I Chicked a Dog. Booyah Puppy!

Workout: Ran 3.4 miles in 27:41. Such a good run! OMG. Running in the evening is so totally my thing. I can not do morning runs. For serial. The last run I did was at noon and I added 2 mins onto this time. Obv evening running produces kickass times. 

Pictures of small children (Mama RNG at 3) showing their booties makes me feel awkward.

On my run, I chicked a dude and his Lab puppy. Homie, you have a Lab. Labs are super energetic. Run that thing! I guess maybe they could've been going on a long run so Dude didn't want to wear out the pup, but still. Anyway, I was stoked and sped up probs way too much. I would've gotten a negative split if I actually had a Garmin or paid attention to that kind of thing. At the corner after I passed Dude and Dog, normally I get there around 9:20 mins into the run. I got there at 8:50 mins. So speedy! My left shin was slightly bitching, but not too much and I only had to stop and stretch it a few times. Time for the Stick tonight. 


I got to think a little bit on the run about the thing I can't really tell you guys about. Such a tease, I know. But I also sort of shut off my brain and just ran, which is exactly what I needed. It's been a while since I've been able to turn off my thoughts and just enjoy the run.

Still perplexed, but not as much as before.

Mama RNG bought the wrong Crystal Lite powders for me at the grocery store. I love that woman to death, but even after 16 years of living here, she still doesn't know where most things are in the grocery store. It kills me! Alas, she bought the normal Crystal Lite powder, not the Fitness kind. Oh well. It honestly probably makes zero difference for my body. If I was pulling off 20 milers on the reg then we'd have some problems, but I'm pretty sure my usual measly 3-something milers are doing a whole lotta nothing. I still drink this stuff like it's going out of style. I love me some seizure-inducing aspartame! 

This stuff is crack.

I Fail and Belated Music Monday

I think that week where I didn't get the chance to blog because my computer was dead got me into a bad habit of not blogging. So, I'm sorry I'm not on the ball lately. I have lots to say but at the same time don't really feel like saying it. I make no sense, I know.

Workouts:
Monday: 3.1 miles in 29:34 mins on the treadmill followed by an intense arm workout.
Tuesday: 3.4 miles in 29:08 mins. This run sucked balls. I don't know what's going on with me lately, but I'm super tired and my lungs hurt. I was just not feeling this. The fact that I ran at noon and the sun was hot might have played a big role. I hate running between 10 AM and 5 PM.

So running just hasn't been great recently. I'm losing my motivation or something. I really am not sure what's going on. I get tired sooo easily and I'm eating a bunch of protein and carbs and veggies so it's not like I'm lacking on nutrients. My sleep for the last week or so has been pretty shitty. Normally I fall asleep and stay asleep all night, but in the last week I can't fall asleep or stay asleep for more than an hour. Maybe that's why I'm tired...duh Jen! I've also been basically lying around the house doing nothing now that school's done for the summer. Energy doesn't spontaneously occur from hanging out on the couch all day. I guess I do know what's going on but it sure isn't helpful when I'm trying to run. Oh well. The sleep schedule will change drastically soon because...

...I start my internship at the UC Davis Vet Med Teaching Hospital on Thursday!!!!!! I'm so stoked! And scared and nervous. It's pretty intimidating knowing that I'll be caring for sick horses but at least I don't have the super responsibility of a vet. As some of you may know (and if you don't, go read my About Me), I went back to school for a vet tech program (I swear to God, if someone asks me another time how I'm enjoying vet school even after I've explained that it's nursing, I may scream!). That's animal nursing. Not doctoring. Anyway, I got this suh-weet internship lined up for the summer and next year in which I get to take care of sick horses 3 days a week. One of my supervisors who I spoke to on Saturday for my orientation told me that just based on the amount of horse experience I have (been riding since I was 6, studied Animal Science at UCD, did 2 internships on Thoroughbred farms in Kentucky), that she would hire me right now if she could. The VMTH Equine Clinic is short on staff and many are retiring soon, so she thinks I'll be able to be hired in the fall of this year! So they're going to train me like I'll be working there soon, not as just merely an intern! This is beyond good news! If I'm hired in the fall, I'll have a job while in school (I'm so broke, it's not even funny!) and then will have a job as soon as I graduate and get licensed!!! OMG! Set. For. Life!

In other news, I had an awesome weekend that probably accounts for some of my exhaustion (I'm sooo not 20 anymore!). On Friday, I celebrated Erin's birthday.

We had delicious Korean BBQ, although I got a salad with tasty BBQ steak on top. Yummy!

Afterwards, Sarah and I went to downtown Sac for a Pirates and Wenches pub crawl.

Sarah, Petey the Parrot, me, and Kristen

About as wench-y as I get.

Daniel and Sarah

Cassie interrogated my date

Kristen and I found amazing faucets at Golden Bear

And we enjoyed drinks with cute lawyers at Golden Bear :)

On Saturday, I went out with my date from the previous night to see Tainted Love, a local 80s cover band. I had such a blast rocking out to "Sweet Child O' Mine", "Mickey", and "Don't Stop Believing", among others! Great night indeed. Except that I couldn't really walk very well the next day due to wearing 3.5" tall stilettos, but whatevs! It was worth it! :)

And The Rapture...totally didn't happen. Duh.

Ok, here's the belated Music Monday. I'm obsessed with this group and they're engaged! How cute! She can rap like no other. If you haven't seen this video yet, check it out!

I Have Nothing Witty for This Title

Workout: Ran 3.4 in 29:23. Yeah...let's not talk about how slow that was. Ugh. I started out soooo well and then I took a minor walking break at 12 mins and that was my downfall. I need to stop stopping! It always does me in. The rest of the run was just exhausting and I was pooped. Damn periods and uteruses (uterii?!). Am I the only one who gets SUPER tired during "that time of the month"? I could sleep for days if I was able!


Enough about my Aunt Flo. Look at these shirts. I want them soooo badly! If anyone wants to contribute money to the "Jen's Super Broke" fund, I am gladly accepting donations at this time. Or just buy me a shirt in size Small and ship it to me. I will love you forever! Pinky swear!


I finally caught up on everyone's blogs. Holy Moses, you people post too much! I think it took me darn well 3 or 4 hours to read through them all! Luckily I am on summer vacay right now, so I don't do anything productive anyway, but still. Way. Too. Many. Blogs!


I've wanted to talk about waving while running for a while now. Yeah, I know, waving is kind of a weird topic to talk about. Who does that?! Me, that's who. 

All hail waving kitty!

So I started waving to people when I was running when I lived in Kentucky. Everyone in Kentucky is gosh darn friendly, it's ridiculous. Am I right or am I right, Julia? I loved it! California is a pretty friendly place if you're up in NorCal. SoCal is a whole 'nother kit 'n' kaboodle that we won't get into right now. Anyway, so I got to Kentucky and when I wasn't doing this:

I love the smell of urine and poop in the morning!

...I would be running. My coworkers thought I was crazy. After an 8 hour day of mucking stalls, I would go run anywhere from 3 to 7 miles. I lost a lot of weight and was more buff than I had ever been in my life. I also could eat the biggest burrito Harrodsburg, KY had to offer, which, I'm proud to say, my boss couldn't even finish. Take that, men! My metabolism was off the charts awesome! Ok, back to waving.

So when I would run on beautiful roads next to my farm...

...trucks, cars, SUVs, and sometimes the occasional tractor would drive by and they would all wave to me! It might not be a huge, Miss America-type wave, but I always saw them. Usually it would be a pointer finger flicking up in acknowledgment of my presence or a fast hand-up gesture. I never got a middle finger wave. Usually I was the one handing out those because some dipshits thought it was fun to try to run me off the narrow road. Anyway, waving became a thing I got used to receiving and giving. It was a friendly way to say hello when we obviously couldn't appropriately greet one another.

These guys saw me run by them all the time.

When I moved back to California, I was so used to this that I waved to everyone...and everyone looked at me like I was crazy. Sad panda :( I persisted. No one was going to stop me from being friendly, damn it! So I kept waving and eventually people waved back. Some days, when I'm grumpy/tired/PMSing/angry, I keep my eyes on the ground and run quickly by pedestrians or bikes. I don't wave to the cars because there are far too many and I usually run on busy streets with 2 or 4 lanes of traffic. But most of the time, I have those awesome endorphins going and I'm waving at everyone.

I love waving at someone who looks angry or grumpy and they suddenly perk up, smile, and wave back. It makes my day! I always think that maybe, just maybe, my small act of kindness changed their whole day around. You never know! I would hope that my minor wave wouldn't be the best thing that happened to them that whole day, but it could be, and I'm not going to prevent someone from having a little bit of happiness headed their way.

The best waving experience happened about a week ago. I was on my long run, struggling at the halfway point because, I, well, have been sucking lately with the whole breathing thing. I was running toward a young guy headed my direction on the sidewalk. He had his pants hung low, a baggy shirt on, and a stern face, obviously trying to act tough and hard, like my suburban neighborhood had been rough on him. I waved at him, and he, in shock, stuttered out a "Hey! How's it going?" I didn't reply because at that point I was past him and it would've been awkward to stop and turn around to answer him. But it was one of the longest replies I've received and it was from this hard looking, wanna-be thug. Day made :)

Do you wave to people on your runs? Does unexpected friendliness from strangers make you happy or weird you out?

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!

Finals Are Ruining My Posts

Workout:
Sunday: Ran 3.4 miles in 27:56. It wasn't too bad of a run and I felt pretty good. I'm shaving my times down slowly but surely, though :)
Tuesday: Ran 5.2 miles in 45:37. My left shin was complaining from mile 2 to mile 3. It wouldn't shut up. And then due to the pollen in the air, my asthma decided to say hello too. The run kinda sucked but I pushed through. You don't need to know how many times I stopped to walk...

Today my poor, poor car Fifi (have you realized yet that I name everything?!) gets a brand new windshield. I'm excited because there are 4 large bird poop spots on it, as well as nasty tree sap, and this means I don't have to clean any of it off! Hooray! I've had issues with the windshield too when it rains. It got this splotchy effect that made it really hard to see in the rain, no matter how much I cleaned it. The only thing that sucks about this, besides having to pay a deductible (I think the rock should owe me money), is that I have to wait around my house from 1-5 PM until Mr. Windshield Man comes to fix Fifi.

It's at least 4" long and growing...TWSS.

I wish I had more to tell you guys but I really should go start studying. I have a final tomorrow, 2 on Thursday, and one more on Friday. I'm planning on living in the library. As soon as finals are over, you'll have more fun things to read about, I promise! Good luck to everyone who has finals right now or coming up! We can make it!

May the force be with you!

Breathing is So Hot Right Now

Workout: 5.2 miles in 45:48. This run was sooo difficult to get through. My whole body rebelled and didn't want to move. Multiple walking breaks and difficulty breathing. Yuck.

Which leads to me a post I've been meaning to write for a while...asthma.

I was diagnosed with asthma as soon as I came back from Kentucky. Strange how I never had any issues all the time I lived in Cali, but as soon as my lungs enjoyed the humid KY air, they said hell to the no to anymore Cali smoggy, pollen-filled air. Ugh. It was hard for me to breathe while I was running and my chest felt like it was going to explode. Running was difficult and I was starting to hate it. So I went to my doctor.

She did some breathing tests on me and found that my lung capacity was half of a normal person. Awesome. She had me puff some Advair and then do the same test. My lung capacity was about 3/4 of normal. Obviously, I needed inhalers, stat!

I was prescribed Advair and an Albuterol inhaler. I had had Albuterol for a while because when I get sick, I get asthma, but I never thought it would progress into exercise-induced asthma and then whole-life asthma. Thanks lungs, you rock! My doctor also told me to change my allergy meds from Claritin to Zyrtec because it would be stronger, meaning less likely for more histamine to be released, meaning less inflammation in all parts of my body, meaning less lung inflammation and easier breathing.

Since I've been on Advair for almost a year, my breathing has been soooo much better! But it's not the best and I will never be Kara Goucher because my lungs can't keep up with my body. That's fine, though. I have no dreams of the Olympics or even winning age group medals. I run for the love of running (and sometimes hatred of it) and the sanity it brings me in all aspects of my life. If my lungs are the limiting factor to my abilities, it's ok with me.

What are your "limiting factors" in running? Do you have asthma and can we be inhaler buddies?

I Chicked a Guy and I Liked It!

Workout:
Sunday: Ran 3.4 miles in 28:05. Felt pretty good and no left calf tightness!
Monday: Ran 3.4 miles in 28:37. Legs had a lot of energy but my body didn't. Did 24 pushups, 45 tricep extensions, 72 rows, and 40 shoulder presses, all from the luxury of my home.

On Monday, while on my run, I noticed another runner ahead of me going in the same direction I was. He was about a block (suburban blocks are loooooong) away from me and I could tell that I could eventually pass him even though he was running at almost my same clip. After about 8-10 mins of catching up, I chicked him! Muahaha runner dude! Totally made my day...and then...a pack of 3 girls turned onto the same street I was on and I chicked them too! I kicked so much ass and felt like such a rockstar! I wish I had pics for you guys of this but I don't carry my camera or phone with me on my runs.

Today, my run was pretty ok. My legs felt springy and had a bunch of energy. The rest of me did not. It really didn't help that I was chafing like woah. The crotch seam on my compression shorts has never been a problem in all the long, sweaty runs I did last summer. I've never had a problem at all. But yesterday, I noticed a little bit of chafing and today it turned into a monster! The chafing is right where my thighs meet my crotch. I can't figure out why this happened but I don't like it! Tomorrow is supposed to be my long run, so I'll be BodyGliding to the max. I promise I won't share any after rubbing the BodyGlide all up in my nether regions. You're welcome.

After the run, I worked out my arms, as I listed above. I have the SPRI Resistance Bands in green and red, which have the least resistance you can get. I used the green for the shoulder presses:

And I used the red for the rows and tricep extensions. It wasn't enough for the rows, but it was better than nothing!

Looking all sorts of hot and fat in the starting position of the row

The end of the row

The pushups kicked my butt, as usual, but I was able to do 24, which is better than most people so hooray for me! I don't want to do the pushup challenge that everyone and their mama is doing, but I'm going to push myself to do more!

Sunday night (yes friends, we are traveling back in time!), Mama RNG and I went out to dinner. This is a BIG deal. We never go out to eat! I wanted to check out a Vietnamese restaurant right down the road because I have been craving pho for a very very long time. So off to Pho Bac Hoa Viet we went.

Mama RNG ordered the BBQ chicken, rice, pho soup, and pink sauce

I ordered the chicken pho...heaven!

Yesterday marked Barefoot Neil Z's Virtual Marathon. He said that we could run it cumulatively, which is awesome because there is no way I could run a real marathon right now. I tallied my runs up from April 17th (starting day) until May 1st and I got 30.9 miles! I ran more than a marathon...over 2 weeks hahaha! Oh well, it was fun! I never printed out the bib (Doh!) so I don't have any groovy pics of that, but I participated and enjoyed it! Thanks Barefoot Neil!

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?

Music Monday

Workout:
Monday: Ran 3.1 miles in 27:23. Followed by this WORKOUT. Had to drop the reps for the core board pushups and planks to 8, rather than 10, or I would've died.

Because I know you all just want the music video, I'm going to force you to read this post before you get to the video. Or you'll just scroll to the end. Whatevs. Read this!

Yesterday, I made these cookies for today's hangout sesh with Erin. The recipe is so easy and the cookies came out very well!

Batter of yumminess!

The chocolate chips stayed gooey for hours! It was crazy awesome!

Get in my belly!

 My grandparents came over for a small Easter dinner. The madre y yo made lemon pepper mahi mahi, steamed asparagus, and wild rice pilaf. Delish!

Among other news, I briefly mentioned that I'm trying this whole online dating thing. We can discuss the why part of this later, since I have to go hang with Erin now, but suffice it to say, I am a baller. I have a coffee date set up for Thursday. I'm pretty freaking excited!

Ok, now you lovelys get your music video. Enjoy this awesomesauce song! I can't stop singing it!

Balance and Personal Training

Workouts:
Wednesday: Ran 5.3 miles in 44:07. Ran an extra 2 miles with friends for roughly 20 mins. Total=7.3 miles
Thursday: Personal training for 1 hour.
Friday: Ran 3.4 miles in 27:48.

Life is all about balance. The balance between work and play, exercising and resting, eating good food and not getting fat, doing what you have to do and doing what you want to do, helping others and being selfish, etc, etc. This concept is becoming more and more clear to me as I get older. This may or may not have something to do with that whole frontal lobe maturation by age 25 thing. As I read/stalk everyone's blogs, I'm constantly learning new things from everyone and this makes me think about my own opinions and ideas about running and my diet.

Balance is key. Too much of one thing and everything else gets out of whack. The most blatant example is with food. Nowadays, "everyone" gorges on fast food, fatty food, food that's just plain bad for them. Many people I know who eat bad foods don't have energy, aren't happy, and complain about being fat. Besides exercising, one's diet is the biggest thing one can control! I know for myself that if I have even one day of eating poorly, I feel bloated, depressed, and lethargic. Basically, I feel like crap. My body is used to eating healthy foods (except for my daily chocolate doses) and so when I don't eat well, I can drastically feel the difference.

Healthy, yummy Greek yogurt!

This leads me to my first personal training session I had yesterday at 24 Hour Fitness. Before I get to the actual supa-dupa-fly workout she gave me, I want to talk about something she said that really struck a chord with me. I had mentioned my issues with shin splints (see HERE) and my injury (see HERE), so Karissa (the cutest trainer ever!) talked to me about how to strengthen my feet. She said that no matter how much I build up my calves, that if I don't have strong feet, I won't be stable and nothing will work. Our whole workout was based on making me more stable (at least we weren't talking about mentally stable!) and having my muscles communicate with each other, rather than just doing isolating exercises like bicep curls. When everything talks to each other, they all get along (um...hello metaphor for life!).

For me, I've always known that you need strong hips to have strong knees to have strong feet. But I never thought about it going the other direction, that you need to have strong feet to have strong knees to have strong hips. If one part of the puzzle is missing, the whole system fails. I think this has been what I've been dealing with. I've just focused on having strong legs and forgot that my feet, my sole means of transportation, need some lovin' too! Lately, I've been pondering barefoot running and while I'm not ready to hop on board that crazy train quite yet, I completely agree with the idea that shoes have ruined our feet. I've decided that unless I'm wearing sneakers for running or school or what have you, I'm going to try to wear minimal shoes. This works well since summer is coming up. No more stupid flip flops that cause plantar fascitis pain. I don't care how dorky I look, my feet are vital to my running and I need to take care of them.

Ok, onto the workout she gave me. She really wanted to focus on doing workouts that would improve my running fitness, not just muscle strength, which I thought was the bomb diggity! Anything to help me improve my running I'm totally down for!

So here's what we did in circuits:
3 sets

• diagonal lunges with knee cross-->15x/leg
• single leg shoulder press with knee up-->8x/leg with 10 lb dumbbells
• crunches with tricep extension-->15x with 5 lb dumbbells

3 sets

• Free Motion cable machine (with machine arm down) deadlift and row, single leg and single arm-->12x/arm with 15 lbs
• Core Board pushups w/rotation in each direction-->10x
• high plank, diagonal knee to elbow-->10x/leg

And then I died. Never have I ever wanted to cry so much during a workout! The pushups straight to the planks KILLED me! I had to take breaks like every 4 reps. I can hardly lift my arms today and my lats are letting me know how much they didn't appreciate that workout. But I know it's good for me and I will get stronger every time I do it!

How do you keep balance in your life? What are the struggles you face to keep that balance from deteriorating?

The Best Holiday of the Year!

Yesterday, I had a field trip to the UC Davis campus for one of my classes. I planned on going to the gym afterward, but forgot my sports bra in my gym bag. Sad panda! I ran around my neighborhood instead and did 3.4 miles in 28:15. The legs felt strong and good :) After the run, I made a pretty random meal of steamed broccoli, 2 hard boiled eggs, and a blueberry/raspberry bran muffin from Trader Joe's.

Yes, that's most definitely a Cookie Monster bowl from when I was 3.

I had to go with my grandma and mom to the airport to pick up my cousin since she's visiting for her spring break. Her flight was supposed to come in at 10:30 PM, but as most airlines go, it was late. I amused myself with taking pictures to pass the time.

SUPER fluffy and blurry Chow that pulled this lady's wheelchair. Talk about slave labor!

Me and my grandma

Ruby finally got off the plane and we managed to get home by 12 AM. I was a tired pup!

Ok, so onto to the BEST holiday of the year! UC Davis has an annual tradition of hosting Picnic Day, which is an open house for the public to come visit all of the departments, learn, interact, and have fun. It is also a big tradition for the students to drink copiously, which has caused a lot of problems in the past, but they cracked down a lot this year since last year was so bad that they threatened to shut down Picnic Day indefinitely! This year, I met up with some friends and we meandered around campus, enjoying the 80* sunny weather and good company.

Kristen, her friend, me, and Misty with our new tomato and pepper plants

Buzzy bees!

Yummy honey jelly beans from the Entomology department

Action Jackson, the jack at the horse barn

Me and Misty on a random couch tier. Gotta love my school!

We shucked our own corn cobs and got popcorn!

My tomato and pepper plants somehow survived the day unscathed!

Super dirty feet from walking around in flip flops all day. Not my best idea ever.

Now, it's time to sleep after a long day walking around in the sun.