I love all sports so when the Olympics come on I get super excited. It’s so many great sports and exciting races and videos rolled into two jam packed weeks.  I love watching the athletes compete and get so excited when watching certain events. I love the skating, the hockey, skiing, snowboarding, all of it. AND I was lucky enough to get a pair of Vancouver Olympic mittens to watch the Olympics in! I love wearing them and every time I see someone wearing them on TV I get so excited. Yes, I watch the Olympics in 80 degree weather here in Southern California with mittens on!

I know for many of the athletes these sports are their lives. I can’t even imagine being at their level and the stress, pressure and crazy amounts of training that they do day in and day out to make them the best in the world. So I found some sick videos that showcases some of the athletes and their training skills on Visa Go World’s YouTube channel. To be at their level it takes sick skills and TONS of training. I have such respect!

This is Angela Ruggiero’s Workout on the beach. She is freaking ripped and has some good points. I do the bridges that you do on one arm and they kill me! You can really feel those. I also have done burpees and know that they are a great workout too!

This is Ryan St. Onge’s breakfast before training. Talk about fueling up! Sheesh. It’s insane the amount of calories a lot of these athletes burn during work outs. Since they are working out so much their metabolism is so incredibly high.

This is skier Julia Mancuso working on a slack line. This amount of balance she has is INSANE. I wouldn’t even be able to stand on that line for one second.

This is Lindsey Jacobellis doing some outdoor training. I can feel my little baby muscles burn just watching this!

This is Ryan St. Onge again and he is a freestyle aerialist and this is the CRAZIEST video I’ve seen. I have wondered how they practice this and this is such a cool video and shows exactly how they practice. I would never be able to do this ever but I have a lot of respect for him and how he excels at what he does.

You can see way more videos from the Visa GoWorld YouTube channel too. There are some sweet workouts in there and it makes you respect the athletes so much more!

Since I love running, I had to include one of my favorite videos of Josh Cox, the American record holder in the 50k (30 miles)

He is running with Ryan Hall, who oddly enough I saw run in high school since we were in the same CIF divisions and were at some of the same races. Man, he’s amazing and so is Josh. The fact that Josh can run 30 miles in 2:54, about an hour faster than I run a whole marathon blows my mind. It’s a little long but to be running that pace at the end of that distance just shows what an incredibly talented athlete he is. They were running in Mammoth where I used to go for cross country camp back in high school. The training up there is amazing. Now I’m inspired to run fast and kick butt!

xoxo

So I’m not Catholic nor do I truly celebrate the ‘lent’ season but this year, as I have in the year’s past, I tried to think of something that would make me really challenge myself. I’ve done the fast food thing, I’ve done the soda thing, I’ve done the workout every day thing. This year I’m already trying to eat healthier compared to previous years, I’ve weaned myself off eating fast food for every meal and I think this year I’ve had it about 5 times, which is epic if you know me. I barely ever drink soda, so I’m doing much better on that front, so I decided to try something new. I don’t eat much red meat but I eat a TON of chicken. I think that this year I’m all about doing things that really make me test myself, I mean, why not. So this year, for forty days, this carnivorous little monster will not be eating meat. I am allowing myself to eat fish, but this will be really challenging for me, especially since I don’t eat salad because I don’t like lettuce. DJ last night was like well then what are you going to eat?

I came up with some good ideas:

Eggs

Sandwiches

Cereal

Oatmeal

Fish

Rice

Beans

There are a lot of options but I know I’m going to have to get really creative, but I’m excited to see if I can do it. I guess I really don’t think I can, so therefore I kept thinking, let’s give this a try. I know it will be even more helpful in the cooking aspect and will branch out my taste buds even more! It’s almost like how I started running a marathon. I didn’t think I could do it, so let’s give it a try and look at me now. So last night I shoved as much meat in my face… okay, that’s what she said, and now today no more meat for me. I will keep you guys posted on my progress. I really hope I can do it!

Also, good news is with my new job I can re-join the gym! I got back there last night and though I haven’t swam in a while and I thought I would lose my swimming skills I was like Flipper! Back to swimming like a dolphin and lifting weights!

Speaking of dolphins I may have sang Lonely Island’s, “I’m on a Boat” last night at the Doodle karaoke night. Yes, I frequently go to a bar called Yankee Doodles and it’s pretty much amazing. BUT after singing the song, I realized that barely anyone knew the song there. WHAT! This is the best song ever. Therefore I wanted to leave you all with the video of it, if you haven’t seen it, come out from under your rock! PS. It’s pretty vulgar, but entertaining, and I have a sick crush on Jorma Taccone. Sigh.

Today is my last day at work for a week and tomorrow I’m going snowboarding and I’m super pumped. I’m going to be like Shaun White out there! Hopefully I don’t break every bone in my body.

Tomorrow I have some SICK Olympic videos I wanted to share with you! Wow, that Skinny Vanilla latte really went to my head this morning.

xoxo

So I am excited to announce that my next and last race before the LA Marathon will be OC Hope and Harmony 5k! It takes place on February 27th and is at University of California, Irvine. I’m excited to get in some quick miles before LA and I totally believe in the cause that Beckstrand Cancer Foundation stands for. I love running smaller races and I know this race will be fun because a few girls I went to college with are running it too! If you are looking for a great race at the end of February this could be a little hidden gem and I’ll be there! You can read more about it from an article I posted to the Examiner about it here too, so you can get all the juicy details about the race. I’m excited, I haven’t ran a 5k in quite some time and I love going fast for very limited periods of time. :)

I also realized while running the Surf City Half Marathon that…maybe I do like running marathons too? I’m still thinking about this in my mind and mulling over the statement that I just threw out there. I think I’m a runner now who has started to think, we’ll might as well do the whole freakin’ thing and lets run the full, or let’s run a 5k. What has my life become. Crazy either way. We’ll see what I’m saying after LA, in.. um… yea, let’s not talk about how close that race is right now.

This past weekend I got in a 17 miler. Man, it’s been a long time since I ran that far. I figured though since I ran the half last weekend, that it was only four more miles. I can play sick mind games with myself. It was a great day out for a run and I was seemingly very inspired by watching the Olympics Friday night. I LOVE the Olympics and watch as much of them as I can. Saturday morning I was up and ready to go fairly early and did a 8 mile loop out and then passed by my house and took off on the beach path. I haven’t packed my fuel for my run and the whole ‘long run’ thing in a while. Everything seemed to go off without a hitch and I was excited to give my new K-Swiss shoes a pretty big test! Towards the end of my run I was REALLY tired and REALLY sore. It was getting warm and I forgot how it felt to be out there for so long.

Then I icebathed, napped for a little bit, showered up and prepared myself for the remainder of my day which included watching the Olympics, cleaning and preparing my picnic for Sunday! I’m such a little hopeless romantic and I made a pretty sweet picnic. It was a beautiful day on Sunday so everything was perfect for a picnic on the bluffs. After lunch somehow I ended up at a Scottish Festival at the Queen Mary, but it was such a nice day out.

Now I’m having some slight issues with my hip popping when I walk. Going to take it relatively easy this week and do some cross training and try to get it to pop back into place. What am I? 90? I think I will try to swim this week, but I’m hoping to feel better to go snowboarding again on Thursday and also I’m going to San Francisco on Friday for the weekend! I am so excited to see my friends up there.

Tomorrow, I have a guest post about running in cold weather, since there are many readers who are battling snow and slush on their running routes. Yea, today it’s suppose to be 76 here. So maybe that monthly rent is worth it :)

xoxo

First off, I want to say thank you for EVERY comment yesterday. I do read ALL the comments every day and everyone’s kind words and nice tweets and everything that was said to me was super encouraging and it meant so much to me. I am so happy!  I start there on the 24th of this month. It also means you all better get busy and be ready to run Long Beach! I expect you all there! :)

Secondly, I have added a special little feature to find me online if you so desire in the top of the right hand side of my site. There is my Twitter, Facebook, Examiner articles, Amazon store, RSS feed and YouTube channel. If you roll over the icons you can click over to the sites easily! I also moved a few more things around over there and tried to clean things up. Hope that makes it easier.

Now onto a random wonderful funny thing that I decided it was once again time to share. I did this a while ago, where I went through my iPhone and found all the pictures that made me laugh and then posted them to my blog. Since my iPhone is attached to my hand 99.9% of my life, I get some pretty good shots. Well here it seems to be round two of funny pictures off my iPhone!

Literally one morning when I woke up there were two boys sleeping like this on the chairs in our living area. Amazing on two factors. One the fact is that they fell asleep like this and two, the fact that they stayed there all night! The cave is walking distance from about 5 bars, so that leads to some interesting slumber parties of friends who come over and then can’t drive home. Funny picture none the less.

This was when I was at the local Fresh and Easy grocery store doing a little grocery shopping, which is rare when I found this amazing piece of work. I never had any idea this existed but I about died in the aisle when I saw it and of course had to take a picture and act like I wasn’t going to fall on the ground laughing.

This picture cracks me up! I am trying to be a total BA and taking chicken off the bones they come with. I am so proud of DJ and I’s newly found domestication skills this year, we’ve really done well making a LOT of dinners for ourselves, which includes planning,  cooking the meal and doing the dishes since we don’t have a dishwasher.

This happened while watching a show on TV one night randomly. That is a paused screen of our TV. The news was talking about Facebook, and low and behold, I glance over and see MY name on the screen when they showed a screen shot of Facebook! I had to pause it and take a picture, since it was pretty much the most random thing EVER and how many people are truly named Danica.

This is my cousins’ monster cat, Patchy! He is the same little kitten I found on a run back in the day! Look at how he’s grown! And how he looks like he’s wearing shorts! Yes, I also wear glasses regularly and am almost considered completely blind without them or my contacts. Friday fun fact.

My brother and I at Christmas lunch at my grandma and grandpas. Can you feel the family love radiating from us?

I got this from a friend in a text a while back and though it was pretty much the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

This was from DJ one evening. She was at a bar, I think called, Snug Harbor, which is fairly epic in itself and the fact that this was found there in the bathroom on the back of a stall door makes it about 500 times better.  I woke up to this picture since she texted me late at night and started DYING laughing. It’s funny little things that make my day.

This is a pig made of meat? I actually found this gem in LA one time after running part of the LA Marathon with Billy. It was at some crazy market and I saw it and about flipped out. Of course a picture was taken.

Cool another picture of my brother looking like he’s going to attack me! Actually, he does love me a lot and I love him too, but he loathes taking pictures! I always want to take a picture and this then occurs.

Sometimes at work I sit on conference calls and draw cool pictures and text them to my friends. This was my two friends Maritza, Tara and I. I don’t really know what is going on, but I love dinosaurs and thought this was appropriate.

This month it was groundhog day so I sent this out to my friends to wish them a happy and peaceful (?) Groundhog day! I know, I have pretty sweet art skills.

Lastly, this one was an iPhone screen shot I took the other day when I was on my way home. I needed directions and I noticed that Santa Monica was spelled wrong. MONIKA?! Is the iPhone becoming ghetto? I about died when I saw this and took a picture immediately. I used the scribble app as well to put the cool writing  on the picture. :)

It’s the little things in life isn’t it? Well this weekend I have a big 16 miler, some cleaning, some cooking and a Valentine! :) For Valentine’s Day I made some fun hearts to share with you guys via this website. I’ve seen some of my other fave bloggers doing it so I thought I would make some for myself :)

Hope you all have a fantastic day of love. I know I’ll sneak in a little morning run on the day of love as well. Ah running, how I big red mushy heart you!

xoxo