I'm Back!!!!

Heidi

 

 

So I know it has been a few months since I have posted anything on here.  I started my Princess Glass Slipper Challenge posts but then just stopped.  I am not sure why.  I think I was just a little tired of being injured and dealing with running and the horrible weather.  Since Princess, I have run The Hot Chocolate Race, The Hershey 10k and now Broad Street 10 Miler is on Sunday.  I am very excited for Broad Street!!   We also went to Boston to watch Kristen's husband run what else...The Boston Marathon.  That was extremely fun and inspirational.  More to come on that trip. 

 

I will finish my race reports in the next few days.  Kristen did a great recap of the Hot Chocolate Race.  Not a lot I can add to that one...plus she stole a couple of my photos.  Ha Ha. Until then,  let me tell you about what has been going on here in Southern Chester County.

 

So as  I have said before, when Kristen and I were watching the Disney Marathon back in January 2013, we made big plans.  I had never even run more than a 5k at this point, mind you.  So we saw all of the fast runners come in waiting for her husband.  When he left to go shower, my husband, Kristen and I went into Epcot to watch the rest of the runners.  We decided to have a few beers while watching.  That always makes for good planning.  We saw the end of the marathon.  I was like, "we can run this!!"  So the plan was hatched.  The year 2013 and 2014 were for getting ready and running half marathons.  Then in January 2015, we would run our first marathon.  RIGHT KRISTEN?????

 

So sign ups for the Disney Marathon, Half Marathon, 10k and 5k and The Dopey and Goofy Challenges started on Tuesday.  Everything is sold out except for the Marathon and Goofy Challenge which is the marathon and half marathon.  Guess who signed up???  ME!!  (and my friend April who has already run one marathon.)  And KRISTEN you ask??  Why didn't she sign up yet you ask??  Well here is the story.

 

You see, a few months ago Kristen decided to sign up for a marathon (without me I might add) in May...Memorial Day Weekend.  She started training.  The weather hasn't been the best for training here in PA and she was following a tough training plan.  As you probably already know, she has been somewhat injured.  Strangely enough, it is sort of the same injury as what I have been fighting for months.  Weird.  Anyway, she now doesn't know if she is running this marathon.  Although today I had to come to her rescue and give her some water and a GU while she was out on her long run.  So maybe that ship hasn't sailed yet.  Now Kristen doesn't want to sign up for Disney or any race until she knows she can run it.  Well KRISTEN....it might be sold out before you decide this nonsense.  Just saying.  So now she has deviated from our plan not once, but twice.  I do not want to run this marathon without the other Grumpy Runner.  I have almost convinced my friend, Heather, to run it though.  She did her first 10k in Hershey two weeks ago.  She should be fine for a marathon, don't you think??  Ha Ha.  You will Heather, I promise!!! 

 

Anyway, so if you all could kindly let Kristen know that she will be fine for a marathon in January, I would much appreciate it.  I mean what better place to run a marathon  but Disney?? 

 

Only it will say 2015...

(courtesy  of the Internet somewhere and RunDisney)

 

 

In all fairness, when we were in Boston and drinking a few Sam Adams' 26.2 beers I did let her off the hook and say we could do it in 2016 instead.  But then all these people were signing up and I didn't want to put it off another year.   So back to the original plan!!  Ha Ha 

 

All of the best plans start with this...  ha ha.

 

 

 

Other than that big news, nothing else is really going on here.  I ran 8 miles on Saturday to get ready for Broad Street.  I haven' run more than 6.2 miles since Princess.  Well it was a very long 8 miles.  And I got a huge blister for the first time in 2.25 years of running.  Broad Street might be a bit ugly for me but as usual, I am determined to do it.  So that is it for now.  The race reports will be posted soon.  Oh and thank you Kristen for keeping up the blog while I took a break.

 



Hot Chocolate Run

Kristen

Race season has begun-FINALLY! Having done a fair amount of races, I will start by saying-this may be my FAVORITE race ever!  But let me start at the beginning...

Over the winter, during one of our endless snow days, Heidi invited all the neighbors over for drinks and sledding.  It was a fun afternoon and we got to talking about how it was the last day to sign up for the Hot Chocolate Run and still get a free mug.  We all became instantly panicked.  I was planning on running this race with my kids anyway, because I think its fun and also its a great way to spend time as a family.  It doesn't hurt that exercise is involved.

 

Anyway, we all raced home from Heidi's and signed up for the race that night and then promptly put it out of our heads.  The packet pick-up was at Philadelphia Runner-a cool little running store about 45 minutes from where we live.  Or you could travel into Philadelphia to another Philadelphia Runner store.  I volunteered to drive everyone and then go to lunch at Harvest-a delicious farm to table restaurant.  I really thought that we would have to wait a long time for our bibs, but we walked in and walked out again in no time flat.  One of the easiest packet pick-ups I have ever done, though apparently I didn't sign up properly and didn't get free mugs anyway!  A delicious lunch did not hurt things either!

My poor daughter broke her foot a few weeks ago so sadly she couldn't join us on this family outing.  She was happy for the great new sweatshirt that they give all race participants.  We again set up a carpool for Sunday morning and were pulling out of our neighborhood at 5:20-as close to leaving on time as we've ever been.  We were 3/4 of the way to Philly when I got a text from Amy asking if I had brought Emma's bib?  I had been trying to give it away for weeks with no takers.  That morning, I decided to bring it along just in case.  So glad I did.  A certain someone had no idea they needed a bib to race.  I was quite happy to share and may have laughed a little at this persons expense.

It was the little guys first race!  He did an awesome job!

We got to Philly a little later than planned-we had at most 30 minutes to race time and we had a hike from the garage to the start.  No worries though, we made it in time.  We split from our group and hung out for a few minutes and before you knew it we were off.  I ran with my oldest.  He tried his best to train beforehand, but we still did a lot of running/walking.  His whole mission in life was to beat his brother who did catch up to us at the halfway point and this made the oldest work all the harder.  He was about to give up in the last one-tenth of a mile-it was a slight incline and he wanted to walk.  I told him his brother was catching up so he took off for the finish line-whatever works!

 

After we were all done, we headed over to the post-race snack area.  It was beautiful-a cup of hot chocolate and a mug filled with fondue and snacks.  We were all in heaven.  We sat near a fountain enjoying our delicious treat and waited for all the others to join us and share their race stories.  We finished our celebration with a run up the Art Museum steps-the steps Rocky runs up in case you were wondering and then a group photo with Rocky himself.  The beauty of racing is we were still home by 10:30 with a full day in front of us!

 

 

Fast Metabolism Diet-Week 2

Kristen

I made it through the first week!  Overall I lost 3 pounds which is super exciting!  I did not follow the plan down to the final detail but overall I am happy with how I ate and really who wouldn't be happy about losing 3 pounds.  Week 2 starts today and I have a few things to tweak for the coming week, mainly because I think I have my running injury under control and I need to start logging some major miles if I have any chance at running a marathon at the end of May-pray for me!

Well, sadly I feel off the diet for the day.  I ran 16 miles and my FMD breakfast did not in any way give me the energy I needed for 16.  I have A LOT of miles to run between now and the end of May, so I think I'm going to need to change things up.  16 miles is the furthest I've run ever, but when I got home yesterday it took quite a while to get to the point where I felt "normal".  In fact I felt sort of sick and there was no way I was going to eat on point.  I will keep you posted on what I decide to do, but I will say that I have my sugar cravings under control and I feel much better energy-wise than I did a week ago.  

FMD-Day 7

Kristen

I almost can't believe I made it through the first week.  I won't lie-it's hard drastically changing the way you eat.  Food is a social past-time.  The benefits to this way of eating though, far outweigh the costs.  I am dreading the weekend when I am back on phase 2, but with a week under my belt, I can go into it with a bit of knowledge on how to easier get through it.

On the bright side, I lost .8 pound!  I am down 3 pounds for the week.  The last time I lost 3 pounds in one week was when I brought my son home from the hospital and I was flushing out all my fluids-so this is very exciting!

My breakfast this morning was eggs, spinach and onion with an apple.  Sadly, I didn't have a sprouted grain wrap because I used the last one for dinner last night.  I really wanted a piece of toast or something-stood in front of the frig contemplating it for quite awhile, but thankfully I decided that eating eggs off my plate would have to do.  And it was fine.

I went for a 6 mile run this morning.  Besides a lingering knee problem, my run felt great and I wished I could have gone further, but I didn't want to over do things.  After my run I made another fruit/veg smoothie.  This time I also added a pear-very yummy. 

Lunch consisted of leftover chili-thank goodness for this meal-I could eat it all the time.  Clearly I have been eating it all the time!  I forgot to pack my afternoon snack and suffered all afternoon because of it.  There is a reason there are 2 snacks built into the day.  It also didn't help that I ran and was absolutely famished!

When I finally got home, I immediately made dinner-a can of green beans and rice spaghetti leftovers.  These were frozen from the week before and I wouldn't recommend freezing.  Rice noodles do not freeze nearly as well as regular pasta.  I was so hungry I really didn't care though.

Sadly I didn't have a big salad today, but I'm getting very low on produce of all kinds.  I generally avoid the grocery store until it becomes an emergency-tomorrow will be that day.  I'll re-stock and re-evaluate what I like about the week and make a few changes for the coming week.

FMD-Day 6-It really is starting to get easier...

Kristen

I again did not lose any weight, but I feel as if I am catching on to this whole healthy eating thing.  I always thought that I ate fairly healthy, but nothing like this.  I have so much more energy and just feel better.  Normally, if I sit down to read with the kids in the afternoon, it's all I can do not to fall asleep.  I read to my daughter for almost an hour yesterday and didn't even think about being tired.  So the fact that I am not losing weight-not awesome, but the other benefits are outweighing it all.

Breakfast today was 2 eggs, spinach, and onion in a sprouted grain wrap and an apple on the side.  This is really a delicious and filling breakfast.  I was talking to my bff later and she was telling me about this smoothie she's been making that just fills her up.  It didn't completely fit into FMD, but I decided to give it a try anyway because it sounds so good and it's quite healthy so not a total loss.  I used 1/3 of a peeled cucumber, a nice big chunk of pineapple and a splash of OJ-abolutely heavenly! It did fill me up, which is really all I am looking for in life. 

My lunch was leftover chili-I could eat this for every meal!  I made another smoothie as my afternoon snack-same ingredients.  I was hungry by dinner, but it really was not appealing to me at all when I ate.  I had a chicken and veggie wrap and nice big salad to round out the meal.  I did not eat any fruit because I probably had enough with my smoothies.  The meal was filling, but it wasn't really what I was looking for in life. 

Overall,  a fairly successful day and besides a sugar craving here and there, it really does seem to be a bit easier.

FMD-Day 5-The day I can eat again

Kristen

Thank goodness the weekend is over!  Phase 2 is really hard, partly due to the fact that I do not like to eat a whole lot of meat.  And really vegetables for that matter-joking!

Anyway, I'm guessing that due to the protein bar I did not lose any weight.  I'm not overly upset by this, but I feel like I starved for no reason, so we will see how the next few days go.  Today is a great day though, because I can again eat carbs and for the first time in 5 days fats are also added in-I can't wait!

I did not eat breakfast right away, and then when I did get around to it, I was a bit too hungry.  Life happens people.  Anyway, it ranks up there as one of the single most delicious meals of my life-that's what Phase 2 does to a body.  I had 2 eggs with onion, spinach, and olive oil in a sprouted grain wrap and an apple as my dessert.

One thing I have also noticed is my lack of overeating-another bonus to this diet I suppose.  I'm so concerned with staying on point that I don't dare put extra food in my mouth.  You are allowed to eat as many vegetables as you like, but I'm not that person who goes in search of extra vegetables.

I was avoiding my morning snack, because I wasn't thrilled with my choices-vegetable and fat/protein.  Hummus is what Heidi normally has, which I was pretty excited about.  Hummus and vegetable not so much.  Hummus and crackers/pretzels?  Yes please!  I pulled myself together and cut up a carrot and drowned it in hummus and it really wasn't so bad.  Maybe there is something to this eating healthy...

My lunch was chili and avocado-again delicious, rounded out with nice fresh pineapple.  I spent an hour on the trainer in the basement.  I repeated my hummus/carrot snack-not quite as tasty and also added in a few nuts as my afternoon snack. 

Dinner left me feeling hungry and unsatisfied.  I had a big salad and quite honestly it is now Wed. and I have no idea what else I ate.  I just remember being annoyed by what I was eating.

FMD-Day 4

Kristen

Well, happily, I lost 1 pound!!  I have to admit that this is very motivating and the ONLY thing that keeps me going.  So far, in 4 days, I have lost 2.2 pounds, which is unheard of loss for me.  I will try to remember this as I eat meat and vegetables all day...

I did not eat breakfast in the first 30 minutes of waking up, it was more like the first 60.  I had 3 eggs, spinach and onions.  Actually pretty tasty.  I know I am only supposed to use egg whites, but I'm a rebel and used the whole egg, partly because I knew how hungry I was yesterday, partly because I HATE wasting food.

I did not get my morning snack in because I was right smack in the middle of church.  I was starving by the time it was over.  I came home and got lunch ready and boiled eggs.  I might as well get started on my salad rather than continuing to be hungry.  My salad was enormous.  Sadly, though I was tired of eating, I left the table not feeling satisfied or full.  It could be a long afternoon.

After about an hour of feeling as if I didn't eat lunch I caved and ate a delicious protein bar.  The thought of being hungry all afternoon and only being able to eat meat was not going to make for a fun Sunday.  The protein bar worked it's magic and I could take my mind off food for a few hours.

Dinner rolled around and I couldn't wait to be done eating for the day.  I had leftover steak with onions and peppers.  To satiate myself, I had a small amount of rice.  Again I left the table feeling very unsatisfied.  My husband is running Boston in 3 weeks and he had done 18 miles that day so he was starving.  He told me as soon as the kids went to bed he was going to have a nice big bowl of ice-cream.  I told him that I would not be seeing him back downstairs because I couldn't stand to watch him eat something so delicious.  Thank goodness Phase 2 is over!!