I suck at blogging

Apparently I haven't blogged since February. Some people have noticed....

I'm going to do better. I have all kinds of injuries and fun stories from the year. Clearly I'll never get my book completed at this rate.

So stayed tuned kids. Big things are coming!!

I know I can't believe all the excitement either!!

Upcoming Runs! Hooray!

I’m getting back in the swing of things. Some days I’m still hard on myself about running but I am who I am and I’m going further than anyone on the couch! SO THERE! I have to say that I’m not really looking forward to the Shamrock Shuffle, my own reasons, one that are probably a coward’s way out, but I will blame Iceland on my slow if I show up performance. Not feeling it!

                                                    Oh whoops I forgot!

Once Heather pops out my new nephew (ok I’ll let her recover too!) we’ll train for the B.A.A 5k which is April 19 in Boston. It’s 2 days before the marathon and the course will take us across the Boston Marathon finish line as well. I’ve run in Boston a lot, but I think this run will be different.  I think there is a lot of emotion and love for a city behind this run. They opened the field to 10,000 so it’s kind of a big deal. 

The Color Vibe is coming to Manchester on April 27^th! The Mind Ninjas are at it again and I am sure no one will leave with any white left on their clothes. I’d appreciate no rain because that just really made for a miserable clean up! So sunny vibes!

I am most excited about the Hollis Fast 5k because my 6 year old super niece Adalee is going to be running with me. I keep telling her I hope I can keep up with her. It’s a downhill race and I thought it would be something special we could do together! So I’ll just chase her the entire time and probably have my best time ever!

                                                        He gets me

July is the Run to Home Base, which I am lucky enough to be sponsored by my company but I am still choosing to fundraise because it is an amazing cause! I missed out last year and while I’m not overly happy it’s in the middle of July I’ll take it! It’s still a cool feeling to run across home plate at Fenway Park! Or maybe I'll do this! 

Heather and I are trying to decide on a mud run, but so far it seems as if there is nothing at the time we want or that we can both do or that didn’t try to kill me (Spartan Run I’m talking to you!) We’ll see what we end up doing. Every race has its ups and downs so it’s a matter of finding something that fits “us”. The last thing we want to do is hate it!

I’m not going to lie when I say a nice shiny medal or good bling really help motivate me! And beer and cupcakes....mmmm cupcakes!

Daily Mantra:  “Focus and finish.”

An Open letter to running...

Dear Running,

I feel like we need to talk. It’s been a rough year for us. You were there but I didn’t appreciate you the way I should of. I lost my passion for you. And then someone came along and I thought it would help me find my way back to you. It didn’t. It made me resent you. I didn’t think I was good enough to be with you anymore. I forgot why I started running and only saw that I was slow and the person who was supposed to support me only made me feel bad about the effort. And then I figured out that something needed to change. I was going to need to break up with one of you. And so now I ask you for a second chance to be a permanent prominent place in my life. I let the negative person go and thought I would miss them, but I still missed you. A lot! So I think we should start over. This time, with better results. Better stride, better times and most of all a better attitude over all. I want to do this for me. I want to remember running and smiling because I was having fun. I may not ever be the fastest person out there but I will always cross the finish line and know that I did something to better myself. In a way letting go of the negative “support” (tough love I think is what it was called) allowed me to have the greatest support someone can have. The support of myself. And so now I’m going to lace up my sneakers, fire up the running app and turn on some good music and just run, not fast, not far, not for anyone else but me.  I’m glad we had this talk and I can’t wait to see where our relationship goes in the future.

Yours for miles and miles,

Erin

Look to Next Year...

So here we are in December already. DECEMBER??? How did that happen? Part of me wants to just take this year and hit the delete button. I lost my dad, I was missing the passion I had for running and thought about quitting, I found out people that I thought were friends weren’t and I end the year single. But I CAN’T hit the delete button because so many great things happened.

 I got to watch an amazing little boy grow up in front of my eyes, I finally got that little sister I always wanted (Johnson that’s you!),  I graduated with my Master’s degree and celebrated with the most amazing people I know, I stood next to my best friend while she married her soul mate, I kept running, I got to go VIP to a World Series game and A Boston Bruins game, and I found out that even though life doesn’t work out the way we want it, we get the opportunity to start new every day and every year.

Next year I see good things, I see more running for sure. I have a renewed spirit for running.I I want to do another ½ marathon next year for sure. I get to run the Run to Home Base in June thanks to my company sponsoring runners and I want to finish faster than I did 2 years ago. I’ll get to meet my newest “nephew” hopefully later rather than sooner. I get to watch my niece at nationals for Cheer, which I am SO very excited about. The kid has passion for cheer and she is awesome!

I keep saying that next year has to be better than this year, but that’s unfair to this year. It wasn’t all bad, it had it’s moments. I got to spend some quality time with my mom and her cats. Oh the cats! They are lucky they are so cute or I probably would have launched one or all of them at one point. I know Milo is looking forward to seeing them go!

So as I look outside past my Christmas tree on this snowy cold night, I’m reminded of how amazing life is, how beautiful the moments are and how there is so much to look forward.

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day.”
― Edith Lovejoy Pierce

Happiness

What does it take for someone to be happy? Someone asked me today if I’m happy. Besides the raging case of poison something I picked up this weekend I really am. I measure happiness by the people who surround me. Some people choose to measure happiness in other ways. They look at what is supposed to make them happy and then set out to duplicate it. For instance, my friend Heather and I went to a paint your own picture place on Friday night. There was a girl there who wasn’t going to be happy until her picture looked JUST LIKE THE ARTIST picture up front. I gave up about ½ way in trying to make mine look like anyone else’s, after all it was MY picture. If I would have spent all my time trying to make my picture perfect I wouldn’t have had any fun and therefore would not have been happy. I hope she got the desired result she was looking for.

I don’t need to get married to be happy. Some people look at their life and feel as if it is going to be incomplete unless they get married. Someone should not complete you (not matter what Jerry McGuire says) they should complement you. My best friend and her husband complement each other and you can see genuine happiness in their wedding pictures. I’ve seen pictures where one half of the couple look as happy as can be and the other half is gritting their teeth just to smile though it. But it’s what they THINK they need to be happy and they have convinced themselves of that. Those are usually the people you see with things that show status. They have a huge house (but not a huge family to fill it), go on expensive vacations and basically do things that are “status” quo”. If you need to convince yourself you are happy (and if you have fooled yourself into thinking you are) maybe it’s time to reevaluate your life priorities.

Sometimes we have to sort people out of our lives. You think you need them to be happy (I’m talking separate from love) and then you have the Ah-ha moment than you shouldn’t need to bend over backwards to make a friendship work. There’s a reason why Heather and I have been best friends for 18 (yikes!) years, our friendship is natural and there isn’t someone who is constantly giving or taking in the relationship. There was an episode of How I Met Your Mother where Ted really wanted Robin to come to a party so he threw it on a Friday, well she doesn’t show up and he tells her the party was really on Saturday. He so much wanted to make it work with her, he changed his plans and pretty much threw a 3 day party in the hopes she would come. That’s when you know a relationship isn’t going to work, if you are practically begging someone to hang out maybe you should rethink WHY it is you want to hang out with them.

I had 2 roommates in college. Therefore there were 3 of us in an apartment. I often say 3 is the loneliest number. Someone is going to get left out and it sure sucks to be that one. I hate being lonely so I only hang out in even numbers of friends. I’m kidding but I’ve been on the losing end of that group and I realized that I wasn’t that sad, so were they people that really made me happy? I can’t wait to go see the doctor later, now while that might not make me happy when I get the bill it will make me happy to get some itchy relief! See now that I’m finished with school I can’t help but want to still write during my lunch time. Old habits die hard!

MAN I SUCK AT BLOGGING!!

I haven't blogged in a while! I stopped running for awhile, my heart wasn't in it, grad school was KILLING me and life just seemed to be getting in the way. Please save the lecture, I know people work 16 hour days and still find time to run, well good for them, that wasn't me. I signed up for a running series where I need to complete 6 of 9 races and I get a super cool jacket at the end. Well my whole running crew is signed up for it so that's a motivator. But when you're sporadically running, you're not going to run your best. We've only had 2 races a 1 mile race and a 2 mile race, quick recap.

Millennium Mile- January 1, 2013- I didn't stay out late on NYE so I knew this wouldn't be a tough one to get ready for. It was FREEZING that day though, should have worn gloves and earmuffs! I finished in 9:35:43, I had my turbo boosters on near the end. I was shooting for under 10:00 and feel like I did really well. It is downhill so that helps and you walk (or take a bus) back up so technically it was 2 miles for the day. 

Then I pretty much crapped out on running, it was cold. I occasionally used the boyfriend's treadmill and I kept getting sick, like hacking up a lung sick. I skipped the Snowflake shuffle by order of the dr as I risked collapsing a lung and well I'm all set there. So moving on to the Shamrock Shuffle, went out the night before, couldn't breathe and was coughing, coughing, coughing!

Shamrock Shuffle- March 24, 2013- I felt like hell, I couldn't breathe and was coughing, it was cold again though not as bad as other times. I didn't want to run, but I had a cute tutu and a team of friends I couldn't let down!  24:42:42 with a 12:22 pace which at my peak is what I was running for a 5k. I was struggling the entire time to breathe and in the end I ended up back at the doctor with a respiratory infection which was super fun. 

I was ready to start running when the weather got nice and I was even sponsored to do the Run to Home Base in Boston, I did it last year and had a blast, and then my dad passed away. Now my dad was sick but his organs were working and he got to go home, which is all he wanted. I flew to my parent's and drive back with my mom. We got back Friday and I had zero gas to do the Run to Home Base, I was disappointed but knew I wouldn't make a 9k.

So life slowly got back to normal and I did the Color Vibe with my mom and Heather J Memorial Day weekend. It was raining and 50 degrees, throw in color powder and it was a big old mess, but we finished and I was so proud of mama. That sparked my wanting to run again. Then it got hot, yes these are all excuses but in my world they are valid. Mind you I'm finished with school, YAY! So I ran (like really ran) for the first time in a LONG time this week. It was 90 degrees and I struggled with 2 miles.  Shit, this isn't good. I have a bunch of 5k's coming up and then somehow I decided the Spartan Run would be a good idea, now apparently I'm just interesting in dying! 

We did the Adventure 5k today, it was hot. It was hard. I wanted to quit, I got in my own head. 2 of my teammates pushed and pulled me along and while I missed my goal of under and hour, I FINISHED. I drank my beer (um pumpkin blueberry?) ate 2 hotdogs and watched some other people come in. I took a cold shower when I got home and the burning started. I looked at my knees when I finished and they are all kinds of shredded, then I noticed the huge bruise on my arm. Battle scars! 

So Monday starts a new regiment. I'm doing the Workout of the Day (or WOD in the Spartan world) and I'm going to be ready for this race. Until then, you'll find me on the couch with ice on my knees, shoulder, oh hell I'll be in an ice bath! And I will blog more, I have lots of projects I'm working on and Pinterest and I are having a love/hate relationship!


Daily Mantra:
Pain is nothing compared to quitting ~ Unknown

Ah Pinterest....FAIL!

So I'm one of millions that feverishly pins on Pinterest and always have good intentions to try things. I've baked some cupcakes and made some desserts, but since I'm re-doing my Master bedroom I've been looking for DIY stuff and once I start looking on one board, it leads to another which in turn brings me to my Pinterest fail. I have long, thick hair. I wear it straight or I curl it which hot tools (hee hee hot tools!) so needless to say my hair takes a beating. I only shampoo it every other day to keep it from drying out too much. But then I found a pin that took me to this website...Olive Oil hair treatment. I mean look at her hair, it's fabulous when she's done! I mean now that I look at it, it's not the same girl. Ah crap! Oh well, I grab the EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) and warmed it up and proceeded slather it all over my hair, great use for my $10 olive oil, but I digress. Add a bun and a some saran wrap and I was good to go for a while. All this time on my hands now that I'm finished with school and I end up in oil and saran wrap, ahhhhh.

I left it on for an hour and found some other stuff to do, fold some clothes, watch some Undercover Boss and may have pinned some more stuff. Now being that I have a Master's degree now and I'm wicked smart I knew to shampoo my hair BEFORE you get it wet. I meant oil and water don't mix! I shampooed it and it did feel smooth but that could have be the layer of oil on my hands. So I went ahead and conditioned it really well too. So I get out of the shower towel dry my hair and I couldn't really tell a difference when I was combing it. I blow dried it on low heat and it felt softer. I didn't want to ruin the reveal for myself so I did it away from a mirror. Now in my head it was going to look like my friend Carrie Ann's hair, it's ALWAYS shiny and nice and well you can see by the picture that well it pretty much looks the same as it always does. And really it wasn't even THAT shiny. Sigh. So I guess I could say it wasn't a fail since it didn't say MIRACLE HAIR SERUM! But I did click on some others and they all said the word shiny so to me that's a fail. 

In other news, I'm going to blog more! I'm going to blog about my whole bedroom re-do, summer races and graduation!! WOO!!