Tag Archives: blogging

May 17, 2012 · 6:52 PM

Why my blog has been MIA lately….

You might have noticed that there has been a huge lag in blog writing lately from me. It’s not that I haven’t tried. In fact, I have at least 4 that I’ve been working on and several that I haven’t even had a chance to start on. (One is my marathon recap, another is a giveaway and the list goes on…)

Things are normally busy around here but lately, it’s been in overdrive! The end of school always seems like a time when activities pick up and there are more places we have to be and things to do. Factor in my oldest son graduating from high school on the 19th and my 6 yr old graduating from kindergarten and it gets really crazy. Oh, I didn’t mention that on the 7th my husband came down with pneumonia. He’s actually doing better but is still really weak and can’t run for a while, which is driving him crazy. My 2 yr old also got sick on Tuesday and has had a really high temp, throwing up and sore throat. The doctor said it was a “strep-like” virus which basically means that she’s having the same symptoms of strep throat but there’s not medicine to get rid of it. We’re also trying to get our house ready to possibly sell, which is turning out to be ~~extremely~~ a tad bit stressful as well. I’m also trying to fit my running into the schedule, which has been about 9:30 or 10pm…or later.

So, that’s basically a run down of what’s going on here and why I can’t seem to do a lot of writing. I am trying to make sure my SITNF Facebook page stays current and updated, which is a little bit easier to do than to sit and write a detailed race recap. Although I’m DYING to do that!! I want to tell you about the Crescent City Classic, the Rock and Roll Marathon, a crazy 10k where I got lost on the course and then the Okatoma River Run 5k, which I’d trained like crazy for and tell you what the outcome of that race was…in case you don’t already know, lol. I’m also working on a post about how I nearly didn’t make it to the marathon. I started to include it in my marathon recap but decided that you’d probably rather read a shorter version and go back and read the other part later. I will get it all done eventually but my family and the many things we have going on always comes first.

Of course, I wouldn’t trade these busy times for anything (I would like a little more time in the day though! Maybe 26 hours?). Even when the days seems long, I know these moments are fleeting in the grand scheme of things. It seems like yesterday that Tyler was Zach’s age….now he’s graduating and going to college. My 14 yr old will be in high school next year and Zach will be a 1st grader. Those nights, which are usually most nights, when I’m hanging off of the bed on my side and Jason is propping his head on the night stand because Zach and Zoe have gotten in the bed with us, can be exhausting but I know that one day the night time visits will be over. It’s those little things that are so important. They are the things that now seem to be just the normal part of the day (or night) but in the blink of an eye, it will seem like so very long ago. As you can tell, I’m on quite the emotional roller coaster, lol. You always know your kids are growing up but it’s the milestones that can really hit hard.

I hope all the moms had a wonderful Mother’s Day on Sunday! Mine was great. Tyler had his graduate recognition and then later that day had his Baccalaureate ceremony. That evening, the kids and Jason gave me my Mother’s Day gifts which included a pair of Nike Free Run 3.0 shoes in bright pink!

Here’s a picture from my Mother’s Day that says it all. This was not staged, by the way, lol! It’s how most of our attempts at group pictures turn out.

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Filed under Family, Running, Uncategorized

Tagged as blogging, family, kids

July 11, 2011 · 4:58 PM

New Month with New Goals (And how in the world did I become a race director?!)

Well, a new month is finally here…I guess it’s been here for about 11 days now, lol. June was very eventful around our house. So much, that I never had time to finish writing that fussy little post I began countless times! The title was: “Does this heat make me look fat?” and I still may use it one day, lol.

That particular blog was basically me agonizing over the fact that it’s really hot and I don’t like it one bit. And because I’m not a fan of broiling when I go run, I’ve cut back my runs considerably lately. Of course, because I’ve cut back my runs, it makes me automatically feel, well…you know, fat and lazy…and if you ask my family, maybe a teensy bit grouchy at times. It also hasn’t helped that we’ve been really busy lately with lots of summertime activities and by the time I’m able to go run, it might be 9 or 10 at night. Seriously. After feeling down in the dumps over my lack of running when and how much I wanted, I finally decided that I could either keep feeling bad or put on my big girl running shoes and do something about it. (I figured I should take a little of my advice that I give my children and be grateful for what time I do have.) So, on the days that I know I probably won’t get to go and run, I have started using our elliptical machine again and then if I get to go anyway, great! At least once a week, I dress at lightly as possible, bring my water bottle and bite the bullet and go run at the Longleaf Trace. It’s my favorite spot to run my longer runs. It’s always pretty hot and I haven’t run a truly “long” run (more than 6 miles) in a really long time but it’s so much better than running in circles at the track!!! As for the other days, I have come to peace with the fact that I’m going to be running at night and for now, that’s just the way it will be. Soon enough, it will be cooling off and it will be time to start training for our next half marathon. I think that it’s just hard, for me at least, to go from training hard during the week and running races nearly every weekend to training not nearly as much and no races. It was a shock to my system and I felt almost depressed, as strange as that may sound. In a nutshell, that’s basically the blog I was trying to write for nearly a month.

Now that I’ve given myself a good kick in the rear for acting like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh, I’m trying to use this time to work on my form and just kind of be in maintenance mode. We’re also getting ourselves ready mentally to start our half and full marathon training. I think it’s never too soon to get your mind focused and geared up towards looking forward it. I know it takes a lot of physical endurance but I can tell you that if you start thinking that can’t, your body will most likely listen.

Speaking of races, we have one coming up this weekend! Yeah, it was kind of a surprise to me when I found out too. It surprised me first when I was told that it was July 23 and then an even bigger surprise when Jason said he found out that it was actually the 16th.(Here’s a link to the race, if you’re interested.) In a way, I’m excited to have a race to look forward to and in another way, a little anxious. We went Saturday to see what the course would look like and if it’s where we think it’s going to be, then, wow. Just wow. Do you remember that time several months ago when I was so worried about a race with all of those hills? This one may be worse. Especially when you factor in the heat/humidity. I’m trying to tell myself to not fret over it. (Back to the mind over matter/visualization thing.) I know that I’m going to have to take it slow for the first half of the run because it uphill nearly the whole way. On the other hand, while I can cruise coming back, part of it is pretty steep and if I’m not careful, I’ll use up a lot of energy trying to “put on brakes”. Jeff Galloway talks about “gliding“, which is what I’ll need to concentrate on when I’m running the 2nd half of the race.

Here’s how he explains it:

What are gliders? Many of us incorporate gliders into our runs without even realizing it. When you run down a hill, using the momentum of the last few yards to relax while keeping the same speed for a few steps, you’re gliding. With practice you can stretch the distance of this glide, riding the wave of momentum farther and farther. You can even learn to adapt this technique to flat ground.

You can click the link on gliding and see his full explanation of how to do them and why they can work for you. I will admit that I haven’t done hill work lately which means I haven’t practiced this technique lately. *Mental note – I might need to go do hills tonight….

I probably won’t have a PR that day but I’m going to do the best I can and go slow if I need to. The important thing is to have fun and finish, right? I’ll try to post an update on how it went and pictures. Here’s one of me from a previous race:

🙂

Another thing that is going to be happening soon is the Race for Grace 5k Run/Walk and 1 Mile Fun Run to benefit Grace Link Kids which is an outreach of Grace International.This idea began during a conversation with my brother about putting on a trail race someday, even though I’m not even a trail runner and it somehow grew into this!! After having a meeting and forming a committee, I (of all people..if you know me, you’ll agree, lol) was chosen to be the race director. I have only been in races and never even helped with one, so you can imagine my surprise and panic mode that I was suddenly in since I’ve never considered myself a “leader”. Luckily, we have several other people who are great with planning and know people who can advise us on things that we have questions about. We really want this to be a fun event that is family oriented and something that runners and their families will want to participate in again. Most of all, we want to be able to have lots of folks participate so we can help as many kids as we can. By the way, if you have any race planning suggestions or advice for me, I’d LOVE to hear from you!! We are planning our second meeting this week and hope to have the final details ironed out. Here is what we know for sure: It will be held September 24 at 8:30am at the Longleaf Trace Gateway, which is behind USM (See directions below). There will be race t-shirts, prizes for the winners (age group categories to be decided on soon), water and snacks afterwards and some fun stuff for the kids too. We will be listing it on the Mississippi Track Club site and the Pinebelt Pacers site too. We’ve already listed it as an event on Facebook and made a page for it too so you can keep up with updates there. If you don’t have Facebook, no worries because I’ll update things on here and Twitter and Grace International has a page started on their website and will post info there too. I’m really excited about it coming together and I hope I’ll see lots of you there!

The temps are looking like they are going to be pretty high this week so remember to stay hydrated and take your water bottle with you when you go outside to exercise!

I hope everyone has a great week.

Directions to the Longleaf Trace Gateway

From I59 take the Hardy Street exit and go east on Hardy Street to 38th Street (second light). Turn left on 38th Avenue and then right at the next light at 4th Street. The Gateway will be on your left at the foot of the water tower at the northern edge of the USM campus.

From US Highway 49 from Jackson: At Mendenhall turn south on Highway 13. At Prentiss turn west on US Highway 84. The Trace crosses 84 just south of its terminus at the park in Prentiss. Take a side street to the beautiful park (see pictures below) and parking area. For the Hattiesburg terminus see I59 instructions above or the US Highway 49 directions below.

To access the Trace at Sumrall or Epley from Highway 49: Turn west on 42. Turn left on Epley Road (first paved road) to go to Epley, or straight to continue to Sumrall. In Sumrall turn left on 589 and the parking area is a few blocks on your left.

If you are coming from Mobile on US Highway 98 or from the coast on US Highway 49 (they intersect just south of Hattiesburg): Continue (or turn) west on US 98 to I59 north to Hardy Street. Then follow the directions from I59 above.

US Highway 49 Directions: If you are familiar with Hattiesburg and USM, another more scenic way to get to the Gateway Southern Miss is to stay on 49 into Hattiesburg, and then turn west on 4th street (watch for signs directing you to the Gateway. You will get onto a frontage road that will take you to 4th Street (4th Street passes over US 49). The Gateway will be on your right across from the football stadium. That way you get to see more of the fabulous hub city and USM. To start at Epley or Sumrall, follow the directions above. Going North, Highway 42 will be on your left about 3 miles after you cross under I59.

2 Comments

Filed under Family, Racing, Running

Tagged as acceleration gliders, blogging, Grace Link Kids, heat, Jeff Galloway, Longleaf Trace, organizing 5k race, Race for Grace 5k, running in the heat

April 19, 2011 · 5:12 PM

A little bit of running, a whole lot of blogging and a big race this week

Hi!

I hope everyone had a great weekend, and if you had races, that they all went even better than you expected! My weekend was busy but we didn’t race because we have the Crescent City Classic 10k coming up this weekend! I’m super excited about this race. It will be my 2nd time running there and Jason’s 3rd. I was expecting Zoe when he ran the 1st time…oh, and I wasn’t a runner then…wow,how times have changed!

My training days usually start on Mondays which mainly consist of hill work. This week, I bumped my Monday run over to Sunday for two reasons. One was because I needed to get my runs done early this week so my legs can rest up for Saturday and because I had to be at our local tv station on Monday at 3. I’m now the WDAM TV blogger for our county, which is pretty exciting for me! I think it’s going to keep me pretty busy but I also think it will provide a great service to our community. I can’t wait to get started! Going there was really interesting and fun. The folks at the station were extremely nice and gave us such a warm welcome. We were given the grand tour of the station and shown all the ins and outs of how everything works. I even got to pretend I was doing the weather! After meeting with their web manager, we had the treat of getting to sit in and watch their live 5 o’clock newscast. It was a great experience and definitely worth moving my Monday run over one day.

This is me taking a stab at the green screen.

My run on Sunday was done at our school track (I know…I skipped hills). I purposely went to the flat track because I’m helping my 13-year-old daughter get back into running some. We are strictly working on 1 mile now and she’s doing great. I walk one warm up lap with her and then we run a mile. It was also a good warm up for me because after we finished the mile, I ran my 5k. It was a hot one again and my time was stinky but a bad run is always better than no run at all! I had a little bit of a freak out moment after I finished that day because my left hamstring was so tight and almost felt as if it was having some kind of weird cramp. It stayed that way for a couple of hours and all I could picture was having some type of horrendous injury and not being able to run for weeks. Luckily, I was overreacting just a tad and everything seems ok with it now.

I need to work in 2 more runs this week before we go to New Orleans for our race. I’m thinking that if I do anything with hills or speed work, it should probably be today and then I’ll do a light run on Thursday. The last thing I need is to have weak legs while running 6.2 miles in the heat and humidity that is New Orleans!! I would love to say that I will beat my chip time from last year but when you are running in a sea of 20,000 people (or more), there can be a lot of chances to be slowed down. We are going to try to line up in the very front of our group. Hopefully, we’ll avoid some of the congestion even though the first mile or so will probably a little hard to maneuver regardless of where we are.

I also received my running skirt and top that I plan on wearing in the race! I don’t usually buy anything specific for a race but I decided to be a little festive this time and get one in Mardi Gras colors. Some brave folks dress up in bunny outfits, super hero clothes and anything else you can imagine…..they are obviously better runners than me!! I don’t think I could function running even a mile in a bunny suit or even bunny ears if you get down to it. I have to keep it simple and keep distractions to a minimum. Hopefully, this outfit will help me stay cool, that’s my biggest concern!

My Crescent City Classic running outfit.

I’m still planning on writing about some of the things I eat before races and supplements but I may have to save that for my next blog. My day has been full and it’s not over yet! It seems like things are always non-stop around our house. I’m really looking forward to Friday night in New Orleans which means getting to go to bed super early! (I bet that’s strange to hear when someone is talking about New Orleans, lol.) I’m also looking forward to eating some really good food and going to the expo. We will take tons of pictures and I’ll post them in my recap of the race.

I hope your Tuesday has been a great one!

Here’s a video I found that was very inspirational to me and I wanted to share it. I hope you’ll enjoy it too!

Bloggin’ Ain’t Easy

For a long time, I’ve mulled over having my own place (other than a notebook) to jot my thoughts down as they came to me. Then, in the last month or so, I had made the decision to start a blog, if I ever had the time to sit down and form more than a sentence at a time. What I’ve found is that, not only do I hardly have time to write more than a couple of sentences at a time but the ones I do write down take forever to type because I have so much “help” while doing it. These few sentences alone have taken about 20 minutes to write because I’ve had to try and put Zoe down for a nap (it didn’t take, btw)…and now keep her entertained while the cat tries to see how many times he can walk across my keyboard and brush his tail in my face. As she toddles off again….(and now I’m back from retrieving her), I’ve realized that my thoughts come in such huge waves that I’ll probably never blog as much as I’d like to and by the time I do get to, most of what I thought of will be forgotten because I have so many other things going on in this head of mine. C’est la vie.

Another thing I’ve realized is that technology has really gotten away from me. Back when I only had a couple of kids (wow, when was that???), it seemed like my computer knowledge was so much more vast. Now, if it doesn’t involve clicking the “Home” or “Upload pictures” button on Facebook, then I’m nearly clueless. I’ve tried to fix my little blog page up so that it looks more personalized and it’s been everything but easy! In fact, it’s been so hard that I pretty much come away feeling like a big dummy. I have always considered myself a fast learner but apparently not when it comes to this. I’m currently looking at a different blogging site that might easier for me to figure out because this one is obviously way over my head.

On a side note, I’m certainly not complaining about having an abundance of children. I really don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have them filling up our home with their diverse personalities and of course their toys and clothes! I do love a little bit of quiet time but I think I’d go stir crazy if I didn’t have someone here who needed a snack, a diaper change, help finding a toy, a ride somewhere or just someone to listen to them talk about what’s on their mind. It’s usually a circus around here most of the time and my house definitely has that ~~tornado just hit~~ lived in look but it’s what makes this journey through life “ours” and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.