This post needs more synonyms for beautiful

 

My good (in my dreams) friend Roserunner just did a really concise post to describe her awesome weekend, and in an effort to make my posts more like posts and less like books I am using her as inspiration to do the same. And not discuss at all how much I am freaking out about the 50K to save space.

Friday: Rehearsal

 Literally got smacked with my bridesmaid gift in the middle of the rehearsal dinner. Sentimental.

 There's the love!

 Friday night: Giant marshmallows

 Saturday: Nicole and Mike's Wedding!

Hotel napkin crossword: check

Demand for prize for completing it: check

Taking pictures with crossword, wine, and MOH in the bridal hot tub: check

Being a totally normal bride: check

 Oh my god how amazingly beautiful is this bride??? Seriously????

 

My sister does my hair for every wedding, including my own. She's awesome like that.

 

 My sister finding out the cake was red velvet. My family and weddings are two of my favorite things in the universe so when they are combined into one I'm pretty much in heaven.

 Husband of the bridesmaid duties

 The ceremony overlooked these falls. Gorgeous.

 

 

A woman escorted me down the aisle - a first for me.

 The bride and her parents - I need more synonyms for beautiful.

 Chuppah....almost blew into the falls but it was all good.

 Left to Right - my sister, Darcy, John, Carolyn, obvi, Casi

 Sexy pose...or something

 

The above photo is a re-creation of the below photo.

 

 This shows why the bridesmaids had to hold the chuppah.

 First dance

 My stepfather, Vince, hard at work on the photographs.

 Darcy, Mom and me and the cake

 Father of the bride and father of the groom...check out the hats.....enough said

 

Best DJ ever! She did my wedding and my friend Katylin's. Might be a little obsessed with her. Seriously if you are getting married in the western NY area email me and I'll hook you up.

  

The traditional roomie pic

 Just a glimpse into why Eric wins sweatiest man award at every wedding we attend.

 No wedding is complete without a kickline

When I tell people I take my dancing seriously....I mean it

 

 

If you live in an area with a Wegmans you can appreciate the ingenious favors/placecards: Wegmans black and white cookies with each guest's name and table number. Incredible. Enjoyed both on the shuttle and, for some, for breakfast.

 

 The next day - massive amounts of meat at Dinosaur BBQ

 How we felt after eating - aka why I am a vegetarian

 Last but not least....a stop to see Gram!

Workouts this weekend:
 Saturday before the wedding: I did 6 miles in the state park the wedding took place in . The first mile was straight uphill.
Saturday at the wedding: 20 minutes of lacing a bride into a corset (upper body work) and four hours of dancing

Monday: 3 mile easy run

I need to save all my energy for the 50k! Oops I said I wasn't going to talk about that!

So...is it like a relay?

Best response when telling a friend of a friend that Lily and I were about to run a 31 mile race. "So, is it like a relay?? WHAT??? YOU ARE RUNNING THE WHOLE THING??"

It's really starting to hit me, HOLY CRAP we are running 31 miles in 8 days.

My last long run was this morning. Ten rainy miles, 1:29, 8:57 average pace. 

 

It was the perfect rejuvenating run (cheesiest phrase ever) after my lame workout week. Next up, ultramarathon. I have a few shorter runs this week but not much going on until next Saturday.

On my run I decided to bring my ipod to the 50K. Yes, trail running is suppose to be about seeing nature and hearing birds and all that crap, but honestly, I don't think I could have made it through the Shamrock Marathon without Ke$ha. And this is 5 more miles.

I felt bad that my last few posts lacked pictures so I had Eric take one of me looking terrified, all wet and showing ten. 

Here's another treat. It's how Eric fell asleep last night after the long drive to my parents' house.

This weekend I have the distinct honor being a bridesmaid in my BFF Nicole's wedding.

 I absolutely love her and her fiance, Mike, and I am so excited to be part of their wedding. Like, seriously, I reacted with more excitement when she got engaged then when I did. And I LOVE my bridesmaid's dress.

See the love here? And the Colt 45?

Other random thought - I know I didn't comment yet due to that whole "being on time for work" BS but my shoutout on RoseRunner's blog yesterday made my freakin day. Go check out her amazing post. Love her, wish I could run behind her amazed at her speed and wishing I could keep up.

And I beat my whole class yesterday in the 20 yard dash. And I'm not ashamed to be proud of that. 

Have a great holiday weekend everyone! I'll be prepping to run 31 miles by getting a pedicure, wearing huge uncomfortable heels, and dancing my ass off all night. CAN'T WAIT!!!

How ridiculous do you get?

Thanks for all the motivation comments on my last post! I totally agree with Paula, she said the time off will be my motivation. And Kara was nice enough to remind me that I risk getting eaten by wild animals during the 50K, so I better get my ass in gear. This months Runner's World also had an article on deciding when you need recovery days, and I had a number of the symptoms they listed. Namely, crankiness. They recommended an easy or off day.

I think its not helping that this week has been pretty rough at work, but at least I have a job. That's what I keep telling myself, anyway.

This morning as I was laying in bed pushing snooze for the fourth time I decided to run without my Garmin. All these blogs claim its so "freeing", but the one time I purposely did it after my first marathon was awful. The rare occasions where I have forgotten it and it ran out of batteries sucked too. But I knew my run would be slow this morning based on recent history and the fact that it was already over 70 degrees. So I decided that instead of berating myself for being too slow for the entire time, I would just take the pressure off. I still plan on using it 99.9% of the time, but it was nice to have a break this morning. I automatically reached over to pause it when I had to tie my shoe though - addicted much?

I also ran without music. I'm about to have another absolutely epic weekend that I have been waiting for for YEARS, but the next alone time I'll have will be pretty much when I go to bed Monday night. So five miles alone with my thoughts sounded pretty good. 

Today is my favorite day of the school year - FIELD DAY!! The perfect antidote to my workout/job slump. I love spending the day outside, getting to compete with my kids and actually getting to hang out with them, instead of being a drill sergeant forcing them to learn because God forbid we get one day behind on the math curriculum. I keep encouraging them to train and I'm not joking. I take it pretty seriously and we better beat the other classes. 

So yesterday I was in a pretty  bad mood on my way to work, but then Don't Stop Believing came on the radio when I was turning onto the street my school is on. So I blasted it and rocked out despite the fact that I was already in the parkinglot surrounded by students, teachers, and parents, and refused to get out of the car until I was done. It significantly improved my life. 

What ridiculous things do you do to get yourself out of a bad mood? Seriously, I'm curious, but more than that I really want some new ideas.

Today I made the official switch from hot coffee to iced coffee! What do you prefer? Or are you one of those crazies who doesn't even drink coffee?

Please Motivate Me

Things have really been on the decline over here in the workout department.

Monday Eric and I headed to bike with the triathlon club, but when we got there, it was starting to rain and we heard thunder, so they said the ride was canceled.

I had a variety of other workout options available to me: YMCA, workout DVD, running....I opted for none of them.

I took the rain as a sign that after my epic whirlwind weekend I needed some time off. We worked out by picking up all the random crap that we'd been dropping on the living room floor and actually put all of our belongings where they belong, and did laundry.

Tuesday morning I went swimming, attempting to do 1000 meters, aka 20 laps. After 10 I started to feel sick so I switched to breaststroke. That seemed to help but when I switched back to....um....regular stroke (what's it called?) I got really dizzy and nauseous and got out of the pool after 15.5 laps. The nausea lasted until after I got to work, and I thought "I can't tell anyone, they'll just think I'm pregnant", and then I thought "just a few years ago I wouldn't have been able to tell anyone because they would have thought I was hungover, when did I cross that line?" then I got depressed that I was old. Then the feeling passed and I blame the chlorine.

Tuesday night was another track workout. It was 85 degrees with high humidity, the sun beating down, and we were doing two sets of: 400, 800, 400, 4X200, and I thought I was going to die. Most of my sets were 7-10 seconds then last week and I just kept thinking "This 400 is so hard....how am I going to run 31 MILES next week?????".

I somehow managed to get up this morning and do Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred, Level 2. So I worked out for a whopping 20 minutes, but it was with Jillian, so whatever.

So we are 10 days out from the 50K, I have basically been training since December with only about 2 weeks off, I am totally burnt out, insanely busy, and starting to freak out about the race. I just need to get through the next few workouts and then I am taking June OFF from training.

I've never had this lack of motivation before (having bronchitis and taking two weeks off before the Shamrock marathon probably helped) so please share any advice! And if you watch Biggest Loser where the hell was Ruben last night???

Warrior Dash Recap

The Epicness of my weekend continues. I somehow managed to wake up and do a wine and cheese fueled five mile run. As per the usual routine as of late, I showered, packed up a cooler, and rushed out. Number of meals I have eaten at home this weekend: 0.

Eric and I headed to Lily and Tricia's house and the four of us headed down to the middle of nowhere, where there is room to set up 3.1 miles of mud and events for crazy people like us to partake in.

Warrior Dash official google description: Warrior Dash lands in Maryland for the second time in 2011 where 12 obstacles from hell await you along this 3.11 mile course. Are you a Warrior?

We were supposed to meet up with Carolyn, Casi and Donnie to run in the 3pm wave. Traffic sucked and we missed them by about 30 seconds and had to go in the 3:30 wave without them :(. 

So we started out "running" aka fast shuffling in a huge bottleneck through the woods. Right away you hit some deep mud and we were all thanking Kara, who had texted me after she completed the course yesterday with some helpful tips, such as tie your shoes tight. I thought that was sort of weird at the time, but understood when mud was sucking my feet down into the abyss like Indiana Jones quicksand and we saw all sorts of shoes that people had lost.

Not long after we started we had to crawl through the mud under these bungee cord things - not too difficult, it just makes you actually start to get muddy. 

The suction-y  mud ranged from ankle to knee deep, with some waist deep watery portions. I was actually wondering if this was an obstacle or just part of the course - apparently part of the course! A guy almost fell and grabbed onto me and completely wrapped himself around me like we were about to slow dance, then got his balance and just ran away. Um, you're welcome.

I think the next obstacle was the concrete walls that you had to hoist yourself over and drop into the mud on the other side. The real challenge was that when you would boost yourself up, your feet would still be stuck in the mud. At this point Eric had wiped out twice and completely belly flopped in the mud. 

Once we finally survived all the mud and crazy hills and got out of the woods we hit a water stop, and they told us we were halfway - we thought we were almost done! Definitely the toughest 5K I've ever done.

We climbed up and over a 15 foot (according to Kara's blog and I'm going with it) cargo net, ran through some tires (both on the ground and hanging), over hay, and went down this crazy out of control water slide. The tough part was that my shoes were so filled and caked in mud that they were super heavy!

Lily and I were pretty scared of the fire jump - the fire was pretty high and it was HOT. 

 

 Casi doing the fire jump - ignore that guy's head.

Eric and I did it together and it ended up being amazing. After that you jump into the shallow mud pool to crawl under the barbed wire, 

 

 That barbed wire is FOR REAL.

and then you are at the finish line. It was my first (and likely last) time finishing a race with Eric, so that was cool. He fell AGAIN inches from the finish line.

 

 

I have never been so dirty in my entire life. Mud from head to toe, in my hair, across my face, in my mouth, everywhere. 

Everyone but me got turkey legs and beer and we let the mud dry and get nice and crusty while we hung out and watched the bands. 

Although I'm glad I tied my shoes tight, it took me about ten minutes to untie them once they were covered in dried mud. Note to self - bring scissors to cut the laces next year. The race directors were kind enough to provide trucks with giant hoses to spray off everyone with cold water before you get back in the car. After that enjoyable experience it was time to change under a towel in the parking lot, then head back. We busted out the leftover snacks from wine in the woods and had a fabulous car feast during the two hours home (and Eric tried Nutella for the first time!).

Perfect epic end to the epic weekend. We were laughing hysterically the entire time we were running, and the photo ops were priceless. I was devastated that I charged my camera as soon as we got home last night and then forgot the memory card in the computer, so these pictures are from Carolyn, courtesy of her husband John who didn't race. If this race comes to your area, do yourself a favor and sign up asap. We wished we had signed up for an earlier time so we would have more time to hang out and eat and drink after.