The Battle was fought.........did I win??

In November I had the crazy idea to sign up for my FIRST HALF MARATHON!!!! The 1/2 would not take place until February, so I had the best laid training plans and the time to do it.

Well then I had a to go and get a little thing called a Stress Fracture in my foot..... Not a deal breaker, it meant no running for a minimum of six weeks. That is OK, I told myself, I can do the elliptical and keep my endurance up. It worked out that January 1st would be my 1st allowed attempt to run. But I was told to start off slowly maybe start on the treadmill so there would not be so much pounding on my foot.

First let me back up and say that during my recovery time I did not sign up for ANY races, HOWEVER I had already signed up for the annual Turkey Trot, and had convinced quite a few first timers into signing up also. Well I COULDN'T let them down could I? I mean I had already signed up. Luckily, I think, there were a few people that would be walking this 5k, so my theory was that I would walk with them. I had made a promise to my husband that I would NOT run any part of it. I mean he practically made me sign a blood oath.

Unfortunately, the course was on alot of brick roads that had they been level and nice would have been OK, but I am talking crater's in the road at one point and the next mountains. Lets just say that at the finish line(really about 1/2 way to the finish) I realized that this was not one of my better ideas. Can you say EXTREMELY sore foot and not to mention my other leg was killing me, as I apparently tried to compensate and put more weight on that leg most of the 5k.

Are you ready for my excuses....cause that is what they are, not very good ones either. Here they go: So between the holidays, my foot, sore tight quads that led to extreme low back pain---all of this AND my very own private pity party led to VERY POOR training for my 1st 1/2 marathon.

BUT, I finished it!!!! I did it and I was NOT picked up for being soo slow, I was NOT last, they were NOT packing up everything as I was crossing the finish line, and I did NOT fall out on the side of the road crying because I could NOT finish.

My time??? 3:11:20. Was it the time I hoped for when I signed up? NO!!! Was it better than the time I feared??? ABSOFREAKINLOUTLY!!!! I did fine(well as fine as I could) until mile 11. Miles 1-10 were run in a little over 2 hours The last 3.1 were HORRIBLE. I walked the last 3, I was hurting everywhere except the foot that had the stress fracture(my biggest fear) My hips hurt, I had a horrendous cramp starting in my calf, my quads were screaming, but I kept telling myself I would not walk across the finish line. Luckily that .1 started around a building from the finish line, so not a whole bunch of people saw me walking. When I got to the building I managed a sloooooow jog. As I crossed the finish line, my first thought was........ I can NOT wait to do this again with a solid training behind me!!!!

Warrior Dash Recap & Life in general

So, Warrior Dash has come and gone, but life has been soooooo busy that I haven't had a chance to let you guys know how it went. I have Graduation coming up for my son (who knew how much stuff you had to do for that and a party???)

Anyway Warrior Dash was AWESOME!!!!

It was in Georgia, so we loaded up Friday after work and hit the road. My brother did the Dash with me, so it was my husband and I and my brother, his wife and their two kids. I will say I was REALLY nervous about driving for 8-10 hours with a 7 year old and a 5 year old. Those two kids are AWESOME travelers!!! I think we had to take "potty" breaks more for the 4 adults then we did for the kids!! Our hotel was 15 minutes north of the site for the warrior dash, which put our hotel in North Carolina. It was awesome to drive through the town at about 2:30 am and see all of the signs welcoming warriors. We were a little nervous about the hotel, it was not a big chain, so we were hoping that someone would be there to check us in---they weren't but they did leave our keys taped to the lobby door. YEAH!!! My brother and I had stayed awake the whole way so we were ready to crash---but we were also SUPER excited, so needless to say we got there about 3am and were up and ready to go by 9am. I had been looking on the Warrior Dash Website for at least a month and decided we(I decided and told my brother he was doing it) to wear costumes as a majority of the pictures showed everyone all dressed up.


So here we are before the race---My brother was BamBam and I was the warrior in pink. FYI: Those are my warrior shields on my chest

Here are some shots of the crowd





And here is my favorite:

Stay tuned for more photos "during" the race..

Are You a Warrior????

That is the question at the top of the web site for Warrior Dash--here. This is an "event" that I am participating in this weekend. When you finish the race you get this .

But to finish the race you have to run 3.22 miles with "11 obstacles from hell". Some of the obstacles are Knee High Hell, Leap frog, Cliff Hanger, Black Forest, Tunnel of Terror......Well you get the idea. You can see all the obstacles here The final obstacle is the Muddy Mayhem. Oh did I mention one of the Obstacles is jumping over fire????

So now you are probably asking yourself, is this chick crazy?? Well the answer is YES!!! I am SOOOOOOO excited about doing this race!!!!!

This is really supposed to be a "payback" race from my brother. I invited(conned, begged--signed him up without his knowledge) my brother to do a Century ride(100 mile) a couple of months ago. Once he agreed--he sent me an email with the link to Warrior Dash and the title of the email was payback. Well I took one look at the website, immediately signed us both up for it and THEN told my brother that we were doing that also. My brother was seriously thinking that I wouldn't do it. He also didn't think I would sign us both up so that he HAD to do it!!!!

Did I mention that they "encourage" costumes??? Now that you guys are thinking that I am crazy, let me just tell you that I am doing the costume!!! I have NEVER dressed up for a race before!!! I am always in fear of being the only one, or just totally looking like an idiot. Well I figured that everyone doing this race had to be a little nuts, so why not. My sister in law, in her life BC--Before children, worked at Rennasaince Fairs and ran a costume shop. She is VERY creative, can sew, make unbelievable cakes and is just all around crafty!!! ME not so much!!! I am also attempting to get my brother to dress up. We will see how that goes.

So stay tuned for hopefully some really AWESOME pictures from "the CRAZIEST Frickin' day of my life"!!!!!

How do you know????

That is my question....... How do you know when to have a long run? How do you know how long your long run should be? How do you know about tempo runs, and all the other running stuff? I have read soooooo many books/magazines and been on soooo many websites. They all talk about long runs, tempo runs and all of the other "types" of runs, but I have yet to discover the what, when, and the how of all of the different types. I have been almost "stalkerish" on everyone's blog and everyone talks about the "different" runs.

I have always thought of myself as intelligent. I am in no way claiming to be an Einstein, but neither am I stupid. I didn't think so anyway. When I started my running journey, I thought oh this will be easy, everyone can run. Yes, some people run faster and farther than others. I figured that my Asthma would be the most difficult part of running.

So how did you learn about running? Is there a specific book or website, that you went too, or did/do you just run?

Why???

I am "stealing" a question from another blog. The question was "Why do you run?" Well that got me thinking. Why do I run? There are many reasons why I decided to run. So rather than take up a lot of space to answer, I thought I would turn to my own blog to answer.

After being very overweight for the majority of my adult life, and still being overweight even after losing over 100 pounds, I wanted a "different" way to take off the rest of my weight. The first part of my weight loss journey was taken the conventional albeit hard way. I ate less and moved more. I lifted weights 3 days a week and did cardio 3 days a week. Yes I had times when I didn't exercise and I ate all the crap that had me labeled as morbidly obese(wow that is the first time I have ever said or thought about the fact that I was morbidly obese). But the thing that was different this time and made this attempt at weight loss work, was that even when I fell off the wagon I got back up and got right back on track. I was looking at the health/fitness magazines and all of the women with the awesome bodies had some running in their fitness regime. I wanted/want that body.

So I wanted a different "workout". I would never have dreamed that I could run. I had attempted to run a treadmill once and felt like I sounded like a heard of elephants and that everyone in the gym was watching me. To this day I avoid the treadmill like the plague!!!! I LOVE to run outside. I LOVE the way I feel when I am running, the way I feel after I have run. I even LOVE the sweaty smelly clothes that I have to wash after a run!!!! :) I also LOVE what running is doing to/for my body. It may not be changes that everyone can see yet, but I am noticing the changes and hopefully everyone else will soon!

New Year---New Blog

OK, so this is a first for me!! I have NEVER blogged before, but I figured that if even one person follows this blog, then that is one more person I am accountable too!!! So this is going to be a report of my Journey to getting thin!!!! Along this journey I am going to run myself thin.

This blog will chronicle my adventures in life as I "learn" to run. Since the summer of 2009, I have completed a sprint triathlon, a Fight for Air climb up the Bank of America Building in Orlando, a Turkey Trot 5K, a Mistletoe Trot 5K and a Reindeer Run 5K. My ultimate goal is to complete a Marathon and a full Triathlon by the time I am 40 years old. In October 2009 I turned 38 years old. So I have a full year and a half to train for this. So here goes...................