Blah Blah RAGNAR, hell yeah!

It's awesome that this was a three day weekend...for everyone but moi, apparently. Not that I'm bitter. I only had a 2 day weekend. Bah.

Available on Zazzle!

Despite the fact that this weekend was so insanely busy and exhausting that I had to go to bed at 7:45 last night, I somehow managed to fit in a 4.25 mile run on Saturday morning.

Do I look like a creepy flasher? Who cares, dude!
 I'm wearing a marathon shirt. Yeehaaaw!

And we took the horses to a schooling show and rode around the cross country course, even though I no longer jump.

Olympian in the making, right here!

I also finally put together my medal display that I got from my mom for Christmas. My race medals have been sort of lying around my house waiting for a place to call their home. I could not commit to a permanent fixture on my wall, so I came up with another idea:

A coat/hat rack! Genius, right?

There's an overwhelming about of runDisney bling
on this rack.

I can move it where ever I want. And I think I'm going to move it upstairs to my bedroom, because this giant monument to my self proclaimed awesomeness is a little too narcissistic even for me. It takes up a lot of room.

We did have our final Ragnar del Sol team meeting yesterday. There are some substitute runners on our team now due to a few injuries. That also means shuffling around runner assignments. So guess who is the lucky girl now running the longest leg in Ragnar history?

That's right, it's me. And I get some extra bling bling for doing it.

So that's super cool, right? So why did I wake up in the middle of the night (besides the fact that I went to bed at 7:45 like a grandma and had 5 hours of sleep already) having a mild anxiety attack over it?

It's not the distance that scares me or even the fact that I still have two more legs to run after the 13.5 mile leg. (I mean, I survived Goofy, right?) It's the fact that I'm super slow. I have no doubt I can do it, but I won't be able to maintain a fast pace for that leg for the entire 13.5 miles.

So I'm equal parts scared and excited. Shockingly, it's not the extra medal that has me excited. Don't get me wrong, I ain't turning it down, let's not get extreme here. Choosing races has now become more about the experience now, rather than the medal. Who would have thought that would ever happen?

Anyway, I'm more excited about the fact that it's a unique Ragnar experience that only a few people get to do. Ragnar is a different breed of race. Your performance affects the outcome for the other runners. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little worried about that.

All I can do is my best, right? And Ragnar del Sol begins Friday morning at 4:00am or something crazy like that.

Also, Words With Friends does not accept Ragnar as a legit word. FYI.

Much Ado About Nothing

After my rant about the coffee situation yesterday, I was thinking to myself that maybe I was, in fact, exaggerating how often it occurs that I find dregs of coffee left on the burner.

Nope.

Yep. And the burner is still on.

I immediately had to drag my friend, A., into my first world coffee drama.

I love A. Pretty much always has the best solutions.

I know what you're thinking: Doesn't that girl have anything better do to than whine about freaking coffee? There's starving children in Africa!

The answer is no. No, I don't.

My day did not improve. After a slew of ridiculously frustrating emails and phone calls between me, my outside rep, two different vendors trying to get me the same piece of equipment and my purchasing department, my head was getting close to exploding.

I didn't feel my outside rep was appreciating the depth of my frustration, so I sent her a picture.

She was not impressed.

And yes, I'm wearing my glasses, because after you have the delightful experience of scratching both of your corneas in the same day, you tend to freak out a little with any discomfort in your eyeballs. Better safe than sorry, right?

After work I got my hair done because I was tired of seeing just how gray I am. I'm too young to be this gray, for realz. I felt the need to share a picture because my hair is only straight after I get it done. My hairstylist always refuses to let me leave the salon with my hair au naturale. Look how ridiculously long my hair is when it's straight. Crazy, right?



I had to go with black and white because I look
excessively orange in this picture in color.

This post is pretty much pointless. And I did no running today for a grand total of ZERO miles run so far this week. What a rockstar.

Cooking For Dummies

We all have our pet peeves, right? One of mine is going into the break room at work to find this:

Who does this?

This happens pretty much every day. Who leaves this much coffee in the pot and then puts it back on the hot burner so that it turns into burnt sludge? I'm not even exaggerating that this is how I find the coffee almost every single morning. Stop being lazy and make another effing pot of coffee. Or at the very least, don't leave the burner on.

Shut up, Yoda.

Annnnnnyway, I find it highly irritating, obviously.

I decided to attempt to make spaghetti squash this evening. I know, right? I mean, sometimes I forget how to even get to the kitchen, I make things so rarely. I'm like a college aged male bachelor when it comes to all things domestic. But all of the cool kids are eating spaghetti squash these days, so I decided to jump on the cool bus.

Hey, there's my ride!

First, preheat the over to 375 degrees. Cut the squash length wise.

I recommend using the biggest knives ever for this task.

Cutting a spaghetti squash is some serious business. It's damn near impossible to cut it in half. Luckily, I have vast culinary experience (and by "vast" I mean none at all) so I figured wedging another insanely sharp knife into the thing and pretty much hacking and prying until it split in half was the preferred method of splitting a spaghetti squash.

This is what I imagine doing when I find coffee pots empty.

At this point I was actually a little frightened that I may lose a finger or two while trying to force the squash in half. Eventually, it split in two very uneven halves. Whatevs.

Having never made spaghetti squash before, I first thought maybe the strands inside are what you eat as "spaghetti". But then I remembered that I read somewhere that you scape the seeds and strands out before you bake it.

I briefly considered baking the seeds to see if they tasted
like pumpkin seeds, but then I remembered I'm lazy.

According to Master Google, you place the halves face down on a cookie sheet and bake for approximately 45 minutes. When the edges are soft and sort of browned, take a fork and see if you can easily pull the strands away, thus making "spaghetti".

Lesson #1: It tastes better if it's really, really cooked. After 45 minutes, it was still a little too "crunchy" for my liking so I cooked it until the edges were more caramelized, which ended up being over an hour.

After the edges are brown, use a fork to scrape the sides to create "noodles".

Lesson #2: It's a good idea to drain the strands or put them on a paper towel to absorb moisture instead of putting it directly into a bowl. Otherwise, it will be watery at the bottom like spaghetti noodles that are not allowed to drain in a colander.

So there you have it. The beginnings of a delicious paleo meal...until you dump Ragu on it like I did. Not so paleo then. But delicious. Next time, maybe I'll use a better sauce but I'm going with baby steps here.

What did you expect? I'm no Martha Stewart.
I'm lucky I didn't burn my house down.

So now I can add spaghetti squash to my fairly small list of things I able to prepare. Check!

In other news, remember when Tara and I did that 12-12-12 Virtual Race? My medal came today!

Front

Back

Pretty cool for a race that cost me $12.12. And the medal is cute. Check out her Facebook page if you want to get in on one of her races.

Odds And Ends

If someone that you barely know posts this picture on your Facebook wall because it makes them think of you, chances are you are tagged in one too many pictures drinking wine.

Do you think I could get away with this at work?

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), my wine consumption this week has been a little high. But a girl has to have her hobbies, right?

Besides wine drinking, I've been out pretty much every night this week. So my calorie consumption has also been...rather high.



Ah-So Japanese restaurant.
So delicious!

Girls night out!

And, of course, we had happy hour at the barn last night, so on my lunch break at work, I ran to BevMo to pick up wine and saw these little gems at the check out counter. Looks like GU packets, right?

For the serious alcoholic.



This might have made Goofy Challenge less painful.

These days my alcohol consumption is pretty much limited to wine, so I was not even a little bit tempted to acquire some of these. But I still needed to get a picture of them.

I did get up and meet my newbie half-marathon-in-training buddies for 5 miles out in the desert. There was a lot of walking, but 5 miles is 5 miles, so I'm okay with that. It's highly possible I would have stayed in bed this morning if I didn't have plans to meet them. I may go out for a second run tonight and do a little speed work.

On a side note, I've had this killer muscle spasm behind my left shoulder blade and it then radiates up to my neck. Strangely, I've also had some serious strain in my right glute. I used the roller stick thingy on my glute and somehow it helped relieve the spasm in my back. Weird, right?

So yeah, my right ass cheek is somehow tied to the muscle spasm in my left shoulder. It's crazy how the human body works, isn't it?

I Feel The Need...The Need For Speed

Back in the day when I didn't find Tom Cruise incredibly annoying.

Google Image searching also led me to these little gems. Dear Santa, these would be good for my stocking. Just sayin'. Too bad these socks come from a store in the UK.

After snarfing some left over Chinese food (not even a little bit paleo or gluten free, by the way), I guilted myself into dragging my ass out for a speed workout at 9:00 at night.

I just have to say that there are a whole lotta pot smokers in my town. It doesn't matter if I run in my own neighborhood or in my mother's, I smell it on pretty much every single run and often multiple times. Seriously. I had no idea before I was a runner that it is everywhere in my 'hood. What is the deal?

Anyway, I took advice from Abby and donned my WDW Marathon tech shirt to get in the running mood. Also, I had no clean running gear so no time like the present to take my hard earned shirt for a spin.

I don't think I'm ever going to be good at self pics.

So out into the chilly night air I went. And by chilly, I mean it was 60 degrees. I'm from Phoenix, I don't do cold. I started with a 10 minute warm up doing a 13 minute pace. After that, I did 3 intervals of running 2 minutes at a 9:30 to 10:30 pace and then walking 1 minute. The next two intervals I tried to keep myself at a steady 12 minute pace and walking 1 minute.

Can you believe I  had a hard time keeping myself at a 12 minute pace? I kept looking down at my Garmin and I would be at 11:30, so I would slow down a little only to creep back up,which is awesome for me!

Awww, thanks, Bill!

I have to say, my run was great. It's been a long time since I said that, but I felt great and speedy. I'm glad I forced myself out there for 42 minutes instead of beating myself up for eating Chinese food and sitting around.

Weekend Crazy- Part 2

Sunday was crazy busy, but I did take some time to meet with Tara for some actual speed work.

We look like serious runners, right?

We did 2 minutes running trying to keep ourselves at a 10 minute pace and then we'd walk for a minute. I know that's not super speedy compared to a lot of people we know, but it's pretty speedy for us. For some of the intervals we were actually around a 9 minute pace.

We ran at the park near my house which is also a police precinct. And it has those exercise stations, which we could not walk past without trying them out.

What the effff... this thing is so awkward.

This is hard core right here...

...but then I decided that I hate exercising.

I should probably do some more core strengthening stuff in the future...but not in the near future, because let's not get crazy or anything.

I ran around all day and doing errands, then ran up to the barn to ride and take care of the horses. Gratuitous Cute Pony Picture coming right up.

And Tara and I finally exchanged Christmas gifts!!

How awesome is this?!

Lots and lots packed into one weekend. I'm exhausted.

Weekend Crazy- Part 1

So, you know what? This girl went running TWICE this weekend! I know, I'm as shocked as you.

And like any good athlete, I spent Friday hydrating. And by hydrating, I mean I drank wine. To-may-to, to-mah-to. Lou wanted in on the action.

Red Solo cup, you lift me up!

You know I can't resist the opportunity to share Lou's adorableness with you.

The next morning, I had plans to get up bright and early to go for a run. You see, I have new victims. And I have convinced said victims that their lives can not be complete unless they do the Tinkerbell Half Marathon next year. I know, I'm cruel, but let me tell you, for at least one of them (and she knows who she is) it was not hard to twist her arm.

So I have some newbie future half marathoners to whip into shape in one year. Too bad I'm such an utter slacker because, damn. They're pretty much on their own.

So my plan was to get to Reach 11 (a desert-y recreation area that appears to be in the middle of the desert, but has 2 freeways running through it, a sports complex on one end and a horse show park on the other. In between all of that is this thing called "nature". Whatever that is.) and get 4 to 5 miles in before Kimberlee and Tabatha arrived for something much more leisurely. Of course, I only arrived about 15 minutes early, so I ran one real mile on my own at a faster pace than is normal for moi.

Look! Nature.

Tabatha originally planned on bringing her man to come along, but he decided not to hang out with "the vagina monologues" (his words, not mine, but funny none the less) so she brought her trusty pup, Atlas.

Handsome, isn't he?

Our run turned into a 4 mile walk. But it's something, right? That still counts as 5 miles for me on Saturday. And I did run one of those miles, so I'm counting it as a run. And of course we then had to go for breakfast, because I need to replace any burned calories with a surplus of new ones. It's how I roll. I also got my horoscope (or as I like to call it, horror-scope) from the restaurant's little news letter.

What, I shouldn't expect everyone to be mind reader? Psshh

Saturday night, we celebrated my dear friend, Ari's birthday! We went to Blue Hound Kitchen and Cocktails, which was delicious.

I had these gourmet tator tots and the risotto. I'm fairly certain none of that was gluten free, so my stomach is a little upset today, but it was delicious, regardless.

So delicious.

I also went back into hydrating mode since I planned to run Sunday. And what better to hydrate with than a Riesling called Gotham Project?

This stuff is so good.

Me, Tara, and Grae

Ari and me

And since I'm a narcissistic blogger, here is a gratuitous self portrait that I felt I needed to include just so that's there's photographic evidence that I wear things other than jeans, breeches and running clothes. Although, this isn't too far from that, but for me, it's dressed up.

I should lose more lbs before taking pics of
 myself wearing skinny jeans.

Nicole made Ari a spectacular cake, but the staff at Blue Hound wouldn't let us bring it in. Something about health codes, blah, blah, blah. Whatever. I couldn't eat any of it because it was chock full of gluten, but it looked amazing and the frosting was made with Nutella, so how could it not be? We continued our little party outside in the courtyard. Luckily, it was pretty warm for a February night.

There was also some singing and dancing...and maybe a kick line.

Now I am off to ride Lou and take care of ponies. But don't worry, I will be back to share my riveting Sunday work out with Tara later.