The Sister Has Spoken

She responded! My sister responded to my CHALLENGE (you can read her response here) and when I called her tonight she said she would make a decision by this weekend! Yayayayay! I'm so excited to hear what she says!


I'm also excited because I get to see my fiance this weekend! He told me he'd help me find training plans and running success stories to inundate (oh, man, I love that word but I don't know how to spell it!) her inbox with to help her make a decision.


I'm a little nervous because although I have a ticket to Virginia (Sam and I are meeting there to attend his fraternity brother's wedding) I'm going to try to go standby on an earlier flight...this means I'll have to carry on my luggage. Firstly, I never carry anything in the airport except my purse because I am really irresponsible and sincerely hate keeping track of a ton of stuff. Secondly, I'm a chronic overpacker and have been my whole life. Even in high school I took between 3 and 4 pairs of underwear and at least 3 pairs of shoes just to spend the night at my best friends' houses. My new carry-on suitcase is about the size of what I normally pack my face/hair stuff in!

Anyway, enough babblings...I'll take pictures this week AND keep you updated on my packing AND (most importantly!) let you know what my sister decides! :-)

CHALLENGE

I am hereby challenging my sister, Amanda at Serenity Now, to train for and FINISH the Disney Princess Half Marathon with me on Sunday, March 7, 2010.

She recently wrote this post about running because I had the {amazing} idea to get all my bridesmaids to run a 5K with me before the bachelorette party. Sadly, I can't find a race in Virginia that is convenient to all the other things going on that weekend AND all the girls' schedule.

BUT THEN SOMETHING AMAZING HAPPENED! I was watching television the other day and saw this girl wearing a wonderful pink shirt kissing a medal hanging around her neck that looked like a tiara...I watched as the screen panned out and holey moley there was Cinderella's castle as the lady on the commercial invited me to a princess weekend at Disneyland! I never knew there was such a thing! aldfa;lfjj!

Anyway, here are the reasons that this is an amazing idea for my sister and I to plan for/train for/save money for this amazing princess-y event:

1. It's something to look forward to...everyone needs something to look forward to!
2. It's my birthday weekend and you could race with me as a present (You're cheap, you admit it, it's ok.)
3. We can get in better shape so that,
4. We will look amazing in our new PINK SHIRTS
5. Family vacay afterwards?
6. We can be a team and get our names on our bibs!
7. You can blog about it!
8. Mom will pay your entry fee (heh heh she doesn't know this yet, but I'll break it to her tonight.)
9. It's only 13.1 miles and regardless of if it takes 2 or 6 hours - it will feel so good to do it!

So, here it is Manda - do you accept my challenge?!?!?!

{Picture is from DisneyWorldSports.com}

This could be us (but you can wear the heinous pink running skirt :-)

Chaskis 8K

Yesterday I met Stacey bright and early to run the Chaskis 8K in Helotes and then walk around the festival after. I was really nervous because since I have been getting used to Crossfit workouts - I haven't run more than a half mile in almost a month. For anyone that has never run with me - I am SLOW. My dream times are usually 10min/mile paces but what I make for my goals are usually around 11 or 12. Today being my first run back I decided to make my goal 60 minutes (a pretty generous time for 4.96 miles!) I walked through the water stops (something Sam taught me a while ago) and definitely walked up this monster hill on the third mile but other than that I jogged/ran the whole thing! And in less than my goal time! According to my Garmin (one of the best investments I ever made) I ran 5.07 miles in 56:36. Stacey, of course, was gone and out of my site within 2 miles and finished the race in about 40 minutes (she is really, really fast.)




Afterwards we walked around the festival until Stace had to leave for puppy class with Sugar. We found out the festival is actually a recurring thing that happens every first Saturday and we are definitely going back! I bought Sam some Strawberry Habenero preserves from a fruit stand man and myself a scallop squash because I've never seen them before and the vegetable man said they were delish.







Question: Has anyone ever done Team in Training or a similar marathon/half-marathon training program? Stacey and I were thinking about doing one but wanted some advice...

Peeves.

As in pets. Pet peeves. Today my preceptor at work must have said at least three times "that's one of my biggest pet peeves." (She was of course talking about impatient, needy surgeons that constantly point out the 5 seconds it took to fetch whatever it is they asked for adds up to hours over the course of their careers - that's annoying.) Anyway, once the surgery got started and I was just wandering around the operating room (I was too short to see the surgical field and the video monitors were turned away from me) I started thinking about my own pet peeves. I actually narrowed it down to five (and not surprisingly most of them have to do with driving.)

1. Very slow drivers in the very fast lane. What the alajkdfl;adjfl; do you think it's called the fast lane for!?!? I have been followed by a black cloud of curse words all the way to and from work several times over the past 3 years of driving in San Antonio because of these slow people making me sooooo furious!


2. People decelerating on the highway instead of in the deceleration lane. Samuel has been the victim of my wrath over this many times...please turn on your blinker and negotiate your vehicle into the deceleration lane in order to slow down and turn. (P.S. I actually don't even know if that's the real name of this turning lane or if that's how you spell it...it may just be that Samuel has feared correcting me when I start yelling about it:-)


3. People who do not do the customary "thank you" wave after you do something nice for them on the road. If I slow down and let you merge in or I stop traffic in order to let you turn across an intersection - just let me see your hand give a little wave, it's not hard.


4. My fourth pet peeve is when people in apartment complexes (I don't live in a house) do not put their dogs on leashes. THE SIGN SAYS KEEP YOUR DOG ON THE LEASH AT ALL TIMES. I love my sweet baby Amber Judith but she's rude and has bad manners and when someone's poodle comes rushing around the corner baring it's teeth - someone's gonna lose an eye or part of an ear and it's probably not my junk yard baby!


5. My last and final and perhaps my worst peeve is when people make comments about other people's food. "Wow, you ate all that?" or "What is that? It smells weird." are just not nice things to say...maybe I'm weird but I've been known to throw away a whole meal because someone made me really self-conscious about the smell/amount/look of what I was lunching on!

Ok, wow, I sound so rude! Haha..help me out here, what are some of your biggest pet peeves? I've made the next 24 hours judgement free - you can say whatever bothers you and there will be no judgement or consequences (plus it will make me feel better for complaing so much.) Sometimes, like a good cry or scream at the top of your lungs, it just feels so good to let it all out:-)

{Just for grins - and because I love blogs with pictures - this is a picture of my Amber with her Stacey's cat, Oreo}

Cross what?

If you name a trendy exercise class/group/video I can probably tell you exactly what it is, how many times I've done it, why I hate it and why I quit. It's no secret I've spent the last 6 years of my life trying, trying, and trying again to find some form of sweaty exercise goodness that I actually liked and could stick with.

I tried joining a gym but found myself just walking from machine to machine gently touching them, eventually going so far as to actually sit on them and attempt to read the directions...but usually just getting onto a treadmill until I felt adequately sweaty and never actually working out. I even hired a trainer at one point but we ended up chatting on the mats about movies/relationships/anything but working out and I never actually got a work out from that either.

Next I tried BodyPump which was a group workout of circuit training using weights. I actually enjoyed the class but it was at weird times for my schedule so I always found an excuse not to go.

Eventually, I convinced myself that since I liked dancing perhaps I might like to try a fitness dance class or some step aerobics. The people I saw from the gym window always looked like they were having so much fun! It took me all of 20 minutes to "get a drink of water" and just never come back...the steps were way too complicated and made even more so because I don't know my right from left without some serious thinking.

Last but not least - there was running. I want to be a runner SO BAD but it's just so damn hard. Not only that but I'm so self conscious running on the sidewalk. In my mind people in their cars wondering if the lumbering girl they're driving past is having a seizure or exercising and the folks on their front porches are thinking that perhaps they should stop trimming the hedges and offer me CPR or supplemental oxygen.

I could continue to go on and on about my exercise endeavors. There was the time that Stacey and I decided tennis was a good workout and bought raquets, skirts, and tennis balls (only to use them twice.) Then there was swimming which meant a new bathing suit and goggles that I only wore once. Not to mention spinning (my butt STILL hurts from that seat!) and Bikram Yoga (too expensive.) I could have started to get discouraged buuuuuuuuuut...

{***drumroll please***}

I found CROSSFIT!!!! I officially think I found my workout love. Crossfit is a workout I tried while in Iraq (it was the trendy thing to do after work) but absolutely despised it. I swore I'd never go again because I hated the jumping jacks, jumping rope, and jumping onto/off of boxes.

Recently, however, I decided to try again and holy moley am I glad that I did! Turns out the workouts I did in Iraq were just poor imitations of the actual Crossfit. It should be more like boot camp and less like step aerobics with some jump rope laced in.

My motivation in trying again was figuring out that our wedding is now less than 100 days away (gotta get rid of the chicken breasts hanging from my underarms!) combined with the fact that the Alamo Crossfit gym was literally 100 yards from my front door. I have been made to run, lift weights, use a rowing machine, and do squats until it feels like my butt will just fall right off (a good feeling, actually) alongside other people of every weight/age/fitness level you can imagine.

{This is not me, obvi, but an example of an exercise.}

I was DREADING going to the first day I signed up for Crossfit. Once I got there it was even worse when I looked around and saw the fit/cut/ripped/hard-core people. I started thinking, "no one knows me, I could run out right now." I even started coming up with alternate routes I could drive to and from my house so that I would never again have to drive by the gym.

BUT I DIDN'T LEAVE. I didn't do what I normally do and bail out and make an excuse. I almost died the first workout (and still come close to death almost every time) but I feel different this time. I look forward to going to see what I can push myself to do that day. I love feeling so tired it takes me 20 minutes to walk the 1/2 block home to my house. I love being so sore I have to use the handicapped bars to make it up the staircase. If you have a Crossfit gym around you - TRY IT! I'll be writing more about my adventures at the gym...and in the meantime - go try a workout and let me know how it goes! You won't regret it:-)

DISCLAIMER: It's now been 2 weeks and I have yet to tire of this place...check with me in 2 more weeks and we'll see if it's still as great as I currently think it is;-)

Don't knock 'em til you tried 'em!

So, like I mentioned in my last post, I've been experiementing lately with different things in my diet and exercise routine. I've been reading lots of blogs and articles and recently read that Jillian from The Biggest Loser said (something close to/that sounded like,) "If it didn't have a mother or you can't grow it - you shouldn't be eating it." This stuck with me and got me thinking...Hmmmm...Doritoes do not have a mother, nor do they grow on trees. Poptarts and McDonald's Spicy McChickens do not have mothers and I don't believe there is a McChicken tree that I am unaware of. (I guess technically, yes you could argue that there IS parts of chicken in the McChicken. However, I'm going with the "spirit of the law" in this case and though I love McChickens dearly, I fully believe that the "chicken" is just beaks and toenails...which don't count in either the "mothered" or the "grown" categories. But I digress...) Anyway, I decided to try some healthier cooking - which led me to today's experiement - healthy french fries!

I tried this recipe (from Hungry-Girl.com) for "Butternut Squash Fries" tonight. I recently bought the Hungry-Girl cookbook too and it's pretty awesome. Almost all the recipes are for 1 or 2 serving dishes which is sooooo great for me (who is always complaining about how every recipe out there is written for families of 6.)

Butternut Squash Fries
- Take a Butternut Squash (I had to read the labels on the vegetables at H.E.B. to find this because I had never seen one before.) This is what it looks like:




















- Preheat oven to 400 degrees
- Cut the ends off the squash and then cut it in half
- Using a peeler, remove the skin
- Cut the squash into french fry-esque looking slices
- Arrange on a cookie sheet sprayed with cooking spray
- Quickly spray the tops of the squash with cooking spray and then sprinkle with salt or your favorite seasonings (I used salt but next time will go for some Cajun Seasoning Salt or some Crab Seasoning.)
- Bake in oven for 40 minutes, flipping the fries halfway through

Here is (someone else's) a picture of what the squash fries really do look like when you're done:

















I was pretty amazed at how close to steak fries these actually tasted. You can eat a HUGE serving of them for around 110 calories too. I had a meatless "chicken" patty on an English muffin with them and it was pretty tasty, I'm not gonna lie. Try 'em out and let me know what you think!

DISCLAIMER: I will NEVER EVER give up my frozen ice cream bars or my weekly dinners out with the girls...but really, seriously, that's just asking way too much :-)

I'm coming back...I swear it!

I've been MIA for a while (that term just seems grossly inappropriate after Boo was in Iraq for 15 months...but for lack of a better term at 5am, "missing in action" it is!) Anyway, I started my new job in the operating room, moved to a new apartment across town (still unpacking! doh!) and have been experiementing with food/drink/exercise nonstop for a couple weeks now.

I religiously keep up with a few blogs that have truly inspired me to do/try different things. Gina, Jenna, Angela, and Danika each have a fun, friendly, and really inspiring blog about health, eating and/or running/exercise. I wanted to put in a plug for my favorite blogger ladies (because while I haven't been writing, they have and they are brilliant!) and let you know that AFTER this weekend (I'm going home to see my Boo, my family, and tie up some wedding ends) I'll be back and with updates on all my new endeavors! Happy Humpday :-)