Post Thanksgiving Blues

It's always hard to go back to work after a four day vacation. It was a wonderful Thanksgiving break, Surprisingly, I don't have have actual Thanksgiving dinner pictures, despite the fact that I have divorced parents and therefore, I had not one, but two Thanksgiving feasts within a few hours of each other.

Wednesday night started off with an 8 mile run with Tara... Which didn't do anything to really lessen the damage I did shoveling food into my mouth on Thanksgiving day. *siiiiiiiiiiigh*

Thanksgiving started with a morning at the barn, of course, and Louie attempted to steal my coffee...

Mmmm

Coffee? Yes, please!

Actually, he was more interested in ripping off the plastic top and chomping on it than the actual coffee, despite the fact that it was cinnamon coffee with vanilla creamer!

Then there was lots of Thanksgiving snarfing. Like, seriously, I ate a lot of food on Thursday. I wish I could say I did some sort of Turkey Trot run - it's not like there's not a ton of them around - but I did not.

I also did not participate in Black Friday this year. I've joined the insane masses on Black Friday for the last several years with my friends and it always turns into getting up at some insane hour, going to the mall, getting Starbucks, getting sleepy and annoyed, going out to breakfast and then finally heading home pretty much empty handed.

Last year, we pretty much had Starbucks and people watched instead of trying to actually shop. I was too exhausted to join in on that this year. Maybe next year instead of Black Friday Starbucks, we can tailgate and and drink wine in the parking lot of Best Buy and watch crazy shoppers try to kill each other. How awesome would that be? It would be awesome.

Hell yeah, count me IN!

Moving on...

One of my friends also organized a reunion of some of my high school friends. While I have seen some of these people a few times since high school, most of them I haven't, so it was so great to catch up with everyone.

By Sunday, I finally did some more running. I met up with Tara once again for a long run. We originally planned for 13 or 14 miles and ended up doing close to 11. It was 10.75 to be exact.



Yup. Had to Instagram this to make it look better.
Here's my required narcissist blogger pic.

The park is really pretty at night

Tara brought me CHRISTMAS GU!!! OMG, it tastes like candy canes. I loved it.

Tastes like Christmas!

Tara running along...probably around mile 4

Thank God, Tara and I have started making an effort to meet for longer runs. She and I are total slackers and it's getting tough to make myself go out and run. At least we find ways to entertain ourselves.

Pole dancing

Tara doesn't like boring pictures, so she wanted me to be silly. Of course, it turned out really blurry...

This is the only filter I could find to
lighten up this pic

We tried to come up with a strategy for the Goofy Challenge. Since the NYC Marathon was canceled,  we don't have the experience of completing a full marathon to figure out how to pace ourselves for Goofy. Last year, when we did the Half Marathon and the Marathon Relay back to back, we took both races really slowly to try and save our muscles. I think we're going to try and do something like that this year. Anyone have any advice?

Speaking of Goofy, I went to send my Dad the link to the Goofy hoodie I wanted for Christmas (he never knows what to get me) and they're already sold out!

Waaah. I want it.

Anyone have any ideas for how you plan to handle Goofy? Any advice?

So that was my Thanksgiving holiday in a nutshell. Love my family, my friends, my wonderful little horse, the great friends I've made through running, blogging and various other Internet sources. I'm thankful for each and everyone of you.

Hope everyone had a great holiday!

Baby Steps

So my almost month long hiatus from running ended this evening. On Sunday, I wrote about getting back on the wagon and until tonight, that basically consisted of trolling for iTunes for hours looking for new music. Baby steps, right?

After work, I met up with Tara and decided to leisurely run for 2 hours. This basically consisted of doing 3 minutes run, 1 minute walk intervals. We started off pretty pretty strong, running at a decent pace, even though how walk intervals were pretty slow. Toward the end of the run, I felt pretty fatigued, but I suppose that's alright considering my complete lack of running for the last several weeks.

Ready to run!

Luckily we decided to meet because it would have been pretty easy for me to bail on the whole running deal. It was nice to have each other for entertainment.

And we saw this weird car...

So yes, I am back on the wagon. On another topic, has anyone seen Pitch Perfect? OMG, hilarious. And the music is awesome. Check it out. This was floating around Pinterest, and I had to share...

Hello, Wagon, We Meet Again

I've fallen off of the wagon in a major way. Like, I've done no running for about 3 weeks. Yep. Three weeks. I happened to notice my handy dandy little Goofy Challenge countdown says that the Goofy Challenge is *gulp* less than 2 months away. Insert panic and dramatics here.

I love 30 Rock...

It's not even like I'm in a funk or feeling depressed. I've got lots of things going on of great importance. Like very important work projects with my work BFF, Tiana...

Grade school project or work project? You be the judge.

I've been spending loads of time with this super cute dude:

And of course, I can't help but Imstagram him, pretty much all of the time:

I mean, seriously, how cute is he?

I'm also developing a serious addiction to Pinterest. It's like I can not stop. I can't remember the last time I got so sucked into a social type of network. I'm blaming Katie for insisting that I join Pinterest when she had to know how sucked in I would get. There are times when Katie and I will hang out at the barn, split a bottle of wine and pin like crazy for like 2 freaking hours. What is wrong with humanity?! Anhyhoo, yeah. Pinterest, I <3 you.

The point of all of this chatter in that I'm seriously in a training rut. Although, that has not slowed down my calorie consumption. Oh no, I'm still eating like I'm running 20+ miles every week. So far, the damage has been minimal, but I know it will catch up with me soon.

So yes, the Goofy Challenge is looming ahead and I need to get my shit together and stop effing around. Time to jump back on that wagon. Like stat. Don't want to miss out on these babies:

My precious....

All of that starts tomorrow, of course, ya know, because it's Monday and all. Right now, I have to play Song Pop, see what's happening on Pinterest and finish off some wine I already have open.

Feel free to (attempt) to keep me accountable by leaving me nasty comments about my ass getting bigger or yell at me to blow the dust off of my running shoes. I'll update you all tomorrow. Good night!

New York City Highlights

I meant to post this earlier, but I've been exhausted and burnt out since I got home from NYC. I had a fabulous time, even though the race was canceled. Boo. You can read my recap about the NYC Marathon that never happened here.

Even though the way the race was canceled was handled horribly, there's a part of me that is grateful that it was canceled so late because I got to have a vacation in my favorite city.

I've only been to NYC 5 times in my life and I have special memories from every trip. I'm just going to bombard you with my NYC picture porn. Enjoy!

It took about 8 attempts to get this right...



Doing a little newscasting from Democracy Plaza.
No big deal.



St. Patrick's Cathedral.
I visit St. Patrick's every time I'm in NYC.

It's cold outside!



I also had a Flat Stanley on this trip!



Since we weren't running, we were drinking.

More Flat Stanley photos from Times Square

If you get a chance to see Newsies,
I highly recommend it!

Grand Central Station

More Democracy Plaza

Grand Central and the Chrysler Building

Statue of Liberty from the top of the
Empire State Building

Stacie, me and Ari

M&Ms store with my friend Cindy that came
down to visit with another friend, Lynda.

Times Square

I'm being kidnapped by Mary Poppins

Can not say enough good stuff about this show...

Phoenix Zoo Lymphomathon 5K Walk

Awhile ago, I wrote about my coworker and friend, Theresa's, battle with lymphoma. Well, I'm happy to say that Theresa's lymphoma is in remission!! I few weeks ago she had her last chemo treatment and the tumors are gone. She still needs to get check ups and preventative treatments for the next few years, but things look good right now!

Today, our company walked as a team for the Lymphomathon at the Phoenix Zoo. It was a 5K and not really a race at all, but I decided to recap it anyway because there are adorable zoo animals involved.

I got up ridiculously early to pick up my friend, Tabatha, and still have enough time to go to her beloved Starbucks. We have our priorities.

Looking half asleep as usual.

After loading up on Mint Mochas, we headed to the Phoenix Zoo. Or tried to, anyway. My iPhone GPS kept routing us back to Starbucks. Not sure what cosmic forces were behind that, but eventually, we met up with Team Milburn for the Lymphomathon Walk.

Team Milburn

The walk was slightly disorganized, but we had a blast. The route was actually through the zoo, so we were able to look at the animals before the zoo was actually open.

I think this guy moves faster than I do

 

I'm not sure how his back got all wet.

 

I heart giraffes

 



This tiger was so playful, romping around.

We somehow ended up off course, but took advantage of some photo ops...

Me and Tabatha

Me and Frogger

Me, Jay and Tabatha

Sarah and me

Most of our group left after the 5K was over, but if you did the walk, you got an all day pass to the zoo, so I hung out for while with Sarah, her two sons, and a coworkers son. We looked like a nice lesbian couple with our adopted brood.

Looks like a family photo, right?

Jambo the giraffe, Jambo means hello in Swahili.

I have to say that the Phoenix Zoo kind of blows. Sarah told me all about the Wild Animal Park outside of Phoenix that she says is much, much better. I'm going to have to check it out. All in all, it was a fun day and I'm glad that we did this.

The highlight of my day: feeding Jambo