Happy Belated Birthday Roomie!

Yesterday, April 11th, was Roomie's birthday! I won't say how old she turned because she'll be mad at me but she looks like a million bucks!

Roomie and I met my junior year of college at UCD because we both were in bad living situations and our boyfriends at the time were in the same frat. They had us meet up, we fell in love with each other, and the bfs broke up with us soon after. So, we leaned on each other and helped each other through all the breakup ick, especially since it was close to Spring Break. We took a trip down to Newport to Roomie's family's house on the beach. Because neither of us was old enough to rent a car, we rented a UHaul and brought along her rabbit, Cooper.

After reading "It's Called a Breakup Because It's Broken" most of the way down to So Cal and having Cooper pee on me while we drove up the Grapevine on I-5, we were pretty much bonded for life.

We had a great little apartment off campus where we enjoyed 2 years of living together. We ate dinners together, studied together, learned the stupid glyconeogenesis process together off her awesome posters she plastered on our dining room walls, and played with Cooper and my hamster together. She is an amazing roommate and best friend :)

Roomie actually was the one who got me into running. While my fat arse was sitting on the couch watching True Life, she was off training for the California International Marathon, which she BQ'ed for btw cuz she's AMAZING! At the time, I had no concept of how incredible all these things were until I started running. I wanted to get healthy and I saw my roomie running so I figured why the heck not?! Off I went and I really started getting it. Sad thing was she moved back to So Cal after winter quarter of my senior year because she was a super (awesome) senior and had had some extra quarters to get her degree. I started running right before she left so I never got to pull all her wealth of info out of her.

But she's my inspiration. I love her to pieces and think she's the most incredible woman you could meet. She's about to graduate with her master's in a couple weeks and she's going to rock her dietetics exam like you can't believe! If you're in So Cal, you should find her for any of your nutrition needs. She's super smart, sweet as pie, and beautiful inside and out.

I LOVE YOU ROOMIE!!! (and now I need tissue because I'm tearing up!)

Giveaway!

Not for my blog though! I'll do one when I get at least 100 followers (all you lurkers, c'mon, follow me!). Anyway, Stephanie from Run On! is hosting a giveaway...but only if she reaches 100 followers. She only needs 10 more, so once you follow her, enter her giveaway. It could be a gift card to Forever 21 and who doesn't like that store?! Let's get her 100 followers tonight!

You Like Me, You Really Like Me!

Oh Sally Field, you took the words right out of my mouth!

I'm glad the general consensus is that my header looks pretty fab. Not bad for spending 30 minutes learning Picasa and making it up! I am a perfectionist so I know I'll be tweaking it as time goes on and I get bored, which happens easily because I have the attention span of a mouse.

I was listening to my iPod yesterday while on the dreadmill and had the idea of posting some of my favorite workout tunes for you guys. I think I'll call it "Music Mondays". I'll include the music video that way it saves you guys the time trying to find it through YouTube and possibly getting the wrong song or some lame covered version of it.

For today's Music Monday, you lovely readers get 3! Cha-ching!


I love this song (who doesn't?!) and it inspires me to run stronger, not to mention happier :)


If this song doesn't make you run your socks off, well then, you just have problems. I could listen to this song on repeat for days.



Now, put on your earmuffs if explicit lyrics aren't your thing. This is the edited version, but I think you can figure out what they've changed. If you don't mind all the cursing, I'd get the explicit version because I think it makes it a more powerful song. It makes me feel like a fighter!

Hope you enjoyed this week's episode of Music Mondays!

What are your thoughts on the songs? What songs inspire you when you work out?

Heady Headers

Oh hai! It's waaaay past my bedtime, but I stayed up late for you lovelys in order to make myself a somewhat professional looking header. I've been dying to get rid of the lame simple text header since everyone who has a kickass blog has a snazzy header too! Call me jelly, but I needed one about as much as I need running. So that's like a lot, a lot. Anywho, mi nuevo header is up. Not the best, but for a quickly made header, I think it's not too shabby.

Do you like the new header? Tips to make it prettier/professionallier (yeah, I made that a word, don't hate!)?

Sunburn Sunday!

Today was quite a busy day of doggies and sun, and eventually the gym. My vet tech program had its annual pet adoption day this afternoon. We managed to adopt out all but 3 dogs and 3 cats. For how little planning this event had (we were only informed a week ago that nothing had been set up...so frustrating!), I am very impressed we had such a good response from people!

Buster and Violet

I stupidly forgot my sunscreen at home and realized I would need it when I was halfway to school. Thinking I would happily stay under the tents, I didn't go buy any. Turned out it was chilly under the tents, so in order to stay warm, I stood in the sun. A lot. My face is now a lovely shade of crimson, as are my arms and neck. Since I was wearing my scrubs, the neck burn is a super sexy V. Hawt.

After playing with puppies and talking to the public all day, I hit the gym. The treadmill got some extra lovin' today, as I ran longer than I usually do, for 3.5 miles in 30:19. If that had been outdoors, I swear the time would've been about 27 or 28 minutes. This is why the treadmill and I are not good friends. I finished up the workout with legs, working the adductors, abductors, quad raises, leg presses, and lunges.

Normally I get red from my runs, but add that to my super sunburn, and you get TOMATO FACE!

I don't know about you all, but my gym has some amazing people to practice your people-watching skills on. Today was extremely entertaining when some brah was doing upright dumbbell chest presses...and he had a buddy spotting him by holding his arms. Not to mention that brah was yelling in anguish over the amount of weight he was pressing. Dude, if you can't do dumbbell chest presses with that weight, there is no shame in picking a lower weight. You looked and sounded ridiculous and stupid, especially with your buddy holding your arms. That's not spotting, that's assistance, dumbass.

Enough of my gym ranting, let's look at food! For dinner tonight, I made chicken tenders with a brushing of olive oil and seasoned with lemon pepper seasoning, steamed zucchini, and a baked red potato. Delish!

A meal is not complete without a Blue Moon...or two :)

For dessert, I made a chocolate angel food cake. I used to buy these all the time at Kroger when I lived in Kentucky and came to expect them on the regular, but since I moved home, I think I've had only one angel food cake and it didn't have chocolate in it. Sad panda. So it was time to make one.

Take one angel food cake mix plus 1/2 cup of Hershey's Cocoa powder (for baking, not hot chocolate) and put in a bowl with however much water your box tells you to. Secret: I didn't have enough cocoa, so it probably ended up being 1/4-1/3 of a cup I was able to add.

Whip it, whip it good. Peaks are necessary for the fluffiest of angel food cakes.

Put in the oven. Waste time licking the beaters and bowl. Enjoy your sugar rush.

When done, take out of oven and cool. I have a spaceship-looking angel food cake tin. It's pretty badass. Sadly, no aliens have visited me whilst making fluffy cakey goodness.

Gaze lovingly at your beautiful masterpiece and prepare to devour.

Smile into your camera with no makeup on and have no shame for posting said au natural face on a public blog for all the world to see. P.S. Can you see my nasty sunburn around my neck?!

Cut yourself a big hunkin' piece of your chocolatey angel food cake and gobble that sucker up! Those spots of chocolate are my mixer's fault, not mine. It's from the 60s and it's too tired to mix everything well.

How was your weekend? What delicious/healthy/totally fat laden but oh so good food did you make?

Third Post of the Day?!

I'm going a bit post crazy today! I have so much to share, I suppose. I have decided to make today a rest day. My feet are still pretty sore from my heels from last night and my energy level is at a 2. It's a gorgeous day, though, which makes me feel more guilty than usual when I skip a run. Oh well, it just wasn't meant to be.

I was searching through some old pictures and found some from my very first race way back in May 2008. Now, I have only run 3 races. Crazy, right?! I've been running for 3 years so you would inevitably think I would have run tons of races, maybe even a marathon here or there. But you would be wrong.

My first race was the Parkway 5K and I somehow managed to snag my age group's 3rd place finisher medal with a time of 25:43. Pretty freakin' sweet!

A few months later, I moved to Kentucky and began the first of my two internships at Thoroughbred farms. Due to working 6 days a week and always being exhausted from shoveling manure, dealing with usual horse antics, and trying to run at least a few days a week, fitting in races just wasn't going to happen.

I did manage to run Lexington's A Midsummer Night's Run 5K in August. It was a sweltering night with temps at around 85 with the humidity at about 85%. I died. Not really. I actually did better than my first 5K, with a time of 25:31. Had it not been Satan's armpit outside, I would have been much better, I'm sure.

When I came home from Kentucky in November of 2009, I ran Sacramento's big, giant Run to Feed the Hungry 10K in 56:41. It was poor effort because I hadn't trained for it and wasn't expecting much. I was definitely happy with my result, but I know I can do better.

And now we come to the present, somewhat. Last year, I made a New Year's resolution to run a half marathon. I was going to do the San Francisco half in July, but procrastinated on starting training, so I selected Sacramento's Urban Cow Half in October.

I trained. And trained. I made my own, slow training plan, where, over the course of a few months, made every long run 1 mile longer than the week before. I didn't come across many issues with my training plan and my body reacted pretty well.

Except for some black toenails :(

And then, one day in August, I went on a 6 miler during the middle of the week. I don't think anything exceptional happened, in fact I remember it being a really great run with a fast pace. The next day, I had an excruciating pain along the inside of my right tibia. This was not good. I attempted to run on it, but it progressively got worse to the point where I started crying 1 minute into my run. This was very, very bad :(

I went to my doctor, who took x-rays to make sure it wasn't a stress fracture. It eventually came back that I had medial tibial tendonitis, meaning the tendon that attaches the muscle to the inner part of my tibia was inflamed and pulling away from the bone. Thus, MAJOR pain!

No, not this one!

My doctor sent me to a physical therapist, who told me that my butt and hip muscles weren't very strong. He showed me exercises to make them stronger and told me to get stability shoes, rather than neutral cushioning shoes (my feet are extremely odd, so I'll have to remember to do a post on them soon). I also had to rest for a while and crosstrain. B-O-R-I-N-G!

After about a month of feeling sorry for myself, I got a gym membership at 24 Hour Fitness and started lifting weights and crosstraining. I also realized what caused my injury, more than just weak muscles. I run on concrete sidewalks (the worst running sin besides flinging snot/spit/sweat onto someone) and I was running in one direction on sidewalks that have a slight camber. This camber was putting a ton of pressure on my medial tibia and the muscles, so it only makes sense that I got hurt.

When October came, I went to the Urban Cow to support my running/training buddy, Daniel, who went out and ran it in 1:51:40! He's a stud!

 I also made him some pretty sweet signs that made the other half marathoners giggle :)

In January 2011, I began getting myself back into running shape. I'm still kind of stuck in that getting back to fitness phase. Running isn't the easiest of things for me, but I like the challenge. It's something that really makes me proud of myself when I've run further or faster than I thought I could. Nothing is better than feeling proud of yourself. No one can take that accomplishment away from you.

My ultimate goal for the year is to finally run the Urban Cow. I managed to get my enrollment deferred to this year (the race coordinators were so nice and understanding about my injury!). Last year was a good prep for me to see how I train so that this year I can do better and really kick this half's butt!

Pet Adoption Day!

If anyone is in or near the Sacramento area and looking for an amazing new pet, my school is having its annual pet adoption day tomorrow from 10-2. Please come out and find a new furry friend!