31 Things Update

Quick update on my 31 Things challenge.  Last week I did Jillian Michaels' water detox.  To be fair, I only did 5 days instead of 7.  I lost a few pounds of water weight, but I'm sure I have promptly gained it back :)  I wasn't thrilled with the detox, mainly because it made me feel sick to my stomach.  I imagine it was the dandelion root tea (which Wes described as tasting like "hot dog water"), since the other ingredients in the detox are just cranberry juice and lemon juice.  And water.  I give the detox an overall rating of "meh."  

I think for now I'll just stick to drinking regular water and "enjoying" my yearly medically-required cleanse.  Jealous? :) 

Where I stand:

Couponing

Ok, so I admit that I'm a little behind the curve with the whole couponing thing.  I'm pretty sure most of my friends on here have gone through a couponing phase and are kind of over it.  Like most things, I've picked up on the craze a little later than most.  Back in Dallas, I will admit that I didn't bother with coupons because I didn't concern myself with my grocery bill.  I'm not proud of that truth, but it is what it is.  And although Wes and I have lived together since 2007 (side note: seriously? where has the time gone?) we did not combine finances until we were married.  We split the bills, but he worried about his money and I worried about mine.  Now he worries about all of our money (a benefit of marrying an accountant!)

So here we are, one year into our marriage and we've made some amazing progress.  We are blessed to both have good jobs and we make a good living, but we have a lot of student loan debt.  Like, more than a house's worth of student loan debt.  <shudders>  Since our wedding, we have paid off all of our credit card debt and are 2 months away from having 2 paid for cars.  (Don't tell Wes I want a new car).  And, since we no longer have the house in Dallas (hooray!), we are saving like mad men to buy a house in Atlanta next summer.  And I can't wait, frankly, apartment living is for the birds.  And by birds, I mean incredibly rude neighbors who never sleep and have terrible taste in music.

I decided to start couponing to see if I could cut our grocery budget in order to speed up the savings process.  And I think I did - in September, I saved $235 and spent about $350.  I do think that the savings will spread out more over time because I definitely bought more items that I usually do, and if I can manage to spread out what we have and plan our meals wisely, our bills should be lower next month.  I mean, our cabinets are seriously full.  The problem that I find with couponing, however, is while we need to eat down the food that we have, I cannot miss shopping a sale!  The one thing keeping me reigned in right now is that we don't have a pantry or an extra freezer, so I'm quite limited in storage.  Also, my fear of becoming one of "those people" on TLC helps me pump the brakes when necessary.

I do have glimpses of life as one of "those" people.  For example, I shopped on Sunday, and I was really tempted to buy some Palmolive dish soap with a final price of 25 cents.  It was a big bottle!  But I didn't buy it because we truly don't need any dish soap (one bottle in use and one back up bottle at the moment).  Two weeks ago, Truvia was on sale for $2.99 and I had a $2 coupon.  I forgot to buy it over the weekend, so I definitely made a special trip to get my 99 cent Truvia.  Man was that satisfying!  And, I think we have seven boxes of cereal right now.  I eat cereal almost every morning, but I seriously can't let myself buy any more boxes until I eat the ones we have!  We also have a pretty ridiculous cracker supply and 4 back up bags of cat food for the lazy ones.  Don't judge...

My strategy is pretty simple.  I clip coupons from the Sunday paper, and enter them into a sortable Excel spreadsheet (nerd alert!)  I also print coupons from coupons.com, target.com, and publix.com.  Then I check the sale ads from Publix & Target, cross-reference with my coupon spreadsheet, and buy accordingly.  If we need something that isn't on sale, then I'll pick a couple of coupons and see what brand is the best deal when I get to the store.  And that's it.  I don't go to multiple stores, seriously ya'll, that is too intense.

I also have a health & beauty supply closet that is ridiculous.

31 Things

In an effort to reignite the old blog and make it about more than running, I decided to make a new list of random goals to accomplish over the next year.  Once upon a time I did the 1001 things in 1001 days challenge, but that was on my old blog and I have no idea how I did on that.  Probably not very well!    Since I will be 31 in a little over a month, this list will be a list of 31 Things.  Stay tuned to see the progress!

1.  Complete wedding scrapbook.
2.  Run a half-marathon.
3.  Buy a house.
4.  Pay off my car.
5.  Take Wes to a UGA game in Athens.
6.  Take a golf lesson.
7.  Buy a nice camera.
8.  Host a family holiday at our house.
9.  Frame a shadowbox of wedding items.
10.  Do a detox/cleanse.
11.  Color my hair.
12.  Lose 20 lbs.
13.  Exceed my billable hour requirement at work.
14.  Write a short story.
15.  Train Ollie to not poop on the floor.
16.  Beat Super Mario Galaxy.
17.  Complete 2010-2011 scrapbook.
18.  Give at least one homemade Christmas gift.
19.  Find a signature scent and start wearing it.
20.  Seriously clean out closet.
21.  Go to the North Georgia Mountains with Wes.
22.  Visit Nashville.
23.  Get a customized stamp once we have a house.
24.  Select and print canvas prints from wedding photos.
25.  Make some Pinterest Christmas decorations.
26.  Get my calves small enough that I can wear knee-high boots.
27.  Create a jewelry display/storage system.
28.  Have wedding rings appraised.
29.  Buy a new car (preferably a small SUV!).
30.  Go rock climbing (indoor, obviously).
31.  Climb Stone Mountain with Wes.

Oh, hey there blog.

Well, it's been a while.  Over two months, to be exact!  Training for the half has been a very tough and eye-opening experience.  I have mentioned several times about how my feet go numb after I have been running or walking for a few miles.  As you can imagine, this is very annoying.  After time, new shoes, stretching, and voodoo did nothing to make the numbness better, I went to see an orthopedic doctor.  He basically said "hmmm, this is weird, not really sure how to fix it."  He sent me to physical therapy, which I've been doing for a few months. 

I ran a 10k in mid-August and it was like my feet were worse than ever.  I went back to the doctor.  Frustratingly, no one can give me an explanation of why this happens.  My doctor advised me to stop running and to continue with physical therapy and other non-running exercises to strengthen my leg muscles.  The educated guess of various doctors and therapists is that I just have very tight, knotted up leg muscles. 

So, I'm not running right now.  I'm so disappointed.  I know I'm awfully naive, but I thought if I just put the time in with this I could accomplish it.  Turns out my body needs some more work.  It's no secret that I carry a few extra pounds, but I'm finding now how incredibly difficult it is to become an athlete in your 30s.  Wow.  It's hard.

Team Spina Bifida is letting me push my race date out to another half, so now I'm working towards running the Publix half marathon in Atlanta in March 2013.   My fundraising will just continue until then (I've raised over $1300!!).  Hopefully if I spend several months working on leg strength and low-impact cardio, I will be able to complete the half training without my feet betraying me.

Peachtree Road Race!

This morning I ran the Peachtree Road Race, which has been an Atlanta tradition since 1970.  It's the largest 10k in the world - with only a mere 60,000 participants!!  Yesterday I was pretty nervous about the race and strongly considered not running it at all.  I didn't feel like I was prepared enough, and the heat in Atlanta had been in triple digits for the past week.  After some great motivational coaching from my "coach" Allison, I decided to do it, and I can't tell you how HAPPY I am that I did it!!  6.2 miles is by far the farthest I've run (even run/walking).  When I crossed the finish line, I had some tears well up in my eyes (which I know is totally lame, but whatever) because I was truly so proud of myself for finishing this race. 

The atmosphere of the Peachtree is amazing!  I think I smiled the whole time.  There are 150,000+ spectators along the course, cheering you along.  It is such a huge Atlanta tradition that there are booths and events set up along the route too, and they hand out things like popsicles, watermelon, Powerade, and other goodies.  I didn't collect too much swag though, because you have to carry everything!  One of my favorite group of spectators was the group of priests sprinkling holy water on the runners as they passed.  I got sprinkled...even though I'm Methodist I could use a little God to get me through the race! :)

I still have a long way to go for the half, but this gave me some much-needed confidence in myself.  I think I can do this!!  I'm still a run/walker, but I think I will probably be a run/walker for the half.  And that's okay!  My training program (which just started this week - 12 weeks out!) is a run/walk interval program.  I think it is smart so that I don't risk injury or overdoing it.  I want to become a runner the right way.

Another cool thing about today is that Wes saw me cross the finish line - on T.V.!!  He DVR'ed the race for me.  This morning he said he was watching a soccer game and the just had a "feeling" that he should flip back to the race.  He did, and I crossed the finish line right after he flipped over!  I was able to watch myself on the DVR'ed version when I got home.  Pretty sweet!!

6:30 a.m. and I'm all smiles!  Let's do this!

These are the Group A runners - the first group after the "elite" runners.  I passed them on the way to my starting corral.  Oh, and for what it's worth, I probably walked an extra three miles today from my car to the race and back to the car!

My corral - M.  The corrals ran from A-Y.  You are placed in a corral based on a verified time from another qualifying race.  My submitted time was my only race I had done - a 5k in January.  My time was pretty average, which is why I was seeded as a "middle of the pack" runner.

FINISHED!!!  The feeling at the end of a race is unlike any other.

  So happy!

Partial view of the finish line area at Piedmont Park.  It was packed!!

Me and my running support coach, Allison.  She wasn't able to run the race this year, but she came out to the finish to support me and some other of our friends!  That meant so much to me!

Hope everyone had a great 4th today!  I feel lucky and blessed that I was able to finish this race safely and smiling!

running is hard and simeon is amazing

Simeon today - one week old!

In the most important news EVER...sweet Simeon Lee Smith was born at 10:10 a.m. on Wednesday, May 23!!!  He weighed a glorious 6 lbs., 2 ounces and is practically perfect in every way.  He has already had his surgery to close his back (6 long hours) and to place his shunt (1 1/2 hours) and he is now recovering in the NICU.  He handled both surgeries really well!  Simeon is a beautiful little boy who has brought his parents (and the rest of his family!) so much joy.  In a situation where so many things "could" have gone wrong on his delivery day, so many things went perfectly right and everyone is very grateful and thankful for that.  In his first seven days of life, Simeon has displayed so much strength and tenacity.  I am in awe of him.  Simeon is reminding me every day that I need to just do this and quit complaining.  Seriously, look at this kid:

Just a few hours old - resting in the NICU.  His back was not closed yet.

Simeon recovering from having his shunt placed.  This is the face of a little boy who will literally get anything he wants from Aunt Camille.

In much less important news (that is, news about me), it turns out that running is hard.  Running for a long time is even harder.  Who knew?  I never honestly thought that this would be easy, but I did kind of think it would be easier.  Like, when I first started driving a car I wasn't very good...but the more I did it the better I got, until it was effortless.  I didn't really have to push myself when I was learning how to drive.  But boy do I have to push myself like crazy when I run.  I watch people at the gym and at races who seem to run so far so effortlessly, and I wonder if they ever felt like a two ton elephant lumbering along at a glacial pace?  Please tell me they did...or there is no hope for this two ton elephant.


I don't know if I'm just not that good at running, or if it's this hard for all beginners.  Right now I feel like I'm not progressing any.  I can't seem to really push past three miles, and honestly I'm pushing it to do that much.  It's like my body seems to think that three miles as the longest distance ever...how do I tell it I need to work up toward ten more miles?  I feel like if I told my legs that, they would just detach from my body and walk away saying bitch, you cray.  Seriously.

As for my weird, sleepy feet issue, a friend of mine who is a really avid cyclist advised me to purchase The Stick.  It's a massage tool that is used a lot by cyclists and runners to work out stiff muscles and improve circulation.  I've been using it multiple times a week for a few weeks now and I do think it's making a difference.  I'm no Dr. Spaceman, but my gut tells me that my feet lose circulation because I have really terrible circulation and muscle tone in my legs.  So we're working on that.  When I use the stick, I actually feel sore afterwards (that really good "I did something" soreness), so I'm happy about that.

I'm going to start posting my weekly stats on here (pace & distance) and I hope that will help me notice the concrete improvement.  The half is in just over four months, so I'm stepping up my training to 4-5 days of cardio a week (3-4 running days) and 3-4 days of strength training a week.  I know, that's 9 days a week, but I think I can do it.  :)  Hopefully by posting concrete statistics, this two ton elephant will feel a little more confident.


If you want to read a beautifully written story of Simeon's first few days, read my sister-in-law's blog.  Just make sure that you get your kleenex handy.  Seriously, read it - her blog is the good stuff, unlike this one.  Just promise you'll come back to my blog afterward.

slow and steady

I'm not sure if I am still bummed out about my race last weekend or if I have actually hit a wall...but running has been slow-going this week.  I feel like I weigh a million pounds and that this is not getting any easier.  My calf muscles are so tight, and when I run they burn and feel like stiff little robot legs.  I have upped my stretching and have been doing jumping jacks and stretching every morning and night as well as before and after running.  I've been running 2 miles every day this week and I'm discouraged that I still feel so stiff in my legs.

Must keep going.