Well this weekend was another great one that included another great run. We ran 13 miles along the beach path according to my Nike+, which could be wrong give or take. It was a great run and super foggy, which made the last three miles seem like forever, because we couldn’t see the Jack-in-the-Box we parked at until we were practically there!

It seems crazy that my 1/2 Marathon is a little over two weeks away. Time does fly, doesn’t it. I remember signing up and beginning training and thinking, man, this is never going to come! Now that it’s actually almost here, I’m like oh man, what did I get myself into?

Anyways, this weekend was a great 5k Walk for the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure Orange County and it took place at Fashion Island in Newport Beach. I was the Team Captain of Team Flamingo and as you can see in the pictures below, Team Flamingo doesn’t mess around!

The whole team

Walking the 5k

Me, trying to round up the team? :)

Team Members

This last picture is actually my running partner, Nicole!

We just leisurely walked the 5k, and it was excellent weather, overcast and never even got too hot at all. Walking around Fashion Island is always great too, and the expo was fun to wander through, especially munching on the Pat and Oscar bread sticks. Overall it was a great success and a lot of fun and I am really glad everyone came out and joined Team Flamingo. We’ll be out there next year again I’m sure. :)

This week I am really going to focus on getting all my runs in, as I have something to do every night of this week, which include an Angels playoff game (GO ANGELS! LIGHT UP THE HALO!) and a Ducks game, which I’m super excited about as well. Next Monday is my birthday and I’m going out to Palm Springs for the night this weekend, so that long run should be a really nice change of scenery. Then next weekend is my race! If anyone has advice or tips let me know.

Look forward to some great goodies on Thursday as well. :)

xoxo

As you noticed, I had Sharnee from http://www.acornglue.com/ redo the site and I just love it. I hope you do too. :)

So it’s almost October which means not only that it’s almost my birthday, but it’s also the start of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

This cause is very near to my heart as my mom passed away from Breast Cancer two years ago. Every Thursday I’ll be highlighting something that is giving back to raise Breast Cancer Awareness along with my normal Thursday goodie-bites.

A little side note is that this weekend I’m captain of Team Flamingo for the Orange County Race for the Cure in Newport Beach, CA. Looking forward to walking with everyone who is apart of my team. I will be doing the 5k walk, so no running, but I’m excited to raise awareness for the cause. If you would like to make a small donation to show your support for the Komen Foundation on the Team Flamingo Page, you can visit our website here. Team Flamingo

So today I’m highlighting a really great website that is called The Breast Cancer Site. (http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/) This site has so much great stuff supporting the Breast Cancer Cause, and also gives you the option to support other causes. They have a variety of cute and fun stuff on sale right now so I would advise you to check it out. I found this super cute fleece to be such a steal, and great potential to be used on a long winter run, especially for all you runners who reside in the colder areas of the US!

The fleece has an embroidered pink ribbon over the chest to display your support. Choose between black with vibrant raspberry, or gray with pale pink. The jacket is 100% polyester fleece and has a heavy-duty quarter-length zipper. They also have an array of sizes that are 20% off! You can find it on the Breast Cancer Site under Sale Clothing, along with tons of other great sale items.

What to do with old running shoes? If you are like me, you go through shoes quickly, and when you are done with shoes, they still almost look new and are just dying to find a new home. It’s always hard for me to get rid of shoes like this, I feel almost a connection to them and the memories that I had made in them, even if they only lasted me a short three months. I found this great website that donates shoes to international countries that are in need. The organization is called One World Running and you can find them @ http://oneworldrunning.blogspot.com/. The faces of the people receiving the shoes makes me want to send all my shoes immediately.

There are also many other organizations like this and they can be found on this Runners World Site. I really feel that sending my old shoes off would be great, and that my shoes would be getting a new life in another country! I’m even inspired to hold a shoe drive, well that is maybe after my 1/2 Marathon in two weeks. There is really no need for me to have more than two pairs of shoes at a time, and that means I have at least three pairs to get rid of.

Also, Footlocker is having a friends and family sale, and you can too take advantage of the 30% off everything on http://www.footlocker.com/. Just use code LKS1FF89 at the checkout by September 28, 2008.

And finally, I tried the Starbucks Perfect Oatmeal this morning and I was very pleasantly surprised. It’s the little cup in the front in the picture above, and though the oatmeal wasn’t heaped in the cup like the picture, it was a good amount of oatmeal in a very easy, convenient container. The Perfect Oatmeal came with the choice of sides of nuts, dried fruit and brown sugar. I tried the brown sugar in the oatmeal and got the dried fruit as well. All the toppings you add yourself, so I ended up saving the dried fruit to eat a little bit later for a snack since they were in an individually wrapped package. I felt like it was definitely worth the wait in the drive thru line, and filled me up to keep me going until lunch. The Perfect Oatmeal claims to be 100% whole grain and the oatmeal itself has 140 calories, while the brown sugar topping has 50 calories, and the dried fruit and nuts have 100 calories each. Quite a nice little breakfast on the go.

Enjoy the weekend, and everyone who is racing good luck! I’ll be with you in two weeks. :)

xoxo

This weekend lead me to a great run on Saturday! I finished my 10.75 mile run in 1:39:43, and here are my splits for all you number crunchers. They are nothing to be proud of and definitely show my inconsistency, (watching the birds flock around parts of the ocean, passing by cute dogs, running into an old high school teacher, and bathroom breaks to blow my continually runny nose, I have excuses)

mile 1 – 8:54
mile 2 – 9:03
mile 3 – 8:48
mile 4 – 8:39
mile 5 – 8:31
mile 6 – 9:24
mile 7 – 9:45
mile 8 – 8:58
mile 9 – 8:52
mile 10 – 8:19
.75 of a mile – 9:10

I hope to finish the upcoming half marathon in under two hours, but we will see. My running partner and I think that the adrenaline and everything will bring us back to our old high school days of racing and will get us going faster.

This weekend on our run, Nicole and I talked a lot about the enjoyment of a run, and how we both love to be able to fit in our jeans, and eat Taco Bell, but at the same time, our running careers have turned into something that is so much more than just working off the calories.

We used to run to please our coaches, then we ran to stay in shape through the college years and the Freshman 15, and essentially keep up with the Jones’s, but as we talked about on our ten mile jog, we have reached the pinnacle of running. We have begun to enjoy running, and not have the kinks, the pains, the soreness. We have trained our bodies enough to absorb the long runs, and have reached the happy medium where a five mile run isn’t a labor, but a labor of love that is not a task, but a pleasure.

It takes a while to reach this point, let me tell you. Over the past ten years, I have never enjoyed a single run as much as I do know, gulping in the scenery, whatever that might be, swatting away the gnats, and even the sopping sports bra that have come to litter my room throughout the week show that I am doing something healthy, and enjoying it.

I encourage everyone to run, not only for their own health, but because once they get used to the body aches and pains, running becomes a release. Those few steps turn into miles, and the few miles turn into more miles, those miles turning into satisfaction. In two days alone I ran 25 miles, not because I had to, but because I wanted too. I go our for a run and find myself in my own little world, enjoying the surroundings, the people I pass by walking or biking.

I never envisioned myself to be this girl out jogging because I was completely head over heels in love with the pain it caused my body, especially because for the last ten years, running has been apart of my life, whether I liked it or not. I’ve come to realize though that I do love running, I love the sound of my feet hitting the pavement continuously. I love the little walk sign that allows me to cross the street. I love the looks I get from drivers in cars, like they have never seen a girl run before. I love the feeling it gives me when I get home after a hard run and I can barely breathe, but that feeling, that freedom, that is what I run for.

Realize what you run for. Enjoy your run.

PS. Check back on Chic Runner on Thursday. Fun stuff is in the air!

So my cousins and I have this saying that something that is a small dessert like object it is called a “Goodie-bite”. We figure it’s still a goodie, even if we are limiting ourselves to just small bite. In our dutch family there are many treats we refer to as goodie bites. :) Today is filled with goodie bites on the Chic Runner, from fashion to a few cool tips.

First off though, I would like to thank everyone for the wonderful get well wishes. With about 10,000 mgs of Vitamin C floating through my system, 200 oz. of tea, and of course NyQuil for good nights sleep, my seal cough is slowly going away. This leads to another interesting fact though. Because of my run down state I have not ran this entire week. I realized that if I continue running, I will make myself more sick and not properly allow healing. While talking to one of my friends who knew I was sick they said, “You are either deathly ill, or healthy, there is no in between for you.” Which is unfortunately very true. So I figured I’ll run a long run on Saturday and just start fresh next week, and work hard, instead of doing three weeks of crappy training, because I would continue to be sick. We’ll see how that works out.

Yesterday after work, I was walking to my car, and it was the most beautiful Southern California running weather, and I wanted nothing more than to go to a jog. Unfortunately, I knew that this would only hinder my getting better process, so instead I endured the pain of getting my almost unibrow waxed. (Okay just kidding, it wasn’t even close to a unibrow, but I’m paranoid and it was getting beyond plucking repair. I like to think that in my diseased state, was too weak to pluck, or you can blame me for being lazy.) So next week I will be able to enjoy the fresh air and nice breezes on my evening runs and with wonderful looking brows… :)

We have this little thing that Starbucks introduced called the Power Protein Plate. It basically has all my life staples in it, including cheese, an apple, a bagel, peanut butter and grapes.

Now it’s 4.95, which is a little pricey, but at the same time, it’s on the go, easy to eat and is super tasty. Just make sure the sprig of grapes is ripe, and not ‘sad’ as some websites have stated some of the plates to be filled with ‘sad grapes’. I wouldn’t want anyone to have sad grapes and blame me! The plate has 330 calories with peanut butter, 260 without which is about one-third of your daily protein intake.

Also another food tip from Eat This, Not That! (my favorite book of all time) Swaps Section.
You can eat two Mc Donald’s Egg McMuffin’s for the same amount of calories as one sesame seed bagel with cream cheese.

It may be shocking, but it’s true, and that is the exact reason why I love this book. I used to always think that a bagel with cream cheese (okay, maybe the amount of cream cheese I was putting on was a little unnecessary) was much better than eating something like a McMuffin. Wrong! That’s what the book taught me in so many different ways. It’s so helpful to keep around, I swear. So the book is not only great because not only because I am obsessed with Egg McMuffins, but because it reflects what we think is the key to successful weight loss: satisfying your cravings with smarter choices, not eliminating the foods you love altogether. So another plug for the book, I know, but I’m shamelessly a promoter for it, it’s amazing.

Hope everyone has a great weekend, and next week something big will happen at Chic… besides me giving a review of the new oatmeal at Starbucks! :) Get Excited!

xoxo

I had, as I’m calling it, the worst run of my entire life this weekend. It started out pretty bad, the first mile was just tiring and my joints hurt and my throat was already burning. (Tell tale signs of me getting sick, but still I had to run to get my miles in) After the first time these sore joints and stiffness usually just goes away, unfortunately for me, they never left. All twelve miles were done in a slow, awful manner where I wanted to die. I just wanted to keel over on the side of the beach path and pass out, drink my Purple Tiger Gatorade and never run again. Once I completed my run, though exhausted for the remainder of the day, I felt good that I had completed it, even during all the stomach cramping, shin splinting, knees aching and phlegm building up in the throat. So now, I’m definitely focusing on getting better and being able to run miles effortlessly again.

It’s only when you realize how hard running can be is when you appreciate the talent it takes, to even go out and have the determination and will to complete mile after mile. I appreciate my body being able to take mile after mile of my pounding sidewalk after sidewalk, and it’s when I can barely do that anymore I realize what a feat I continue to do by just running alone.

A great find I picked up this weekend (and have been wanting for a while) is the Conair Infinity Cord-Keeper Professional Ionic Styler.

First off, the pink color is super cute( it looks red, but it’s pink), and the hair dryer features tourmaline ceramic technology that smooths the cuticle layer to create shiny, silky hair. This 1875-watt dryer includes 3 heat and 2 speed settings, separate diffuser and concentrator attachments. Yet my selling point on the dryer was the fact that it has a retractable cord, which is great because when I’m on the go, either in the morning, or from the gym, wrapping up that cord and trying to keep that cord, and the cord from my straightener separated is quite the task. It’s easy to use and I feel like dries my thick hair in no time. They can be found at http://www.ulta.com/, but I got mine at Wal-Mart for 29.99. I love it because it’s quick and easy and convenient. What more could you ask for?!

Anyways, more this week, so stay tuned for more fashion deals and steals, running tips and random stories.

xoxo

PS. Look forward to something exciting happening at Chic Runner soon… what could it be?? :)