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.

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.

Disney Cars Land 5K Medal and the MATTERHORN!

The medal design for the Cars Land 5K was just announced on the runDisney Facebook page. How freaking cute is this?

(source)

With all of the runDisney events I've done, I haven't tried any of the 5Ks. Usually, I just focus on the half marathon race. Even though I love, love, love Disney races, I've heard that the 5Ks are a mess. They aren't timed, there are no corrals, there are strollers everywhere and it's a total cluster f***.

This year, though, my mom and sister are coming along for a little family vacay over the Disneyland Half Marathon Weekend. I figured they could join in on the fun on Saturday and all three of us could do the 5K and then I would do the Half on Sunday.

                                    Cars Land just opened yesterday!                        (source)

They haven't posted the 5K course, yet, so I'm excited to see if we run through Cars Land. The half marathon course looks the same as last year, although, I'm assuming the California Adventure portion will be a little different. The course map is a little vague.

                                          V8 Cafe in Cars Land                                (source)

I'm really excited to see all of the new stuff. Also, the Matterhorn has been completely refurbished. I haven't ridden it in years because even though it was one of my favorite rides, it was getting so run down that I always felt like I needed to go to a chiropractor after the ride was over. I can't wait to ride it again after many years of skipping it.

       New bob sleds. This is a much better design than the old!          (source)

                                            New Matterhorn Track                         (source)

When the "snow" was reapplied to the surface of the mountain, glass beads were added to make it sparkle like real snow.

                                                  Aww, pretty!                                  (source)

I can not wait to go. It seems like every year that I am older, I love Disney parks more and more. I get a lot of crap for how often I wind up at Disneyland or Walt Disney World. I used to only go to Disneyland once a year at the MOST, sometimes less than that. But now that I've discovered how awesome their runs are, I plan on doing at least 1 or 2 of them a year for the next few years to come. I still haven't done Wine & Dine, but it seems like we're adding that to the calendar for 2013. Woot!

With all of this excitement, I should be training harder than ever. Last night I drove to the gym and had actually pulled into the parking lot when I got a text saying that we were having happy hour at the barn. Of course, I immediately headed to the barn! We now have a tent with misters in our arena for drinking. Well, it's actually so that my trainer can have shade in the brutal sun all summer, but whatevs.

View from inside the arena "bar"

And for the record: this is the best invention ever. 100 calorie packets of gaucamole. Store bought guac is always a gamble, but this stuff is really good.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend!

Rock Encore!



Look what I got! My Rock Encore race bling for completing two Rock 'n' Roll races in 2011. I like this one a lot better than the old design. You can never have too much bling!

Post Race Tomfoolery

Oh, it's magical!

Running two half marathons in two days is tough business. Run On The Sun and I didn't make it to the parks Saturday or Sunday because we were exhausted. We did, however, have dinner with my wonderful friend Debra that drove from Jacksonville just to have dinner with us. I wish I had taken pictures of the food because it was incredible. We went to a Spanish tapas restaurant and ate ourselves silly!

We decided to take our bling for a spin around the parks and get some good pictures.

Just a little awesomeness. No big deal.

I'm being eaten by a squirrel.

Do people actually pay for these hats, or do they
 just try them on and take pictures?

Moi

Fake Italy!

Fake Japan!

I wonder how many people do this every day...

Fake France!

Really wish I had a better camera for this one...

Spaceship Earth

I really love Epcot. I enjoy all of the parks, but Epcot is the most interesting. Also has the biggest selection of alcohol, not that I noticed! We definitely spent most of our time at Epcot. For some reason, I didn't take any pictures at Animal Kingdom. Can't wait to come back in 2013!

The Art Behind Run Disney Medals

I love this video. Kinda makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Plus, it's cool. :)

Love mah medalz

January is over and 3 half marathons are already on the books for 2012. I need to do my race recaps for the WDW half marathon and full marathon relay along with the recap for the Tinkerbell Half from last weekend, but alas, life has been busy, busy, busy (that's code for "I'm lazy, lazy, lazy").
Anyhoo, I thought I would give my blogger app a test run from my phone with this in depth post. And show off my January medals. I shamelessly stole this pic from T.