Showing posts with label Kentucky Derby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kentucky Derby. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

I'm Baaaaack!

Glory, glory hallelujah! My dear ol' Betsy has returned from Apple and now I can blog away like the blogging fiend I was becoming/read all the blogs you guys have posted that I need to catch up on!

I'll try to cut down on the lengthiness of this post as much as possible, but there's a lot to cover, so prepare yourself for a novel :)

The night of my Kentucky Derby party, Betsy crashed on me, so I suppose we should start there.

In my Derby dress and hat
Me and Mama RNG
We made a ton of food for the party, including pasta salad, spinach salad, grilled chicken (no fried food for this party!), fruit salad, pecan pie, Derby pie, bourbon bread pudding, and baby Hot Browns.
Yummy pasta salad
So much fruit!
My pecan and Derby pies
The party was a success and I think everyone had a good time. We did a Derby trivia game and had everyone place bets on which horse would win (congrats Animal Kingdom!).
Sarah, me, and Cassie
The next day was Mother's Day and my mom and grandma wanted to go to a baseball game. Sacramento has a local AAA team called the Rivercats (apparently they're Maine Coon cats...wtf?!). The forecast predicted rain, wind, and clouds. So we brought a bunch of blankets...
Mama RNG with 39472357 blankets
...only for it to end up being sunny and around 70*. No need for all those blankets now! It was a great day hanging out with the madre and the grandmadre. So much laughter and fun times. I love the women in my family :)
I also love the Rivercats' garlic fries. Edward Cullen better watch himself around me!
The whole next week was preparing for finals. I should have studied more. It would've been a good idea. But I did well enough on my finals and I easily passed every class (I'm expecting straight As!). During finals week, at just the perfect time, Stephanie at RUN ON! sent me a box of Jolly Rancher chews for participating in trying to get her up to 100 followers for her giveaway she did. It was so perfect because I need to munch when I study.
Thanks Stephanie!
I ate those suckers up in about 5 mins flat! I have zero self-control when it comes to snack foods. If you put a bowl of crackers, chips, cookies, candy, etc in front of me, I will eat the whole bowl. No will-power.
Sugar coma!
Finals came and on Friday, after my last one, I went out with my friend Erin for celebratory drinks at Lounge On 20 in downtown Sacramento. I had never been there before and it was quite a classy establishment. Sacramento is really trying to become a utopian mecca.
I love hanging out with this girl! Constant laughs :)
Our fancy girly drinks. Mine was a strawberry basil concoction and hers was a sparkling fruit wine thing.
I walked Erin back to her car after we were done because Sacramento isn't the greatest of places for young, pretty girls/women to be walking around alone after it's dark. A few parking spaces over from her car was this monstrosity:

I don't understand the need for the ghetto schoolbus. Why, oh why is this appropriate?!

So now that we're caught up with life, we can get back to running, which is the whole point of this blog, correct? There hasn't been anything of epic proportions to inform you guys about, except for my run on Monday. It was supposed to be a 5.3 miler, my long run of the week. I started out fine, but after 5 mins I could tell something was up with my left foot. My baby toe and the 4th toe were rubbing against each other and it didn't feel very good. I took my shoe and sock off to evaluate, but couldn't find anything inherently wrong, so I put both back on and continued on my run. The pain eventually went away and I didn't think anything of it again. I got home, cooled down, and stretched. When I looked at the bottom of my left sock, I saw this huge bloody stain! I ripped the sock off and discovered that my pinky toenail had dug a chunk out of my 4th toe and it was bleeding. Yuck!
Ignore the chipped polish!
I bandaged it all up and set to cutting my nails suuuuuper short, which I know was the problem that caused the bloodfest. All was well...until a few hours later, I randomly looked at the bottom of my right foot and found this beauty:
What the heck?! (High five for "Roman Holiday" on the TV!)
I apparently had gotten a huge blister on the bottom of my foot that managed to pop itself open during the run! What happened on my run?!?!

Neither of the boo-boos hurt at all, so I can go back to running like normal. But still, sooo weird!

Do you feel caught up now? I do! Whew! That was a long post and if you made it through all that, high fives for you!

Friday, April 29, 2011

Royally Awesome

Workout:
Ran 3.5 miles in 30:57. Then did a bunch of leg exercises, including my new diagonal lunges of walking doom. Seriously, the day after I do them, I can't really walk. I waddle. It's hot. It brings all the boys to my yard.

So I know there's like this royal wedding of a lifetime thing going on, and honestly, I'm happy for Kate and William! But that doesn't mean I've watched a single minute of it. I would like to, but if I never get around to it, I've already been bombarded with images from it (thanks Facebook!) and probably get the general idea of what went on. Those weddings, guys, so different every time...

Ya know what is royally awesome? This week!

On Tuesday evening, I used my $25 Marshall's gift card and bought myself some new workout gear. Who needs a fancy hat for the KY Derby party I'm throwing in a week?! Not this girl!
My goodies, but not Ciara's version of "goodies"
I'm not kidding, you guys, I am in LOVE with these clothes! It might be that these are the fanciest summer running clothes I've bought so far. I love my Target singlets and sports bras, but it was time to try something new. The shirt is made by Athletic Essentials and the bra is by Marika. I needed another workout tank and this one is amazing! It's super stretchy and soft and it didn't show ANY sweat! I am a profuse to the nth degree sweater (not the kind you can wear!) and there was zero dark blue sweat marks. Color me amazed!

The sports bra was just as amazing, if not more! I've only used Target's C9 sports bras and loved them. But after 3 years of running, my girls need some more lovin'. This was the only brand at Marshall's I could find that was for high-impact exercise. I tried it on and fell in love. The sides have 3 sets of adjustments to take in or loosen up the band around your ribs. The cups were supportive and they have inserts (who doesn't like a little extra boost?!) you can remove. It's really cute and something I will have no shame in wearing without a shirt on in the summer when it's 90* on my long runs.

Jen approved! Flash added for extra fun!
Another awesome thing about this week? I won a $400 scholarship at my school! Talk about book money! My school had an awards ceremony, complete with chocolate chip cookies and punch. The ceremony was short and sweet, which was great because it was 7:30 PM and my tummy was an angry, grumbly bear!
It was apparently supposed to be semi-formal dress and I really, really didn't want to wear a dress or skirt (hadn't shaved my legs in 2 days...hawt). But my mom forced me to look cute-ish. I gave up on my hair since it had been in a messy bun all day and was all sorts of kinked. I also hadn't taken a shower in over 24 hours, so I sprayed on a ton of body spray to mask any sort of stank I had. Obviously, I care about my image a lot.

April has been very good to me in all sorts of aspects and I'm sad to see it go. Hopefully May brings us all bigger and even better things to be happy about!

What's your favorite kind of sports bra? How has April blessed you this past month?