So obviously, I’m pretty  much obsessed with the Geico Money commercials. I crack up every time I watch them and I have the music as a ring tone on my phone. I LOVE them and realized what I wanted to be for Halloween back in July. Yes, I said July. Looking back though, I’m really glad that I had so much time to think about how I was going to build this costume because it seriously took me a long time to craft something that wasn’t too heavy, would stay together, that I could wear and that I could be at least somewhat functioning in. Thus, about two weeks ago, the building began.

I started off with just a box and cut a hold for my head. I figured I would glue the ‘money’ on the front of the box, but I didn’t know if it would hold, but there was pretty much no other way to get it to stay on my body. I really tried to find a box that wasn’t huge but could hold something on the front of me and covered most of my body at the same time.

After I cut up the one box I realized I would need a TON of cardboard for the money. I went big and collected way too much. I didn’t want to have to keep going back to the store to get more though, so I guess it was a go big or go home moment, and I went big. I got all the boxes from a local hardware store and packed up my car with them.

Then it was time to cut everything out. The ‘money’ started out as long strips of cardboard. The eyes, as you can tell, are just paper plates that I cut out and would later draw eyes on. The strips of cardboard were then folded in half to make the area where I was going to glue to the box a straight line, if that makes sense. I later then had a better idea about the gluing after I painted everything.

The money folded in half and being painted. I went through 2 and a half cans of spray paint to paint all the money.

After I was done painting the money, it was time to paint the box that would hold all the money. I just painted it black so that it wouldn’t be that obvious. I ended up cutting off the flaps on the bottom too so it didn’t really matter what they were painted like.

Once everything was dry I had to lay it out to see how everything was going to work, which was my biggest concern. I realized when I was laying it out that I should glue the pieces of money to each other after getting the ‘top’ piece very secure. So the folds were super helpful and I didn’t have to use all the money I cut up. I glued the money to each other with hot glue and used a lot of it!

Then I took it outside again and repainted some of the green  parts of the money so make sure that everything was completely covered. Yes, it’s huge, and I can’t walk through doors or really move at all in it. Lastly, I added the white part of the stacks to the front and the eyes to the top of the money pile in the front. Then I realized I needed arm holes, so I added those as well. I realized I would have to wear my hair back in a ponytail since I wouldn’t have much mobility which was fine. I also added this on the back of the box at the bottom.

The final product! I’m going to wear some black shorts, fishnets and my hair up and just a black tank top underneath. It should be pretty exciting!

Then I added this to the back of the box portion.

I’m going to do a whole Halloween post after the big night so then I’ll have tons more pictures! YAY! I’m just so excited that it worked out and is finally all ready for this weekend!

So, do you always feel like somebody’s wattttching yoouuuuu?!?

xoxo

So it was the Nike Human Race this past weekend. The race took place in LA around the campus of USC and by the Coliseum. The race also started at midnight. Yes, you run the race in the dark. I came home early from work because I had a migraine and was a little worried if I’d make it out to race. I took a nap and woke up three hours later, and realized I had to eat dinner in order to have some fuel in my body for the race. My head still hurt but when I get migraines it comes in waves. It was also dark when I woke up and that was helpful because when I have migraines I am super sensitive to light. So I drove to Chick-fil-a for a little pre-race dinner and came home, rested and then got ready to go. It was really weird not being so early in the morning. I drove up there with a friend and we got there right about 10:00pm.

We had more than enough time before the race, so we went and picked up my race shirt, which also has your bib number on it and then went back to my car. I seriously could have napped but I knew if I took a nap I would probably end up sleeping through the race or something. I also didn’t want to be too tired to race. Finally at 11:00pm we decided to walk over to the starting area. I changed into my shirt and ate four sport beans. The shirt is actually a decently fitting tech tee and I’m glad that I can wear it again. Once we walked over, I was going to meet up with my friend Chris, who is a huge inspiration to me. He’s an Iron Man and has a sweet blog too. Anyways, it was very dark still even in the starting areas and there was a lot of  chaos. Thankfully we found each other via texting, but without that I doubt I would ever have seen him. There were so many people and when everyone is wearing the same thing, it’s kind of difficult to stand out. I had a lot of friends running in this race and only found a very few people.

Chris and I before the race started in our racing shirts.

Getting crazy with the music before the race. That was one great thing about this race, they had a lot of great music playing and some cool DJ’s pumping up the crowd. Then before we knew it, it was race time, and we had hung out with Chris’ friend Alycia and her boyfriend Booker. Thankfully, Booker said he would hold onto my camera and key while I ran, so I just had my iPhone with me. He was also kind enough to take some cool pictures while we were running! He was super excited to hold all our crap… as you can tell below. (also, Booker is a DJ at my favorite radio station, AMP 97.1, if you live in the LA area check it out, or you can listen online HERE no matter where you are…. They play tons of great music and I get a lot of my new running songs from there!)

The starting line was a mess. There were people cramming in everywhere and the first mile was just chaos, it was horrible. Once you see my splits you’ll really be able to see how bad the beginning was. There were ‘pace’ markers but it seemed like people who were running 15 minute miles were up in the 7 minute mile area. There was SO much weaving, hopping through the crowd, and though it was somewhat lit along the course, let’s be honest, it’s still dark and running in the street with curbs and sidewalks is a little sketchy.

After the first mile, the second mile wasn’t that much better, but the packs started to disperse a little bit. I was cruising along and right around mile 2.5 I fell into my ‘zone’. It was another, ‘Oh my gosh I love running and this is so fun,’ moments for me. I was smiling and happy and seeing some of the bigger landmarks in LA was pretty fun since I’m not from around there. We ran towards the Staples Center and around USC and then also later on, ran down Frat Row at USC. It was one of those moments when I was running towards Staples and I saw all the lights and I got sappy again. Running just makes me so happy, it was one of those, “This is what I do, and I’m good at it!” moments. Though those moments don’t happen every race, or every run, when they do happen it’s like all is right with the world and nothing can go wrong. I was starting to feel really good around mile 3 and realized, Duh! It was almost over! Then I started to turn on the speed  since I was feeling good and my arch in my foot wasn’t hurting me.

The last two miles were pretty quick for me, but they were super fun. I have a little confession. In races, I like to pass boys. It gives me some kind of weird satisfaction and I almost want to be like, “Yea, a girl just passed you!” Sometimes I almost want to turn around and see their faces. Mean? Nahhhhh! Anyways, I think I started to get a little competitive since I knew the race was almost over and for some reason there were a TON of guys in this race. So I had lots of fun! :)

Finally we got to the finish, which was the same place we started. Running into the finish was kind of weird becuase there  were SO many bright lights you couldn’t see anything. I just ran into the light and then it was over. The race wasn’t time chipped so I stopped my garmin once I crossed the line. It was pretty humid out and I was pretty sweaty even though the race was so late at night, it also didn’t help that I decided to work the last few miles. My finishing time was 48:59, which is 9 seconds off my PR. I didn’t race the first three miles and it was another ‘fun’ race for me, so I’m more than happy with that time and it was a pretty fun race. It was fun to see all the younger people come out for the race. I felt like most of the crowd was in the 20-30 range, so the energy was pretty contagious. After the finish it was more chaos but I found Chris again and then went to where we designated to meet up post race with Alycia and Booker. We got weird pouches of water that tasted funny and looked like we were drinking out of a catheter, and a ‘dog tag’ like necklace for the medal. I’m just glad we got medals and shirts for the race.

Post race picture with Alycia and Chris. You can see the medal on my neck that we got at the finish.

The whole gang after the race!

This is my friend Katharine, who ran this race as her first 10k last year and was back again this year. She is super fun and I LOVE her skirt! :)

Then, I finally got to meet up with my friend Laura at the end of the race! She is an inspiration to me and I’m so glad I got to see her in the masses of the crowds.  We tried to find each other before the race but it was just too crazy!

Overall, the race was fun, and you should run it for fun if you choose to do it. It’s not a race to PR at with all the people and I feel like some of the people were just doing it to do it, it’s short enough to pull a  big crowd, which is great. I hope some people may have caught the running bug just by feeling the energy at the race. Running at night is a little weird for me, but it worked out okay, besides the beginning I never felt like I was going to trip or fall on any objects. For being a Nike event, it could be SO much better, but Nike events pull a lot of people and I feel like aren’t executed to what they could be.  I have done a Nike event before so I kind of expected the chaos and ill-planning, but compared to other non-Nike events I’ve ran, it’s not the best planned. They could make it so amazing, but oh well, they get people out to run, and it’s a good concept. It was fun to meet up with my friends and see all the people who were so excited about running, even if we were packed in like sardines at the starting line.

After the race, I was SO hungry, so I did some serious work at McDonalds on the way home. Getting into bed at 3 am that night threw me for a loop for the rest of the weekend sleep wise, and I do feel that running that late at night and getting sweaty and then being a little bit cold was probably not the best idea when I was on the verge of recovering from being sick, and now am fully sick. AGAIN. Oh well, what can you do I guess? I’m working from home AGAIN today, and I miss my giant computer screens. Hopefully tomorrow I will be feeling better, but last night I slept really poorly so I don’t think that helped either. Too hot, too cold, back sore, running nose, coughing. UGH!

I didn’t get to run all weekend besides the Nike Race, but will hopefully be able to run this week, do a long run next weekend and then taper back down to get ready for Malibu. It’s already approaching here pretty quickly and even though I’m doing it for fun, I can’t keep getting sick like this, or 26.2 miles will be a complete mess.

Guess what I’ll be posting tomorrow, my completed Halloween costume!!!

xoxo

So, this morning I went to the gym. Again. I know, who am I right? I hop out of bed at 5:30 like it’s my job and before I know it I’m working out my T-rexy arms with the meatballs of the world. Anyways, I’ve been doing a lot of spinning and working a lot to get my strength back because, ahem, I may have slacked just a little bit during training for Long Beach. As in, I did NO strength training. I really started to feel my back getting weak during my longer runs and realized that I had to make more than a once a month effort at the gym to perhaps get some decent results. Thus I’ve found myself kicking serious butt at the gym lately, and totally, gasp, LOVING IT! I know, I’m turning over a new leaf, wild. I still have been getting in some great runs lately, and last night knocked out a quick 5.5 miler.

When I got home after my run last night, I thought to myself how I just ran 5 miles. Seriously, I would have never guessed I would be doing that. Thus leads me to the cheerleader coming out and saying, “Rah! Rah! Everyone can run!” I am used to running 2 miles, 3 miles, maybe, on a good day, 4 miles, but just going out and dominating a 5 miler and feeling great? If you would have told me that a year ago I would have literally laughed at you. Change is good though, and I’m glad I am at where I am now.

So back to me being a complete BA at the gym. Call me dumb, but I’ve seen the word ‘brick’ thrown out like it’s candy at Halloween on twitter and some blogs, and I never truly knew what it meant. Obviously, I knew it had something to do with a workout or some type of training. Well for you folks, here is the official definition in case you didn’t know, like myself.

“What is a Brick Workout? A brick workout is when you do one workout immediately after another. For example, you could do a swim followed by a bike or a bike followed by a run. There is no special way you have to do a brick workout. However, the most effective brick workout is one that most resembles the race you will run. So more than likely you are better served doing a swim to bike or a bike to run brick workout for triathlon prep.”

Well I normally stick to one or the other, never mixing it up, because that would be too crazy for me, but this morning, after spinning for 35 minutes, and thus becoming a swamp monster, I felt like getting in a little run so I ran for 15 minutes and got in 2 miles. Wait! I did my first brick workout! I didn’t even know it! So it wasn’t THAT bad, I actually felt fine, and honestly, it’s not like I was in the spin class where afterwards I think I might throw up, I just did my own hill workout on the bike. But still, brick me up baby!

This is random, but here are some new songs if you wanted to check them out, they have really been kicking butt when I work out lately. Drake – Forever, Ester Dean – Drop it Low, Kevin Rudolf – NYC, Jay-Z – Empire State of Mind, and last, my favorite, David Guetta – Memories. Be careful, the videos might be, how shall we say, inappropriate? :) Thanks also to my friend Tara for giving me some new sick jams!

So I did a brick, I’m becoming a gym mouse (not rat, that sounds gross) and oh, I’m running the Nike Human Race 5k tomorrow night, at midnight at USC. Why am I running a 5k? Because I can and it’s going to be super fun! On a completely unrelated note, my halloween costume is coming along and I finally figured out how I’m going to, as Tim Gunn would say, “Make It Work!” It’s going to be SO funny and I can’t wait to show it to you guys. Hopefully I will get it done this weekend.

I seriously need to stop going to the gym before posting… because these are getting way too peppy. :)

xoxo

So I’ve received numerous questions about the training plan I used for Long Beach. As you all know, the main purpose of my running is to have fun and because I’m crazy and truly love to run. Sometimes people ask me why I run and most of the time I cannot even explain to them why I do it. I do it because, for me, it clears my mind and makes me feel free. It allows me my own time and time to reflect on so many different aspects of my life, from family, to friends, to work and to my past, present and future. I also have no one to report to but myself. Yes, I have been running for over ten years now, but I just recently started back into entering in races. I truly believe that anyone can run. It’s not about how fast you go, or what your time is. It’s about doing something that you love and you’d be surprised how addicting running can be.

It sounds strange that I do so much thinking when I run, but there are some runs when I can just zonk out and go into the ‘zone’ too and those runs are great as well. Music makes me run faster and I love just enjoying my time outside and doing something for myself.

Most of the runs I did during my training for Long Beach were strictly for fun, which worked out perfectly for me. You may realize that I put a lot of pressure on myself to succeed. I hold myself to a high standard throughout my life and I think it began with running when I started racing in high school. I’m highly competitive and even to this day when I do track workouts or try to run a faster workout I can still hear my coach in my head. The runs I did for Long Beach were NOT pressured at all, and were just to ‘get in the miles’, to get my legs ready for the race.

There were pace guidelines that we talked about doing for training, but I, as you can tell never did any tempo work or speed work or any type of faster workout. I only did general (relaxed/enjoyable) and long (SLOW ha, ha) and then easy/recovery for my paces. Most of the times I felt like being speedy I did a faster workout on either Tuesday or Thursday. If I felt like being fast, I would pound out the miles, however fast I wanted to go. Which I liked because I wasn’t pressured to hit a time goal. I also do not run with a heart rate monitor, which I think helps me not feel pressured. Then, if I felt like going slow, I went slow. The long runs were pretty slow, mostly around 9:30 pace. Most of my Tuesday and Thursday runs were around 8:00-9:00 pace and if I felt speedy they were ranging in 7:00-8:00 pace. I liked this plan because obviously, it was pretty crammed, but I wasn’t overworked and didn’t hate running come race day. I had a decent base going into it so that wasn’t my problem at all, I was running about 20-25 miles a week before I started on the ‘plan’. I really think that this plan helped me to not get burnt out and not put too much pressure on myself throughout the training and I still enjoyed running when the time came to race.

Running four days a week seemed perfect for me because I still had time to relax and rest, and getting in some miles after work or before work worked well for me. I wasn’t overwhelmed which made running way more fun. I would totally try to find a plan that works for you. You can tailor your own plan or use other plans, but for me, this worked out perfectly. I think running is all about you, and no one else, and that’s why this plan worked for me. It was MY plan that fit with MY schedule, instead of squeezing in crappy runs here and there, I had more than ample time to get them done and felt great about most of them.

I am taking a rest day today and will be up and hopefully running tomorrow morning. I have had a little bit of weird pain in my arch, so I just wanted to take a little rest to make sure it was nothing serious and the pain is slowly fading. Hopefully I can run tomorrow am!

xoxo

So you probably all remember the fact that I get pretty sick when eating/taking GUs or any type of endurance ‘food’ along my run. I tried shot blox, GUs, hammer gels, crank fuel and everything I tried made me miserable. I know it’s important to eat when running such long distances, since your burning so many calories and you have to have fuel to keep you going as your mileage goes up. Thus began my search to find something that I could fuel with on my longer runs without making me sick. I started with some sport beans on smaller, close by my house runs. They worked well and weren’t the easiest thing to eat, but I could chew them up pretty quickly and swallow them without a problem.

Then I really had to become creative for the longer runs. I knew that eating would be difficult since anything that wasn’t in a goo like form would involve at least some pretty serious chewing, which led me to wonder if I could chew without choking and keep running at the same time. I knew peanut butter was full of ‘good nutritients’ that would help me keep going while running and I knew having anything in my stomach that didn’t upset it would be better than nothing and hitting the much dreaded ‘wall’. Thus the peanut butter and jelly square sandwiches were born.

Now, to make them work, I usually prepare them the night before my run so that the jelly has time to ‘sit’ and ‘soak’. Sounds disgusting, but it works like a charm. I also make sure to really smash them into the small snack size bag I put them in. Then I put them in the fridge overnight. I put on a lot more jelly to make it more squishy, and a normal amount of peanut butter.

I use creamy peanut butter and make the whole sandwich.

I also make sure to get the jelly ALL over the bread including almost the crusts. The crusts most of the time I either just throw away or don’t eat. During Long Beach though I ate the whole thing.

Smash them together and wha-la. Then you cut it into four small squares. Then put in the bag and smash a little. It won’t be the prettiest thing in the morning, but it works when you need substance.

When I was training, I would walk and eat one square every 6-8 miles. During the marathon I ate one at mile 6 and mile 12 but never stopped to walk to eat them. I kept the sandwiches in the side pocked of my pouch that was attached to my iFitness belt. Then I lived off sport beans for the rest of the race, though I did have more sandwiches if I wanted to eat them. They actually aren’t as hard as you would think to eat. I would sometimes, when training, dip them in water like Kobiyashi does with hot dog buns and then they are easier to swallow. During the marathon though I just kind of choked it down and drank water after to make sure that it was all down safely. As I said before, I usually don’t eat the crust and just throw it to some birds nearby.

Here’s the Hot Dog Eating Contest from this year.

Um, just listening to the commentary is amazing.

This video made me want to make a video for you guys showing you how to eat peanut butter and jellies while I’m running, but then my better judgement kicked in. Lucky you.

I’ve been really into the gym lately, which is weird. I think it’s because I can’t run when I’m sick so I just go to spin and get my butt kicked. Like, I have never sweat so much in my entire life. Seriously. Anyways, I’m feeling much better and hopefully can run again sometime soon! We’ll maybe give it a try tomorrow am, or after work.

xoxo