My Birthday Recap Plus......

Good Morning!! First off, thank you for all of the birthday wishes! I did have a great birthday weekend! :) Here's a little recap of my weekend and just some random thoughts that are going through my head....

• Friday hubs called and told me not to look at the bank account because he had just bought my birthday presents. Now, major points for buying them early!! Usually, he waits till the day of to buy anything. :) So, like a good wife, I didn't look at the account!
• After work, he decides that I want to open one of my gifts now. Now, if you know us, you know that we can't wait to exchange gifts - we usually open them the day they're bought! So, keeping tradition... He bought me a 3in1 printer/scanner/copier, an external hard drive, and a Limited Gift Cert! I have the greatest husband! I wanted that 3in1 because I always had to print things at work and I wanted a scanner to scan old pictures and such. Then, I wanted that external hard drive because I have 4 years worth of pictures on my laptop and I was so afraid of losing them. And, we all know why I wanted the Limited Gift Cert! :)
• Saturday morning, I ran 7.15 miles! I felt great and kept my 12:37ish overall pace! I plan to upload my last few runs sometime soon! Now, let me just say that I prefer Carb Boom over Gu! Gu is a little too thick, but I choked it down! Ugh. I might stick with Gu though because their packaging is easier to open while running and the size is smaller than Carb Boom. Which is important, btw, when you're stuffing them in your sports bra because you haven't found a belt that works yet! :) LOL
• My grandma surprised me by stopping by after my run, with a birthday card and some cash! Thank you grandma! She's so sweet. :) Plus, I got a card in the mail from my mom! :)
• My friends left me over 40 Happy Birthday messages on Facebook! Awww!
• Sunday we ventured down to Hot Springs to see the family for my birthday. My MIL made an awesome homemade pizza for my birthday! She does this for birthdays and special occasions and it's so delicious! Also, there was a cake! It had cream cheese icing on it - Yum! You can bet that we took some pizza and cake home! :) Which, is probably why my stomach hates me this morning. Cake is not great for dinner.
• While at Hot Springs, I received some lotion from B&BW, a homemade bag from my neice, and some moolah to go shopping with!!! I'm so excited!!

That just about wraps up my weekend! There was some other fun stuff that I've left out I'm sure, but this post is already too long! Maybe I'll share more during the week! :)

Weight Watcher's Wednesday

I usually don't participate in Weight Watcher's Wednesday, but I tried this recipe last night and had to share it!

Fusilli with Sausage, Spinach, and Peppers

8 oz uncooked fusilli (or bowtie pasta)
8 oz raw turkey sausage, casings removed
10 oz chopped frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
1 cup canned chicken broth (I used one 10.5 oz can)
7 oz canned pimento, drained and chopped
1/2 tsp table salt (I used garlic salt)
1/8 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp dried oregano

Cook pasta according to package instructions.

Crumble sausage into a large nonstick pan. Cook, breaking apart sausage, until no longer pink.
Add spinach, broth, pimentos, salt, pepper, and oregano. Heat to serving temperature (3 to 5 mins). Drain pasta, add to sausage mixture and toss to combine. (I continued to cook it all together for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently.)

4 servings, 7 points each. Yum-o-licious.


In other news, I ran last night with no shin pain, but some back pain. Girls, it's time for new shoes. Today after work, I'm heading over to get the Asics GT-2140. Also, my time was a tad slower, a pace of 12:49 overall for 4.66 miles. Not too shabby, considering the back pain which caused me to look like I had been beatin up and was only running because I was being chased! ha!

A Great 6 Miles!

I met the group on Saturday morning for our 6 mile long run. I was a little uneasy due to the fact that my stomach felt a little heavy with the 7 slices of pizza I ate the night before. (They were small, thin crust slices... ) But, I'm thinking that maybe all those carbs helped me out more than I would've originally thought.....



The run started out pretty well. There are these 2 girls (who knows, they might be older than me) who I play leap frog with quite a bit. Now, usually this wouldn't bother me, but I find one of the girls quite annoying. Why? I'm pretty sure she's making smart remarks every time I pass her and she passes me. Which, btw, one of my friends told me that they do the same thing to her and she over heard them say "Jump complete" when they passed her. How rude. But, I digress... Anyhow, I was determined not to let these girls beat me in the end. I wanted to get past them and stay that way. So, I did my usual 4 & 1 routine and pushed up the hills even though I wanted to stop. All in all, I was feeling pretty good and somehow kept the leap frog girls at bay.


I think the running gods were in my favor. I could breathe pretty well, my legs weren't all that tired, I wasn't being a negative nancy, and my iPod was playing the "right" songs. I was running so well that I didn't even look to see what my pace was at mile 1. To be honest, I forgot. That never happens. I'm obsessed with numbers. So, when I made it to mile 2 and heard my Garmin beep, I looked down to see that I was in the 23 minute range. Holy cow. That hasn't happened ever. Never ever. I think I probably jumped a little when I saw that. So, after that, I was determined to keep doing well. I kept pushing up the hills.


I began getting tired at mile 5, but I knew I had just one more mile to go. My pace had slipped some, but it was still pretty decent for me. And those girls? No where to be found. Ha! Needless to say, I had a great run.. and here's the proof:




Take note of that overall pace. That is the fastest pace I've ever kept for such a long period of time. I think I've kept this pace for 2 miles before, but never 6 miles!! So, ladies, if this wasn't some fluke, I could potentially meet my goal of 2:45 for the Half! But, I'm trying not to get my hopes up. Right now, I just want to make it to the race, injury free. How's that going? Well, I had a very slight pain in my shin and a sharp pain in my foot at the very end of the run. So, I made sure to ice a lot on Saturday and then on Sunday as well. I took yesterday off from running. I was suppose to do 3 miles, but decided not to chance it just yet. I'm also doubling up on my calcium (and vitamin D) and tomorrow I'm going for a new pair of Asics. Which, btw, it saddens me that I can no longer find my GT-2130's and will have to upgrade to the GT-2140's. But, I'll live.
Let's hope that tonights 4.5 miles goes just as well!

Running...Running.. Running!

I've finally gotten my act together and have my running stats uploaded! Yay! So, let's see where we stand... shall we?


July (seems so long ago):
Total Miles: 13.96 (ha!!!)
Pace: 13:29

August:
Total Miles: 34.61 (getting there...)
Pace: 13:26 (a slight improvement)
Biking: 16.22 miles, time: 1:44:30

Now for runs so far this month... (Please excuse the quality.. Copy & Paste & Cut are my BFFs)




My pace here lately seems a little slower and all over the place. But, I'm happy to say that I finally feel like I'm beginning to run a little stronger. Last night's run was hotter than it's been in a few weeks, but I ran pretty decent. :) So, I'm pretty happy overall.
As my half marathon is getting closer, I'm beginning to think about goals. So... after much thought, here are my HM goals:

• Goal A: to finish. Last year, I made it to training week 8 before getting 2 stress fractures.
• Goal B: to finish under 3 hours. This was last year's goal. (Pace of 13:43)
• Goal C: to finish under/at 2:45. This is what I'm really shooting for. It's within reach...almost. (Pace of 12:35)
  

I'd Like To Thank HGtv

I had planned on uploading this week's runs and one bike ride, but my pc had other ideas. Actually, I blame the wireless router and had I really wanted to fix the problem, I could've...but..well, lets just say that I'll do that sometime this weekend. mmk? Great.

Let's talk about my craptacular runs this week... shall we? Monday, I didn't run. My legs were tired from the 16.3 mile bike ride the day before. Tuesday, I decided to mix Diet Coke, PB, and running. Fail. Wednesday was a rest day. Thank the Lord above for rest days. Thursday, my stupid fuel belt decided to sabotage my run. Seriously, I'm not using that stupid thing anymore. The first two runs with it were amazing...after that is a different story. Water Belt = Hatred. So, tomorrow's 6-miler... Well, I hope it goes amazingly well because I need a running boost since the last 2 runs have been chalked up to a failure! There is a 60% chance of rain/thunderstorms (depending on which site you look at...it all differs...) for tomorrow. I have no idea if it's for the morning or evening, since my tv is programmed only to watch HGtv. :) Just pray that I run good. LOL

Speaking of HGtv... that station has given me the remodeling itch. Hubs and I have started tiny projects and I've taken some stellar before pictures (read: omg, we live in this??)..so I can't wait till we finish a few projects and show you the befores and afters. Thus far, we've replaced our doorbell button. (ha) It seriously was busted and you couldn't ring the doorbell unless you had a skinny pointed object. Which, btw, was awesome. I've never imagined that a working doorbell could be so annoying, but I digress... Anyways, it was a cheap, easy fix and now we have a working doorbell. I'm tempted to put a sign out asking people (hubs) not to ring it!

Last night, we picked out hinges and knobs for our kitchen cabinets. The designers of our house must've been color blind because we have a mixture of gold and silver fixtures every where in our house. So, I thought that we should replace the ugly gold knobs and hinges with some nice silver ones. Well, now I'm not so sure. You see, we have light colored wood cabinets (oak or pine or something????) and silver isn't going too well with them... Plus the hinges weren't the right size. Fail. This project will continue on through the weekend. :) For all of you people out there with light colored wood cabinets... what color are your knobs and hinges??