Almost Thanksgiving

It’s almost Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving isn’t really one of my favorite holidays.  It’s actually my least favorite. I don’t like turkey, I don’t like football….The one thing I do like is pumpkin, sweet potatoes and squash, so this Thanksgiving I am making my own unique dish for myself. I haven’t figured out completely but I will post pics when I make it.  I am thinking something like a baked sweet potato with black beans and pumpkin pie….yummy!

My hubby’s family is coming to visit us this year for Thanksgiving. I am making ham, green bean casserole and mashed potatoes to name a few…I am trying to be vegetarian ( tried vegan but its hard to give up dairy and eggs!) so I am making my own special dish.  Since the dinner is at my house it won’t be that hard to do!

For today, here is  a pic of my breakfast, coffee with almond milk, pumpkin cranberry pancakes  with sugar free maple syrup and a banana.

Ymm... pumpkin pancakes!

As for the HBB

For Tuesday November 23 I got 9 more points! My total is 40 so far!

Starting a New Holiday Challenge

So I was reading one of my regular blogs that I like to read in the morning, N Her Shoes and I found out about a holiday challenge called Holidaay Bootie Buster Challenge. Its a challenge that started this past Saturday ( Nov 20) and needs on Jan 7.  Its to help people not gain weight during the holiday season, so I thought, why not! I just started doing Jillian Micheals Making the Cut, which is a 30 day circuit training and diet plan yesterday and thought that this holiday challenge would be great to do too! To check out the rules go to Run to the Finish.  Here are my points for the last couple of days since I missed them:

Saaturday: 2 hours of swimming ( 8pt) and 90 min of yoga (4pt) comes to a total of 12pts

Sunday: 10 miles to a total of 10pt

Monday: Day one of Making the cut ( 40 min circuits) ( 2pts) and 6 miles (6pts) and 7 servings of fruits and veggies ( 1) total of points 9pts

Which brings my total to 31 pts so far! I will post Tuesdays points later in the day since I haven’t completed my training for the day!

Duke City Marathon 10-17-10

Well, this blog is a little late, but a week ago Sunday I ran the Duke Marathon in Albuquerque, NM. Yes, thats 26.2 miles. I have been training for this marathon for about 3 months now and I thought I was some what ready for it. I had not done all the long runs that I had scheduled to do, but since this was my 5th marathon I didn’t worry too much. I wanted to get better than my PR ( 3:55) and was aiming for 3:50. On race day I was feeling pretty good, I didn’t think I could get a 3:50 so I was aiming for around 4 hours.
The race started off pretty good. I was running a little bit faster than I wanted to ( 8:30/pace a mile) I started to slow down around mile 15. My legs where hurting pretty bad and although I didn’t have to walk at all my pace slowed down the last couple of miles to about a 10/pace a mile.
I finished with an official time of 4:01:22 and my garmin said 3:59:47. I finished around my goal so I was happy. I wish I could have got a PR, but you can’t win them all! emoticon
The good part was that since the race was in my home town, and my hubby’s, my dad and his parents cheered me on through out the race which was really cool! My hubby even got one of my good friends to come to the finish along with her little girls! Usually for races its only me and my hubby that we know in that city so it was cool to see so many friends and family while I race!
I think for the next marathon I will need to do more leg weights, since it was my legs that gave out on me, especially my upper thigh area. I didn’t do that much weights while training for this race and I could definitely feel it at the end!
I think I might train next for a half marathon that’s in the town I live in ( Las Cruces) that is in December. Going from training for a full marathon to a half should give me some rest time since its not as much mileage, but enough to keep in shape!
I can’t believe that was my 5th marathon! But you know what people say ” Running is a mental sport….and we are all crazy!”

Chips and Salsa Half Marathon

So I went to Albuquerque a couple of weekends ago ( Sept 19)  and ran the Chips and Salsa Half Marathon. I wanted to run this race so that I could practice my marathon pace for the Duke City Marathon, which is a month away. My plan was to run it in 1:55:00 ( which is about 8:46/mile) so that in the Marathon I could run at least a 3:50. I was a little nervous because I had not run that long of a run at pace. I have been doing my long runs at about 10:30/pace to 11/pace which is a long way from the pace I want to run my marathon in!
This was one race where my hubby did not go with me so I have no pictures. My father lives in Albuquerque, but since I was going to have to be at the race area around 6:30 am, I told him he didn’t need to go with me since there would be nothing for him to do until I came in. I didn’t want him to have to wake up at 5 am just to stand around outside for 3 hours! The night before I saw people putting up port-a-potties up by my father’s house and found out the race ran right by my house! That was pretty awesome! So I told my dad he could just wait out there around 8:15 am to see me run by.

I started the race and felt pretty good, so I stepped up my pace a little.
Around mile 10 I got to see my dad by his house. I finished with a 1:53:10 official time and my garmin read 1:52:48. The pace came out to an average of 8:36/ mile. I was actually running most miles around 8:20/mile but slowed down the last 3 miles. I was really happy to beat the 1:55! My dad meet me at the finish line, which was a surprise! I came in 6 th in my age group and 68 overall out of 231for the half. Don’t you just love when you get a better time than what you wanted?

I think this last month I am going to do at least one run a week with the 8:35/ pace so that I can practice more for the marathon. I want to get under 4:00 for the marathon, but I really want to break my PR of 3:55….. time will tell if I do!

Change your mind….

Why do some people have to be so hateful? Why do they insist on making my life a living hell. I thought by the time once reaches adulthood they grow out of these childish middle school antics. I feel like I have to walk around on egg shells as not to “offend” someone, when in reality, they are the ones that are being bullies and making endless demands that no one can possible meet. I feel like I am an angry thirteen year old again, where no one understands me and I must succumb to stooping to there level.

Why must these people hate me because I “have it better in life” than them? Is it my fault that my childhood and life seems “easier” and more “pleasant” than theirs? They don’t even know me well enough to know if their assumptions are correct. Who is to tally all the things that you would need to calculate how has it “easier” in life? Its really quite plan and simple to me: they hate me and say things about me behind my back that are not true because they are jealous of me and what “appears” to be the way I live my life. Its like people that are jealous of celebrities because of what they read in the magazine and the pictures that they see of them. They do not know these people. What they are jealous of might be completely fictional. Who is to know if say, Jennifer Aniston has a “perfect” life or if she has had to struggle through life. Just because she looks the way she does not mean that her life is perfect. It probably took and takes a lot of time to look like that. And who is to say that just because there are a lot of pictures of her out on vacation, that she doesn’t work all the time and that was just a moment in time where she took some days off?

Back to my situation, I feel like I can’t be myself around these people. I feel like I have to be silent and act like I am a child and only speak when asked to. I feel like when I do talk that I have to be so cautious of what I say and how I say it because they might “ take what I say the “wrong way”.

It is known that the reason that they hate me is because I am “stuck up” and “think I am better than them”. They think this based on how I talk to them, which is the same way I talk to others that don’t get the same assumptions as these other people. Frankly, I feel the same way about these people, that they are stuck up and think that I am stupid because they are always snappy to me and I can never do anything right, or right in their way. I thought it was also weird that they said these things about me because I have never been know to be “stuck up”,  all my friends say that I down to earth, friendly, kind of girl.  I I think that they probably say these things about me because they know it is true about them.

I am so tired of walking on egg shells and having to change myself so much that I am no longer myself”, in order for them to like me. I have come to the realization that they will probably never like me, because if you are jealous of someone and hate them for that there is nothing that that person can do to change the others mind. I was listening to Sister Hazel’s lyrics to “Change your mind”, which puts exactly how I feel at this moment.

This person is never going to like me. I need to stop trying to be someone else so that they like me. Why would I want to friends with a person like them anyway?

“If you want to be somebody else,
If you’re tired of fighting battles with yourself
If you want to be somebody else
Change your mind… “ ( Sister Hazel)

Taos Up and Over 10k

This weekend I went to Taos, NM and ran there 10k  Up and Over mountain race.  I am not really a trail runner so to speak, I am more of a road runner, but I thought this race would be a nice break from the usual as well as I could visit some family that lived up in Taos.  The race was only a 10k ( which is 6.21 miles), and as a marathon runner I thought it would be really easy.  I mean whats 6 miles when you usually run 10 miles for fun?  Well to say the least this race was not “fun”.  It was a lot of work! Right before the race, the officials said to watch out because a bear had been sited on the trail earlier that morning!  What a great way to start the race!  We started the race at 9,000 feet above sea level, went all the way up to 12,000 feet, and then back down.  We ran up a “bunny” ski slope up the mountain, let me tell you a “bunny” slope is easy to ski down, but really hard to run up!  Then we ran down a variety of different slopes down the mountain.  There where some places on the course that I was sliding down the mountain and I couldn’t stop!  I just had to pray to God that I would not fall and keep falling all the way down the mountain! I thought to myself  great I did this race for fun, good training for my marathon race coming up and I am going to break my leg! I did have some close calls on falling, but never actually fell to the ground! The first female to cross the finish line finished in 1:06:42, which is a pace of 10:44/mile.  That is crazy fast considering we all had to CLIMB up the trail, it was impossible to run up it, which meant she ran like 5min/ miles down hill!  My time was 1:53:48, which was a pace of 18:19/mile, this time would be bad for a regular 10k, but I am just happy that I finished in one piece! I don’t know maybe if I am crazy enough I will do this race again next year….

Racing into the finish line