The end of an era

Sadly, this weekend, my BFF Kelly will be moving to Birmingham, Alabama with her husband Keithy-poo.  While this is going to be a very exciting time for both Kelly and Keith, it will be a sad weekend for myself.  I first met Kelly circa Fall of 2001, in Pensacola.  We both went to UWF and worked at the same steakhouse.  I call Kelly my Malibu Barbie friend.  If you aren't friends with her, you will totally want to be her friend just so you can be around her infectious (in a good way!) personality.

Here we are around 2003ish with my old roomie practicing our Foosball skills.  In college, Kelly and I were quite the Foosball sharks.  The poor men of Pensacola...

Once I graduated in 2004, I moved back to the Tampa area.  I begged Kelly to move here for several years.  But she was in graduate school at the time and had a great job.  The issue with Pensacola, is that it's mainly a transient town.  There is a military base, a college, a Christian college, and hurricanes.  A few years later (around 2008), Kelly got a job in Land O' Lakes as a guidance counselor and much to my surprise moved to Pasco county.

Sometimes when you have been away from a friend for a few years, you wonder if your relationship is going to be the same or if you will be too different now.  And although Kelly and I didn't see eye-to-eye on every situation (who does?!?), we were just like peas and carrots again!  Here's a little trip down memory lane:

Molly's Pushing It (real good!)

Gasparilla Parade 2009 (this is the day I met Ben)

MacDintons (cheers to new friend, Amanda!)

DMB Tailgating 2009

Fitzgerald's for my birthday

First of the broken arms at Beer Garten

Being cultured at the theatre

Time for tea - National Museum Day at the Tampa Bay History Museum

Halloween

Still sharking at foosball in Pensacola

Four Green Fields

World of Beer

More foosball (yes, we are that good!)

St. Patrick's Day at Four Green Fields

St. Pete Beach (with new/old friend, Michelle!)

Kelly's housewarming!

DMB tailgating 2010

Drinking Keith's delicious cider!

Howl at the Moon

Hands down the best date ever at Ryuu

Gasparilla 2011

Lori's visit 

Biff!! (This is the first broken leg)

Pensacola reunion!

The fabulous wedding of Keith and Kelly (LOVE Kristen's face in this one!)

Mmm, PETRAs!

Michelle's goodbye :(

Another date night at Bar Louie

Tommy's Paradise Grill for Lori's visit.

The Loving (?) Hut

It's been quite the adventure.  Good luck to Kelly and Keith and their new adventure in Birmingham, we will be up to visit soon - wild horses couldn't stop me! :) Love you, guys!!

Markets, Cheesecake, Hills, and Baseball

This weekend went by WAY too quickly.  This sounds really horrible, but I normally start planning the upcoming weekend on Saturday.  Blah, if only the silly work week wouldn't get in the way so much...

On Friday, I just caught up on some things around the house, finally did some grocery shopping, and met Ben for lunch at Tampa's downtown Farmer's Market.  It was a really nice day outside and I've been wanting to check out this place for some time. In addition to wonderful food (BBQ, Greek, Ethiopian, Vegan, etc..) they have vendors that sell jewelry, purses, clothing, etc... I actually bought something from Down 2 Earth, and it was beautiful!

After an amazing Greek salad, I headed over to Citrus Park mall to waste some time.  I was potentially looking for some new summer clothes, but it appears that I really need someone to assemble clothing together in to outfits because I'm really bad at shopping (unless it's running clothes!).  Sigh.  Ahh well, I decided I would head over to the party store to gather some (a dozen) balloons for Natalie's pre-birthday celebration at the Cheesecake Factory.

I thought it was going to be hilarious to have Natalie walk around Bay Street/International Plaza with a huge bouquet of balloons...  Guess what?!?  The joke was on me because I had to shove/squeeze/cram a dozen balloons in my car first.  On a windy day.  Holy smokes, I sure hope that I don't show up on one of those American's Funniest Home Video-type shows...  Anyway, the end result turned out great!

Saturday morning I got up really early and watched the movie Moneyball.  If you haven't seen this movie, I highly recommend it!  Moneyball is about baseball, statistics (my favorite!), and the Oakland As. Oh, and Brad Pitt is in the movie, too!  I was really debating about going to bootcamp this Saturday (because I'm lazy), but forced myself to go anyway.  And it's a good thing that I did because I was the only one to show up.  Holy crap, JJ put me through the ringer!  My arms AND legs were shaking so bad at the end of that workout.  Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?!?

After regaining strength in my extremities, I went to go try on my wedding dress. (AHH!)  I had ordered my dress back in December, and I was starting to worry that maybe I wouldn't like the dress as much as I first had.  But, that totally was not the case!  It's hard to describe the way you feel in a wedding dress, espcially the ONE that you are going to be walking down the aisle in, but it's an amazing feeling.

Several people have asked me to see the dress, but I'm trying to make sure that Ben doesn't see that dress before our wedding day.  SO, if you would like to see THE dress, I would be more than happy to e-mail you a picture of some model wearing the dress that I'm going to be wearing, but there will be no pictures of me in my dress until April 13, 2013.  Final answer.

Sunday morning was a planned monthly Hill run in San Antonio.  Most people think Florida is relatively flat, but the East side of Pasco county has some incredible hills.  Elevation gain of 381 feet, anyone?!?

Distance:	10.01 mi
Time:	1:30:47
Avg Pace:	9:04 min/mi
Elevation Gain:	381 ft
Calories:	1,178 C

There were eight of us that met up this month, and it worked out perfectly because everyone had a partner to run with.  I paired up with Matt (since he didn't know where the route was) and did much better than I expected us to.  Here are the splits:

Split	Time	Distance	Avg Pace
Summary	1:30:47.0	10.01	9:04
1	9:16.3	1.00	9:16
2	8:41.8	1.00	8:42
3	8:52.6	1.00	8:53
4	9:35.0	1.00	9:35
5	9:06.8	1.00	9:07
6	8:56.0	1.00	8:56
7	8:39.9	1.00	8:40
8	9:26.2	1.00	9:26
9	9:18.3	1.00	9:18
10	8:47.6	1.00	8:48
11	:06.5	0.01	9:34

The last month we went out to San Antonio, the average was 9:18.  Needless to say, I was incredibly happy with the improvement and hope to do better next month!  Here are a couple of pictures from the paparazzi:

Tracey cracking me up as usual:

We are actually not sure if Coach Steve is taking our picture or not... I'm actually laughing at the fact that he's not even looking AT the camera, just randomly snapping photos

All done (and acting crazy!)

It was a great morning, definitely looking forward to our next adventure in the hills already!  After we got back, Ben and I heading to St. Pete for the Rays vs. Braves game.  We packed up some sandwiches and drinks and hung out in the shade for a little bit before the game.  

My honey grew up a Braves fan (there really weren't any baseball teams around Florida - when we were kids...),but has since become a Rays fan. Here he is honoring both teams:

Our seats were in the 300s, but right behind home plate. (And apparently very close to a lot of other people that I that knew, but didn't realize were so close!)  We had a good time, but ultimately, the Rays lost.  Their offense was TERRIBLE.  TWICE the bases were loaded and they weren't able to score at all.  Ho hum.  Another exciting weekend in Tampa Bay - on to Manic Monday now! Ahhh! 

Race Report: Picnic Island #1

This Friday was the first of three summer Picnic Island Runs.  I was really looking forward to running this race because it is really different than any other race that we do normally.  However, on Saturday, I came down with some sort of cold/voice funk that pretty much stuck with me all week.  I was disappointed because I was really hoping to run well in this race.  

Typically, we do about one race per month, but because of other commitments the last organized race that I did was Trout Creek in March.  Ironically enough, it was also put on by Jim at Tampa Races.  The one really great thing about doing a race that you've previously done, is that you are familiar with the course.  (This has proven to be my nemesis in some cases as well, AHEM - Gasparilla, I'm talking to you!)

When we arrived at Picnic Island, we got our race numbers and shirts, met up with our friend Cami, sprayed ourselves down with bug spray and then set off to check out the water levels.  All the race entrants received and e-mail the day before the race to indicate the tide would be at the highest level right around race time.  Sweet!  And they were right, the water level was about hip-level.  

We saw two younger women on a dock and they had their iPods and shiny new sneakers on and they asked Ben and myself if we have ever ran this race before.  We told them that we have and that you shouldn't plan on salvaging any clothes or shoes from this particular race.  They looked HORRIFIED! We just said good luck and continued running towards the other end of the park.

The race started right at 6:45 and Ben surprised me at the start line to say that he wanted to run the race for fun with me.  What?  He really is the sweetest fiance and/or running partner that I could ever ask for.  I mean, he is WAY faster (legitimately) than me on a bad day, so for him to slow down for me during a race is CRAZY.  

We hit the water pretty early on.  And both my shoes came untied - whoops!  I decided I was just going to go with it and just try not to trip over them.  We made it through the first mile or so and then we hit a rock/sand hill that the people in front of us decided to walk over.  So there was a little bit waiting... ho hum.  Then we looped back to the beach and met our first obstacle:

There was also a tire hop and then hurdle to go over before heading back in to the water.  There was a lot more walking/wading in hip-level water before running back around through the first field and up and down several hills.  The real kicker of this race is that you have to swim/wade/walk/run out to a buoy that comes up to about collarbone level before running up the final hill to the finish.

Here are the splits:

Split	Time	Distance	Avg Pace
Summary	36:56.1	3.60	10:15
1	9:26.3	1.00	9:26
2	10:47.4	1.00	10:47
3	9:23.6	1.00	9:24
4	7:18.8	0.60	12:08

Overall, I was the 52nd female out of 292 total females, 199th finisher out of 699 total finishers and 14th out of 55 in my age group.  Not bad for a sick day.

Next up, Rap River on June 9th and Picnic Island #2 on June 15th

Getting my nerd on 8)

Most everyone knows by now that I'm a HUGE nerd.  I like to read, wear glasses at night, love statistics, and love figuring out new apps, programs, software, etc..  It all goes along with the territory.  My first nerdy admission is that I'm wildly obsessed with Prezi!

Oh? You're not familiar?!?  It's like PowerPoint, but WAY more awesome!  It took me almost half a day to figure out how to finagle everything in Prezi compared to PowerPoint, but it so much more interactive and AWESOME.  I've been working on a presentation for a leadership program I'm going to be completing in June so when it's all finished, I will post the link.

My other nerdy obession right now is Mindy Kaling's book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)

You may recognize Mindy from The Office, but homegirl went to Dartmouth College! And is a writer on The Office as well.  At age 24, she was the only woman writer on the staff of 8 - not too shabby!  The book has been really good so far, and there are lots of pictures so that's always exciting in an adult book, right?!?  

Oh! I have a blog to maintain, what?!?

Holy smokes, I've been a total slacker on my blog lately.  There has been lots going on, but not enough hours in the day to keep up.

This week was in a word CRAZY!  The school year for us was winding down with a lot of final grade "surprises", commencement, nurse pinning, and of course our annual Faculty/Staff vs. Students Softball game.  Now much of our faculty/staff is pretty fit, likes working out, and (of course) is competitive.  I'm happy to report the final score: 

Next  week at work begins a four day work-week for the summer.  I find that I have a love/hate relationship with Fridays off.  It is nice to have Fridays available, but 10 hour days are rough!  But, this year I'm planning to do a little working out in our school gym on my lunch break to keep active and break up the day.  I'm also going to be teaching an online class for PHCC this summer, which should be interesting! :)  

In other exciting news, Ben qualified for the National Xterra Trail Run championship in Ogden, Utah on September 23rd.  To qualify, you get so many points for each race that you fun in the Florida series.  You have to run at least two of the Xterra races (Wildhorse, Trout Creek, or Claw).  The first person in his or her respective age group can qualify for the National race.  Here are the complete Florida Series Points.

Ben and I also signed up for a six week Saturday morning boot camp with my buddy JJ from Itone Fitness.  Here is a link to his Facebook page.  The word I would use to describe JJ is BEAST.  But he has the BEST laugh of anyone I've ever known.  Check out his muscles (Seriously, his arms are the size of my legs):

As my friend from France, Marie, said when she met JJ, "everything is bigger in America!"  The workouts are pretty intense, but luckily only one half of a mile from our place.  We've been running there and then limping home for the past couple of weeks.  It's a challenge, but a really nice change from just my running workouts.

Next week is the first Picnic Island race on Friday night.  We are signed up for the Series which is one Friday in May, June, and July.  Also on the horizon is the Rap River Run on June 9th. PHCC has put together a team to run this one.  The course is right in downtown New Port Richey and relatively flat.  I've been following a training plan that Jenny devised for me.  It's been hard work, but Rap River has become my targeted race to dip below 25:00.

I'm being realistic about Rap River because it is typically a hot race (June in Florida...), so if it doesn't work at in June, I'm going to set my sights on a Fall 5K.  That's just a brief overview about what's been going on, more to come soon - I swear!