I have been slightly bummed because I couldn’t run my 12 miles on Sunday as I had planned.  My right knee has not felt above 90% since I ran 6 miles on Saturday so I was being smart and had to skip my long run today.  This seriously makes me sad, I hate having to miss runs.  I need to remember that I can only do as much as my knee lets me do.

Happy Monday!

Last month I was sent some amazing products from GNC for the fantastic #livewellnow campaign.
It has honestly taken me 2 months to get through all of this.  I was ill then Brady had mono and then the holidays….so I had a hard time getting with this program and sticking with it because life always gets in the way.

I can be 100% happy with my review of the GNC products I was sent.
I was sent the following products (all can be found at your local GNC store or online at GNC.com) to try and give an opinion on:

These products are truly easy to take each day and even easier to fit into your daily routine.  Forming a habit can take more than a week, but these products sure make it much easier.  I was especially pleased with the GNC On-The-Go Blender.  I am a huge blender lover and this just makes blending things simple and a streamlined part of my daily routine.

There was a large assortment of protein powders, Lean Chews, and some pills to take daily that can help to rid your body of excess water and curb your appetite.  The Total lean protein powder is a great meal replacement or a fantastic snack.

I can say that I am very pleased with the GNC Total Lean products that I was sent!

I was not compensated for this review.  I was sent GNC products to review by GNC through Fitfluential, Inc. Please read my Disclosure Policy for more information.

Holly over at Rust Belt Runner tagged me in her 11 Randoms post.  Naturally I freaked out and couldn’t think of 11 things to say about myself.  But after 2 Cadbury Creme Eggs I sorted it all out…

The Rules:

• Post these rules
• You must post 11 random things about yourself
• Answer the questions set for you in their post
• Create 11 new questions for the people you tag to answer
• Go to their blog and tell them you’ve tagged them
• No stuff in the tagging section about you are tagged if you are reading this. You legitimately have to tag 11 people!

11 Random Factoids About Me:

• Bo and I have become accustomed to sleeping nose to nose on my pillow.
• Each time I come home from a race and I have a finishers medal or trophy Brady always asks if I won and got it for a prize.  I always say yes.  Why should I break his heart and tell him I am too slow to ever finish near the front of the pack!
• One of my dream jobs is to be a famous slow running blogger who is an ambassador for someone like Asics.
• My Erin Condren life planner is my favorite thing in the entire world and I am going to marry it.
• A goal of mine is to find a pair of running tights that actually fit me and that are not over 4″ too long for my legs.
• I have very little self control over some things…like shopping.  And impulse buys.  And food.
• I have not cut my hair in almost a full year.  Surprisingly, it doesn’t look like total shit.
• I am a very light sleeper.  I have to sleep with a small fan on to help drown out some of the nightly noises, like Jeff or Bo breathing, the cats talking or the wind outside.  I cannot have noises.  But when Jeff starts to snore and won’t stop I move into the guest room, aka: my snore room.
• I just started my new bi-polar meds this week.  I paid $18 and the paper said that my insurance covered $1,122.  Um, what?  Over $1000 for 30 days worth of meds?  Holy fuck balls.
• I am in love with certain bloggers and I would totally stalk them if I lived in CA or TX.
• This year is already going by way too damn fast.  Only 85 days until marathon #1.

11 Questions From Holly:

• What is your favorite place to vacation?
  I have always loved Seattle, I have fantastic family out there and it is beyond gorgeous!
• If you could no longer run, what sport would you take up instead?
  Air Hockey
• What is your dream race?
  Paris Marathon or Berlin Marathon, closer to home: NYC Marathon
• What is your favorite running distance?
  10 miles so far 
• What was or has been the favorite time period of your life?
  My 20′s had a lot of ups and downs so I am hoping that my 30′s bring some peace and quiet.  Plus money.
• When I’m not running I am ______.
  Eating, Working and shopping.
• If you could only drink one beverage the rest of your life, what would you drink?
  Diet coke
• Which piece of running gear would you find most hard to give up permanently?
  Greta, my Garmin
• What do you enjoy most about blogging?
  The ability to share my thoughts and opinions with people all over the world.
• What do you enjoy least about blogging?
  Trying to get people to read me, I am horrible at this.
• If you could be paid a lucrative salary to do anything of your choosing, what would you do?
  Blog as my full time job.  I would kill at that.

11 Questions for the lucky bloggers below:

• If you could only eat 1 food for an entire week what would it be?
• What color pen do you like writing with?
• What is your favorite piece of running gear?  Or exercise gear?
• If you had to change your name what would it be?
• Where would you live if $$ wasn’t an issue?
• What kind of pets do you have?
• What is your #1 favorite blog to read?
• Favorite type of restaurant to eat at?
• Favorite celebrity?
• Left handed or Right handed?
• If you are married/co-habitating: What side of the bed do you lay on (picture yourself lying down, what side are you on?

I’m tagging…

Becca @ Diary of a Slow Runner
Julie @ Boyfriends Make You Fat
Kara @ It’s a Dog Lick Baby World
Lisa @ Chasin’ Bunnies 
Cely @ Running off the Reese’s
Angela @ Constantly Unwinding
Eli @ SuperEli23

Ah….isn’t this the way life is?
You want you want you want…but when do you really get what you want?

Either way, I know I will always want, I think it is human nature.
Here are the things I want this week:

This Team Sparkle Skirt:Along with these Team Sparkle Race Legs:

OR perhaps, these Team Sparkle race legs:

I basically plan on dressing up in this skirt and some race legs for my marathon in April.  If I have to be slow at least I can look fun while I do it!

Speaking of the marathon…I am making Jeff and the kids go…at least near the end so they can see me on the race course and I am going to make signs with them to hold.  I need some really good sign ideas for kids…aaaaaaaand GO:
I am going to get Jeff this shirt to wear:

I love klassy t shirts.

I really want my long run this weeekend to end up better than my long run last weekend.  My knee swelled up and was beyond painful to straighten.   I skipped both of my short runs this week in order to rest it because I know my long runs are the most important part of the training (to me).  I will attempt 6 miles tomorrow as planned and then 12 miles on Sunday as planned.  My knee is my #1 issue and the #1 thing I have to baby when I run.  I really want to accomplish this goal to run a marathon.  I just want to finish.  I know I’ll never be fast and I’ll probably want to punch everyone at the finish line in the face, but I really want this.  Badly.  So, my knee better cooperate more this weekend…

I am revisiting the notion of buying myself a new laptop.  I mentioned before that my current HP laptop is 9 years old now, it was one of the first computers with wireless internet.  I am on the laptop hunt.  I want speed, storage and I want it to be pretty.  I am thinking of a Dell.  Thoughts?
I am also totally unsure of what I want or need.

What are your plans for the weekend??
Give me laptop help…please!

One of the best things about Bo is his cuddle factor.  This is a dog that loves to sit on you, next to you, in between your legs or on your pillow with you.  He sleeps next to me every night, his back or paws are always up against me.  He is lucky he is so lovey and adorable or else I’d have to be really mad at him.
A few weeks ago we decided to try to not crate Bo during the day when we are at work.  We learned that we cannot leave certain things in the Bo Zone – anything 3 feet and lower in our house.
No English muffins, glasses, night guards, toys, articles of clothing and shoes are to be left in the Bo Zone.  With the exception of the muffins he doesn’t ruin anything he merely chews on it a touch, licks it a lot and then like all ADHD puppies, he moves onto the next item.   He found a way to open my closet doors and take all of my shoes and dirty clothes out and rearrange them all over the house.  As thoughtful as that was…I had to stop it from happening again.  I tried 5# hand weights in front of each door, surely that would deter his mischief.  NOPE.  I had to step up to 10# hand weights in front of each door.  It worked but now I have weights in front of each door…klassy.

Yesterday he ruined his first item.
Of course it had to be a library book.

There were microscopic pieces of book pages scattered all over upstairs and in our bedroom.  Bo went to town on this sucker.  He ruined about 60 pages of the book I think…I don’t think he actually ate much of it, but he did rip the shit out of it.

Naturally he didn’t think there was a problem with this and was happy to show us how it happened.  Now Jeff and I learned another lesson…Books don’t belong in the Bo Zone.  This cutie is really keeping us on our toes.  Each day when we get home from work we are ready to see what he got into that we never thought of moving.

Each new season always brings around a crop of new televisions shows. Some of them are even good!  Ever since LOST began I followed Jorge Garcia’s blog he wrote while he lived and filmed in Hawaii, Dispatches from the Island.  Then when the show ended he created another blog, Further Dispatches.  On Further Dispatches he mentioned filming another show with J.J. Abrams, the mastermind behind LOST.  I have been waiting and waiting for this show to air since November 2010.  Seriously, I am that pathetically in love with tv.

If you liked LOST you should be watching Alcatraz.  Both shows are mind fucks that are on islands and star Jorge Garcia.  I sold you on the island part, right?

I still have not cut my hair since March 2011 and I hadn’t really planned on it until this March, just so I can say I went an entire year without getting my hair cut.  Why?  Why not, I ask.
Since my hair is getting pretty long I have been looking into hair donation programs.  I have never donated hair and if I did donate I don’t want it to go to waste because I didn’t follow some specific guideline.  The big 3 that I found were Locks of Love, Pantene Beautiful Lengths and Wigs for Kids.  The only one of these that allows color treated hair is Locks of Love, and they also need 10 inches of hair.  Well, Pantene Beautiful Lengths does take semi-permanent color treated hair, but mine has been permanently colored, but they only need 8 inches.
Wowzers.  I have not yet measured my hair to see where that would take me up to…but if I want to pretend that I am Kate Middleton anymore then I need to keep my extremely fine brown hair in hopes that it will someday give me the results I want.

There are a lot of things I do in my daily life that could easily categorize me as a 13 year old girl.
I sleep with a blankie (to cuddle with, duh), I go to bed early, I believe that marshmallows are their own food group and they are perfectly acceptable as an entire meal, I watch Disney movies quite often and not because of Carah and Brady, and I also like to read young adult literature.  I do use the word literature lightly here…

But I am mega geeked to own Breaking Dawn, Part 1 on February 11.  I know how stupidly amazing the movies are and how unhealthy their relationship is in so many ways…but I love this shit.  Come on her baby basically bites its way out of her uterus.  Cinema at its best.

After an epic 20 mile week coming off of 13 days of 0 miles I found myself with an injury.  Maybe not an injury, but an annoyance.  My right knee, the bastard knee, has been swollen since Sunday morning.  It is puffy, full of fluid, and hurts when it goes from the bent position to the straight position.

I’m sure this isn’t a good sign, much like when E! gave Melissa Rivers her own microphone, you knew it was going downhill from that moment onward.  Back on track here, with my swollen knee I knew running my 3 miles yesterday would be out of the question seeing as straightening it out was an issue.  So I did what anyone would do…I emailed my orthropedic surgeon.  He did tell me that if it is slightly swollen I can still run on it as long as there is no pain…if the swelling and pain continues then I’ll get in for a cortisone shot.  Simple enough!

So, even though I didn’t want to I took yesterday off from running, today is a schedule no running day and then tomorrow I am back at 3 miles!
The pain has really gone down a lot and the swelling is about 50% better at this point, I think I just angered the poor old dear when I ran my 9 on Sunday.  She probably wanted to nap instead.

Have you ever donated hair?
Do you watch Alcatraz?
Are you a 13 year old girl? 

After 13 days of zero running whatsoever…I cranked out 20 miles this past week!  I am pretty proud of myself!  I didn’t push it and never felt overwhelmed or in pain.
I did also pick the coldest damn week of the year to kick my own ass…It was a cold little witch outside over the weekend.

I wanted to showcase how great Jeff is…looked at how beautifully the driveway has been snowblown!  Fabulous work!  I think I’ll keep ya.
This was our first ‘big’ snowfall of the year.  Four whole inches.  Typically this amount of snow is extremely common during the winter months but since we have been having days in the 50* range lately I guess it threw people off.
With that being said…it is common place in many cities that your sidewalks must be shoveled by a certain time or a certain number of hours after the snowfall.  It is the same in Perrysburg, even though I really don’t know the exactities of laws but I’m sure you get 30 lashes if you don’t comply.   I typically run in the street because I am really clumsy and trip over sidewalk cracks so the street is much safer for me.  Except for the larger roads where running in the street means certain death and having my head run over like a squirrel’s, then I have to take to the sidewalks.
Mind you, this was a late afternoon run.  There were already numerous hours to shovel…hell, even Jeff and I (the lazy team) got around to it.

Apparently I have become a crochity old woman when it comes to this whole sidewalk business…after running 6 miles and having 3 of them be through 4″ of snow on sidewalks it made me angry.
Ninja angry.

At one stretch of city park sidewalk I ran through a 1/2 mile straight of snow.
I think our own city parks should get their booties out there and clear me a path.  Don’t they know who I am and when I run?
And literally when I was 5 steps from the end of this half mile snow hell they call a sidewalk I looked across the street and realized that I am a huge dumb fuck.  Probably even the Queen Dumb Fuck of the day.
The other side of the street had a 100% clear sidewalk for me to run on.
I like to look back and pretend that I chose the snowy side to work some ass and thighs…I’m sure running in the snow is similar to running in the sand. Except when snow gets in your pants it just looks like you wet yourself instead of the staying power of sand.  Sand is the beach equivalent to cockroaches I believe.  It never goes away, at least snow melts.
But, to recap, I think I am totally overreacting about this but running in wet shoes is never run.

After that 6 miles of FUN I ran in the Donut Dash 5K prediction race on Sunday morning.  I predicted 37:30 and I actually ran it in 36:??, so I wasn’t that far off I guess.  Then I came home and ran 6 more miles so I could hit my long run of 9 miles for the day.  Both of my weekend runs were in 12* wind chill type of weather.
And today it is 50* here, WTF weekend weather?  Why do you hate me?

Next week I have 24 miles on the radar and I am so happy to start getting these long runs out of the way!

Happy Tuesday…

After cranking out 20 miles last week I am not sure I need motivation…but I’ll bet someone does!

Happy Monday!
What is your motivation today? 

For this sweet little fucker to be 100% potty trained.

Bo’s little nuggets of fun are beginning to be not so much fun to clean up. Not that they ever were fun to clean up but the fact that he leaves us a surprise in the living room every day we are at work is painful.

Plus Bo likes to leave me fun things around the house that he ‘found’.  Like yesterday he ‘found’ my unopened 18 pack of english muffins that I just bought from Costco.  They were on the desk in the kitchen.  Obviously I left them somewhere he could get to them whenever he wanted a snack.
They were everywhere in the house.  Some obviously licked to death and some were half eaten…at least it was only $5 gone to waste.

I want everyone to think like the college pro painters that came to my door last week.
They took one look at this face:

And proceeded to ask if my mom or dad were home.
At my house.
So I chuckled a little and told them that I owned the house and they seemed honestly shocked. This made my month, the fact that they thought I was young enough looking to still live with my parents was a great ego boost.

I ran last night (collective cheers were had by all), 4.5 miles in 15* weather with a 2* wind chill temp.

I thought I was really stupid at first but I then discovered that winter running in the snow is my favorite.  FAVORITE!  Somehow I had forgotten this from last year… I don’t like the fact that my ass and thighs freeze up like a Thanksgiving day turkey fresh from the freezer but I love how peaceful and beautiful everything is.  I really want to have winter stretch out into summer this year because I loathe the hot weather more than the Kardashians and Jersey Shore.

Plus, on this January Friday I want some uninterrupted sleep and 2 fatty ass naps this weekend.  One would be great right after my 9 miler on Sunday!

What do you WANT this week!?

Every weekday morning for the past 6 weekdays I have set my alarm for an hour earlier in the morning so I could get a short run in.  And every morning for the past 6 weekdays I have woken up in the middle of the night and reset the alarm for my normal wake up time.  I know my thought process is hazy at 4:00am but I am pretty sure it is hell bent on just getting more sleep.
I need to remember that my very first marathon is in OMG 94 days!~
94 days will come and go in the blink of an eye and I have not even run in the past 13 days…yeah.  Seriously.  13 days.

So. I hereby vow that I will get my big ass moving and get back with the training schedule I set for myself because I don’t want to wuss out of this marathon and run it like an idiot!  If anyone actually reads me daily/weekly/ever here is my training schedule so you can ask me about it whenever you like and tell me I am a dumb ass for skipping…if I ever do.
(just click on it to make it larger so you don’t need bifocals to read it)

Plus adding some color to it will ensure that I look at it once or twice over the next 3 months!

I randomly stepped on the scale yesterday and saw that I was down .5 lb, which is totally surprising because I have been eating anything and everything i want. Perhaps I am eating too little?  Who knows, I have not been running and I am eating like a pig plus I lost 2 pounds in the last 3 weeks. So I think I discovered the key to weight happiness.  Let’s see if it sticks…

I am only 1.5 weeks into school and I think I am doing pretty well at this my second go around at grad school. Luckily the classes are free and the books were hella cheap or else this would feel so worthless and monetarily draining.  Plus the best part of this whole deal…one of my books is the 6th edition of the book…when I was in graduate school the first time I read the 3rd edition.  Yeah.  I had to buy the same book twice because of updates.  But on the plus side at least I’ve already read it!

Since I am moderately anal choosy specific about most things that have contact with my life I am proud to say that for the first time in 12 years I have a planner that I like.  A day planner, a calendar…not like I have the money for an assistant to follow me around and fetch my Diet Cokes for me…Ah, dreams.
I have tried desk calendars, monthly calendars, weekly calendars…Ugh, pocket size, full sheet size, half size.  I hated them all.
But I found this planner (saw that a friend on FB had it so naturally I had to have it too) at Erin Condren and let me tell you this is a lifesaver!
You need to get one.  You can pick the color of the front, the wording that goes on it, I had my name obviously, the pattern.
Ah, it is just fabulous.
Nope.  I was not compensated for my gushing review of this life planner.  I paid for this bitch and I am singing its glory because I love it so much!  Erin Condren does not know I exist except that I bought this and my information is probably on file there or something.

Happy Wednesday!
How do you keep yourself organized??