sell back my old school books but kept putting it off. I loaded them all up in a book bag and took em to the store. I'm glad I did cause I got this ginormous stack of benjis jackies!

When I was on pintrest, I saw this good idea to help motivate weight loss. Being the person I am, I decided to give it a try. I stopped by the local arts and crafts tore and got this stuff.

You put how ever many rocks that equal the amount of weight you want to lose in one jar and as you lose the weight you transfer them over into the other jar. I thought it was a really good idea, and now I'm putting it to the test. Since my one jar was kinda dinky with nothing in it, I put a couple in there since I have been very slowly losing weight this year. Plus, I wanted more rocks to make it look nicer. I'll let ya know how well the system works!

Kroger was my last stop. I had been putting it off all weekend but caved in and got some normal food. I had to make pancakes this weekend for breakfast cause we were out of everything else.

After I got home, it was time to work on my math homework. I didn't think it was going to take that long but I spent 80 4 hours working on it until I just gave up. I got most of it done though.

 I'm thankful that yesterday was a rest day for me. If I would've had to squeeze in running with everything else I did, I probably would've pulled a Demi Lovato... just sayin.

Did anyone else have a crazy Monday?

Full of Fifty

Being the awesome totally boring person I am, my weekend was pretty dull. I had to work from 1-8 on Saturday and Sunday. Which means that I didn't do anything when I wasn't at work. My sister and me tried to catch up on The Office cause I just recently got into it, and we also ran on Sunday after work. I ran Saturday morning without her but with my training group. It was our first group run and I was a little nervous but it was fun. My sister had talked me into running Friday night (which I wasn't going to do since I was running with my group the next morning, but what can I say... I'm easily persuaded. Needless to say, when Saturday morning came I wanted to kill myself. I was going to do 2 laps, aka 30 mins of running, but chickened out after only a lap. Better than nothing though! I also noticed this...

I've ran everyday this past week except for Monday. I think it's pretty good. I'm not going to do that again though. I have a training schedule that started Saturday so I'm going to follow that and use it as an excuse to not run everyday.

While I was at work I noticed the google doddle and decided to try and crack the code. Did anyone else have fun with that? I did, mainly cause I was at work and had nothing better to do but it was a good way to pass the time. 

Loads of fun.

After I played with that for WAY to long I got my Fifty on.

My roommate has already finished the series and I'm trying to play catch up. I will admit, I'm not a big fan of the books. Don't get me wrong, they aren't horrible, but they aren't that...um... awesome. I mean, I paid for the books so I'm going to read them but I don't feel like I just can't put them down. I'm fine with reading a chapter and than wondering off into space for the next 3 hours. I started on the last book this weekend and it is my favorite of the three by far. 

Have you read the series yet? Any other good series that you love to read?

I love reading and have tons of books. This meme is completely me.

I had to limit myself on how many books I can buy in a month. I go into Barnes and Noble for one book and end up spending 3 hours and over $100. It's a disease really.

Call me Picasso

Since I cleaned out my closet I had a couple things I needed to bring to our storage unit to get out of my way. I loaded them up on the back of my car and got rid of em.

Doesn't look like a lot but since all of that stuff was in my closet and my closet is as big as a crescent it took up a lot of room.

 After dropping 'em off, I got home and set everything up so I could start work on my master piece (and ate lunch).

Nothing tastier than a bologna sandwich and some Whales.

I think I like Whales better than Goldfish. Not that Goldfish are bad but Whales are saltier and I think I like it.

I was worried I was going to run out a paint. I bought a tube of each color but once I started paining I realized that it was going to be a close one. I did the brown ones first and than when I started the green ones found out a better way to paint so I didn't end up using as much and had some green left over.

After they all dried I hung 'em up on my wall.

I like the way they look but at the same time lookin' at 'em kinda hurts my eyes. But they look nice so that's all that matters!

Project Time

I ran this morning. YAY. I planned on running 3 miles but by the time I got out of bed and got ready it was hot as crap outside. I did a faster 1.5 miles and called it good.

After my rub I ran some errands so I could finally finish cleaning my room. I realized that it's hard to clean and rearrange when you don't have anything to put stuff in. So, I ran to wal-mart to get some big clear buckets and then decided that I wanted to hang some art on my wall. I stopped by this place to pick up some paints and some blank canvases. 

After going to my last class for this term I came home and wanted to read up on Fifty Shades Darker but convinced myself that my room had been a Pigpen for long enough.

After an hour or so of cleaning I finally finished!

It looks so much nicer! I am super proud of myself. I still have some artwork that I need to work on to hang on the walls but other than that I shouldn't have to worry about doing any deep rearranging anytime soon. 

Ketchup

I've been slackin lately... surprise surprise right? Or not. I'm going to update and the last couple days and then do another post about yesterday to get me back on track. 

I ran with my sister after I got off of work Sunday and Tuesday. I was worried that she was going to run way faster than me but we pretty much ran the same speed. Mainly cause I wanted to try and keep up with her so I pushed myself more than I normally do. 

I decided a couple days ago that I was going to crazy clean my room.  My closet was a mess so I went on a mission to fix it up and make it look all pretty. I forgot to take a picture of my closet before I fixed it all up but I did take this picture of what my room looked like while I was trying to rearrange everything.

I know! It looks like a Tasmanian Devil came through and destroyed the place.

Change of subject... I went to Kroger to pick up some normal groceries and found this...

 It is AMAZING!

I also saw this and HAD to buy it...

MMmmMmmm... watermelon... so good.

For a update for the past couple days I realized that this is kinda bad but a lot of stuff I forgot to take pictures of or I just feel like I don't need to go over EVERYTHING. If I could just remember to do this every day this would work better and my life would seem boring crazy awesome.

Sorry Vampires! I'm out of order.

Last week I gave up coffee because I planned on giving platelets on Saturday morning and I have low iron. The last time I tried to give blood and my iron was too low the doc told me that caffeine hinders your body from absorbing iron.  Something I didn't know or I wouldn't have taken my iron pills with my coffee EVERY morning. Oh well... no big deal. I went out, bought come vitamin C (cause that helps your body absorb it) and I'll lay off the coffee the week prior so I get a good intake of iron. I was SO sleepy all week it was horrible. I only drink a small cup of coffee in the morning and I never really thought it did anything until I stopped drinking it. Anyways, I go in to give and am COMPLETELY confident that I'll be able to... 11.7?!?! what?!?! how is my iron THAT low! I take iron pills three times a day with vitamin C and I laid off all caffeine! I was SO.... sad. I really tried my hardest and still came up short. When they pricked my second finger that reading was a little higher, 12.2, but the minimum is 12.5 so it still wasn't going to work  :(. I really love giving blood and it sucks that I just can't even seem to win. I finally decided last night that I'm giving up. No more trying, I guess I was just not meant to share my awesomeness. So, this morning when I woke up I got this first thing...

A nice cup o' Joe. I've very excited.

While I was listening to my Backstreet Boys radio on Pandora, this song came on...

WHAT?! I LOVE Pandora but sometime it's kinda off. How does Lil Jon fit into the 90's boy band genre? I have no idea. Even though I didn't thumbs up it I did listen because this song remind me of the movie The Proposal with  Sandra Bullock and this hot guy...

Thanks Google Images!

After that I think I need a shower...

Lazy McChunky Pants

So, I haven't posted on this thing in a hot minute. Mainly because I've been lazy. Leastly (not even a word) cause I've had a lot of school work to do. Being that I haven't post in a while I'll do a quick catch up on what not cool in any way awesome things I've been up to.

I tried one of these...

Which was good but not as awesome as I thought it was going to be.

This was crawling around in my house.

A tiny crab...  they are everywhere are our apt complex.

The crazy awesome guy my dad is got me these.

nothin' more to say about that!

and lastly... since my roommates are gone for the weekend. I made myself some hotcakes and they were amazing!

Smoothie!

Yesterday was pretty boring. I didn't really do anything remotely interesting. After my Spanish class I went for a run. I was trying to update my running journal and realized that my counter on here was off. Adjusting the numbers made me feel like the worst runner ever. So, I planned on changing that. I started out and was going to do 2 fast miles but gave up (pretty much) after the first mile. I decided to walk a little bit and then run fast again for another mile but a quarter mile into that run I gave up. It was SUPER hot out. When I started running it was hot but overcast and kinda raining. By the time I started my second mile, all that had gone away and the awesome sun was out.

I decided that since my run went so horrible I was going to come home and hop on my bike for some exercise. Which is a lot easier in the hot sun. I finished up a 15 mile ride and then came home to take care of this issue...

Now I'm down to one container of bananas and almost done with the strawberries! YAY! In the process of making this I decided that I was going to take a bit out of one of the bananas cause I heard that frozen bananas taste like ice cream.... true story. It was amazing! I think I'm going to eat all my bananas like that from now on! Anyways, I piled everything into the blender and it went to work.

It's three bananas, a handful of strawberries, milk, and some yogurt. 

The end result was a little thinker than I normally make them but I think it had something to do with the fact that I didn't let the fruit thaw before I mixed it all up. It ended up being like a triple thick shake. Still good in my book!

Muddy Buddy!

So this isn't going to be some HUGE post about how organized the people were or anything but I did want to post more pictures and since I needed to catch up on 800 millions days in the last post I didn't want to make it any longer by including this.

So as I mentioned earlier my friend wanted to dress up ( which I thought was an awesome idea). So, we ended up on dressing up as Robin Sparkles and Jessica Glitter. This meant that we pretty much just dress up like kids from Saved By The Bell aka early 90s. Which again, I am completely fine with. I wish this style would come back crazy hard core.

Our awesome jackets that we got a goodwill. We stayed up the night before to bedazzle em. I think they turned out pretty good.

When we saw this mud pit. Ana and I decided that we weren't going to be like the people that slowly walk through it and barely get muddy at all. We were like... it's called muddy buddy for a reason... to get muddy. So we both agreed that when it was our time to go through we were going on a rampage.

start line

one of the walls we had to climb over

The course was really nice... VERY hilly though. I'll admit, we walked pretty much the whole time. We weren't really in it for the time though. We had WAY to many clothes on to be trying to do it at a crazy fast pace. Plus, I haven't been running as much as I should and I'm sure Ana has done none.

So by the time we made it to the mud pit... my awesome friend let me ump in with a vengeance while she just stayed back and took her sweet time.

I tried to go back and get her more muddy but thought that if she really didn't want to I wasn't going to force her. I ate a nice piece of dirt right after this picture. I had a good time, mud and all. I would do another one but the next time I think I wanna do one that's a little more hard core. Like the Warrior Dash series or Tough Mudder. It was a blast though!

Gettin' all the mud off was not...