Three Things Thursday

1. The H has been following some super intense 90 day workout stuff, like a P90X type program. I originally bought it AGES ago, when I thought it would be a nice compliment to the 10-15 miles a week I was running. Turns out, running 30-40 mile weeks, it's way less interesting. Also, it looked really hard and unfun. Anyway, he's about 70 days in, and... man. It works.

And, since yesterday was cross training day, and he was doing arms/chest, I decided to join him!

I've been pretty regularly doing some arm program I have on an app on my phone (so it MUST be legit...), and thought it was okay.

And last night, doing the DVD stuff, I was like, eh. This is a little hard, but not terrible.
But this morning? Hello, triceps. Ouch.

Verrrrrrrry tricky, DVD. Very tricky.


2. Our weather has been glorious and cool for a few days. Today? High around 80. By Saturday and Sunday (when I'm supposed to run 5 and 20 miles, respectively)? High 90. WHAT IS THAT, SO CAL?? Stop being so rude.

I had grand cooking plans, involving empenada dough and beef stew this weekend. Out the window, I guess. Rude.


3. Tuesday night, after an arduous day at the office (not really), a hard run (really), then having to go to the store, and FINALLY getting home around 8, I step out of my car, and almost right on top of a damn giant vicious BUG.


I told the girls, and #2 and #3 wanted to go laugh at me check it out. After some net wrangling....
The H captured it so we could all glare look at it...

VICIOUS

...before releasing it back into the wild. RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY CAR. I'm telling you, getting to my car the next morning, in the dark, was terrifying. Something that looks like that surely holds a grudge.

Gotta run the bad runs to appreciate the good?

Or something like that?

I don't know.

All I know, is last night when I got home, I posted this on Daily Mile...



I know. Is that the WHINIEST thing ever? LAME.

It just sucked.

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I have a race tomorrow, wheeeee. This is normally the part where I feel all cocky and make crazy goals.

Goal A: 1:01:xx
Goal B: PR. <-- my current PR is 1:06:05.
Goal C: Don't puke.

I had this plan to shoot for sub-60. The way I have felt this week, I just dunno that it's reasonable. We'll see. I'll keep it in the back of my head and see how I feel, I guess. That #($!*# "Conditioning" class has sucked the life out of my legs. Maybe they'll feel fully recovered tomorrow. It is possible. Plus, it's THAT time of the month, and blah. I need to schedule races better.

THIS JUST IN. The H agreed to run with me. Since he's (shhhhh, it's a secret) training for his first half (!!!!), this will be his long slow run for the week, and his long slow pace should be just about where I want my 10K race pace to be....... so..... this might change things. *****************************************************
Team Gab! Lesley's Team Gab Virtual Race recap link HERE - 13.9 miles, on trails. She's so badass.

Heather at Go Girl Go ran the ING Miami Half Marathon with Team Gab, link to her recap HERE.

Team Gab officially broke $3,000 in fundraising this week.

Thank you!!!

Aaaaaand, the winner of the giveaway this week....

Congrats, T! Check out the prizes and let me know which one you'd like!


Good luck this weekend, Princess runners. I hate you all, but just a little bit. I hate missing out on things.

Happy Birthday, guy.

Today is The H's birthday.

He's pretty fabulous.

He babysits for my friends so we can frolic at expos together in kidless peace.

He never, ever complains about my ridiculous racing schedules. Or ridiculous racing ensembles.

And sends me to Denver to hang out for a weekend with my BFF and BFF?

I was stumped about his birthday gift. I mean, what do you do for that guy?

So, The H, I am giving you free reign to buy WHATEVER THING YOU WANT.

I know you've been eyeballing some bikes, and some tv's. But I also know you like the thrill of the hunt and finding the best steal you can...

So go for it. I pinky promise I won't pick on you, laugh at you, side-eye you, or otherwise obnoxious-thing at you.

Because you're pretty rad.

The Confessional... Friday Funnies included

Looking for more ways to find balance during the holidays? Click HERE for 281 FitFluential Tips!

1. Hey, remember MONTHS ago when I went to a concert? Rest assured, world, my Evan Dando obsession lives on. This song is my current repeat fave:


Lyrics HERE. (Confession: I play an Evan Dando mix on youtube all.day.long.) (Confession 2: Man, he's pretty) (Confession 3: I just gave him his own tag. ON MY BLOG. TOO MUCH)

2. We're 9 days out from Christmas. Have you finished shopping?! (Confession: I haven't)

3. I'm very, very excited to run tonight. (Confession: I'm equally feeling like I might lazy-talk myself out of it... it's been 6 weeks since I ran regularly!)

4. I haven't really posted about this much, but! Gabby is being granted a wish through the Make a Wish program. I talked about our meeting with the Wish Granter's briefly HERE. We heard back from the document coordinator this week, and they are hard at work on her wish.... TO DISNEY WORLD! Her official wish was to "meet Cinderella in the giant castle far away, because Cinderella is so beautiful". So, pretty much the cutest thing EVER. (Confession: I tried very, very hard to not influence her wish with my very obvious bias towards all things Disney - I succeeded, but #1 may have been busily showing her youtube videos of Disney World....)

Yeah, those are patent knee high boots. I don't know. (Confession 2: I obviously need to clean out our pile o' shoes, but I won't)

5. My mom flew away last night. The girls had SO much fun with her visit.

(Confession: I did more in the last 10 days in SoCal than I've done in a year. Lame)

6. I love that RunRacing lets you customize your bibs... I may have done this to the H...

He's just about as pleased as he seems in that picture.. (Confession: None, I don't feel bad) (The bibs made more sense when I was Mrs. Awesome. #1 was Awesome #1. I wrecked the whole party with Jerk Shin)

7. Yeah, she's sleeping like that. No commentary needed.

(Sorry, #2)

Racing is a spectator sport. Holiday Half 5K Recap...

Saturday morning, I woke everyone up bright and early for the Holiday Half 5K, that started at 8am.

Oh, except it didn't. It started at 9. So, sorry, family, for making you get out of your toasty warm beds and wait outside in the freezing cold for an extra hour. Sorry 'bout that....

I talked The H, #1, and my BFF and her husband into running the 5K with me, months ago. And then this happened, and I jumped over to the Half Marathon instead, which worked well logistically, because I could babysit my friend's Shady Baby.

And then The Shin happened, and none of that mattered 'cause I wasn't running anything. And apparently I also stopped reading schedules to see what time the race started.
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Anyway, Holiday Half is run by Run Racing, the same folks who put on Long Beach Half. Rock n' Roll should take some notes, because Run Racing seem to be experts at putting on pretty seamless events.

The race started right on time...

I kept an eye out for my runners...

while babysitting Shady. I swear she likes me. She just doesn't know it yet.

Spectating makes me look homeless?

After all the runners passed by, I hopped over to the other side to watch the finish line.

Too much, my friend. Too much.

It was a pretty successful day, for everyone. The H finished in 26:52, after having not run much at all (not that I'm jealous...). #1 finished at 26:30, good for third in her AG. She had a rough day out there - I think she wasn't prepared for the cold air, or something; kind of a bummer, based on her last PR she could have placed in the top 3 overall, but whatever. She's rad and I'm proud.

She looked like she was gonna puke after she finished, but 15 minutes later was talking all about how awesome she is going to be next year. PSYCHED.

We had planned on sticking around for the kids' races with #2 and #3, but Gab was still not feeling great, so we bailed on those.

The shirts are NICE, and the medals are rad. #1's AG medal is hanging happily amongst her other AG wins.

I've heard good things about the Half, as well, so I'm extra bummed that I had to miss out. Oh wells. There's always next year.

Guest Post: The H recaps the OC 10K

My notes in purple :)

Hi, I'm the H. Giraffy asked me to do a recap of the random 10k we "ran" over the weekend. I apologize now for not being nearly as brilliant of a writer as my wife. (He’s a liar, he’s funny.)

We signed up for this race a long time ago because it was super cheap and worked well with Giraffy's run schedule. I've never run a 10k, but I was coming along well in the little running that I had been doing. That is until I hurt both of my lower extremities (feet/ankle/tendons/whatever) running one day in June. Which stopped ALL of my running until this race.

My plan was to hang out at the beach while Giraffy ran and maybe take a picture or two of her finishing the race. Unfortunately for me, my legs weren't bugging me when we got there and it was pretty chilly so I decided to run along with her. Giraffy was a little worried that I would just hurt myself more. (it's true; I even tried to give away his chip. No one wanted it. Should have been clue #1....) I was worried that I would be frozen when she returned. (Note: it was 65* and overcast. We are wusses in SoCal)

So she is gracious enough to run with me and the only thing I didn't want to do was slow her down. She may not be faster than me in short bursts, but I have always been the hare to her tortoise when it comes to distance.

7am comes around and the race begins...

And I am kicking butt! My own for starting this race. What was I thinking?! I hadn't run in forever. I had just started to feel better. I'm going to ruin any type of healing I've done because it's cold out! Thankfully Giraffy has her race plan (she always has a plan), and I stick next to her to make sure I'm not dying after three minutes of running.

And just FYI, I felt no real lasting pain.

Mile 1 comes and goes and we're doing pretty well. Mile two is coming up and Giraffy is just starting to get warmed up. But then something else starts to look good too... The sidelines! It's not cold anymore. I've gotten some running in… Already two miles more than I planned on going. I could just sit down at the comfy looking benches until Giraffy comes back around. Perfect! That's what I'll do.

Until I realize we just passed them while I was daydreaming of daydreaming.

Meanwhile, while I'm still heartbroken about missed race skipping opportunities, Giraffy says she's just not feeling it this race. I think the lack of Disney characters and cool blogger buddies has affected her motivation for this race. She's stuck with the H who (she thinks), at any moment, is going to get bored of running at her pace and sprint off ahead of her.

Back to the actual racing. For all our issues with running the race, we actually realize we are going at a nice pace. And now we're halfway done! Woo Hoo! I'm reenergized by this and tell Giraffy that I want to do a faster second half of the race. She laughs at me, but agrees to try anyway. We're doing great till mile four. It quickly became Giraffy is doing great. I'm running on empty. The walk breaks for me are getting longer while Giraffy's appear to be getting astronomically shorter. By mile five she's like "see you later slow poke, I can't be seen with you anymore; you're embarrassing me." (lies, I tried to see if he wanted my handheld, but he turned it down, because, I quote, "I don't think I can lift my arms to hold it". Heh. But I would have stuck around...) I do my best to play catch up, but it's a losing battle. She is now destroying the course, and me in the process! I was so happy just to see the finish line.

Giraffy looks like she's ready to run another 10k, just not here because all we got were a silly little hey you ran today ribbon and a tree in a box. I took one for each of us because it may be fun to watch a tree grow from a box.

But even with all my sucking and the losing to Giraffy it was still a lot of fun to run with her. For the five miles she slowed down for me ;)