M.I.A.

Sooooo I kinda fell off the grid for a couple of months… oops.  Seriously, I hate that I haven’t posted anything since Valentine’s day and I will try to be better about it, promise!  I had a busy couple of months adjusting to my new work schedule (with shifts that change about as often as ), I’m still enrolled in school working toward my Bachelors in nursing (the semester just ended and I have a whole two weeks until I go back for more!), I started P90X3 (I WILL post about this), training for the Nike Women’s Half Marathon in D.C., and making sure things were planned for my wedding!  So to sum it up, a lot of stuff going on all of the time, however, I really need to make this a priority this summer seeing as I love connecting with new people and reading new blogs!

Anyway, my running was totally sporadic thanks to all of the lovely snow and winter weather we had, living up a holler makes it hard to get anywhere to run, oh and having the rail trail covered in a foot and a half of snow makes it hard to run as well, so I had to form a relationship with my treadmill.  We’re sort of frienemies… Treadmill miles are way different than actual running-on-your-own miles, so getting back to doing all the work was a bit of a challenge.

By the end of March I was able to run outside regularly since snow had finally melted away!  I didn’t run nearly as many miles this winter as I should have to properly prepare for my half marathon however, so I was going in with a mindset of “just finish, don’t worry about running your best time or anything”.  So after having a stressful evening navigating the streets of D.C. the night before, I made it to the start line with 14000+ other gals and we began our run through D.C.!  I kept telling myself “you’re just on a jog with 14000 girls in D.C., that’s all, don’t stress about this”, and it actually worked cause I was so relaxed and felt the best I’ve ever felt running a half marathon!

(Above, me before the race)

(a picture during the run)

(One of my favorite pictures, the stand said “We Run” and it glowed, we were in a tunnel!)

I tweeted and tagged my instagram picture saying that I PR’d, and I honestly thought I did, but I forgot that I ran a 2:24 before, so my 2:26 will just have to take second place, but I was totally shocked with the results considering how training went!  Aaaaand I stopped to pee 1.3 miles in and the line was so long that I was stopped for about 6 minutes so maybe had I not stopped to pee I would have run a 2:20 and PR’D?  Who knows and who cares, in the end I got to the finish line and got my finisher’s necklace!!!

(I’m finishing in the purple shirt, Mr. Body finished just before me! haha)

(Me getting my necklace)

(the front of my finisher’s necklace)

(the back side of my necklace)

We had a very short visit to D.C. though since we left that night to go to Las Vegas (well, we were supposed to but our flight got delayed… long story) so we left on Monday, which is the day we were getting married in Vegas, and didn’t make it to Vegas until 2, didn’t get checked in the hotel until 4:45, and were getting married at 6, but even though it was rushed I ended up marrying my best friend, my running partner, and most importantly the love of my life, and that was by far the best moment of the weekend!  I don’t have any pictures because we weren’t allowed to take any in the chapel (they gotta make that dough I guess), but I will surely make a photo album of some pictures when I get them!

Like I said a lot going on, none of it was really super eventful until this past weekend so I didn’t want to bore you guys with some loooooooooooooong post about nothing ; )   I will post soon about P90X3 (this week is “Victory Week” and I’ll finish on Saturday!!) and I’ll try to post more frequently again!!

Thanks for reading!  I’ll have another post soon!

-Samantha

Ideas for this year

Soooo I know I’m kinda late on the “goals for this year” post, but I started working nights around new years day and since I’ve had a few days off I’ve been catching up on things around the house and getting ready for school to start.

Last year was amazing for me, and I went into it without any hopes or real goals in mind, so that makes me kind of hesitant to make any solid goals for this year.  I’ve been thinking about what to do and I’ve come up with this solution, I’ve come up with some ideas about what I want to do, so I’ll call them “ideas” for this year.

• Idea #1: Keep up my same enthusiasm for running this year as I had last year!  I never thought I would love running as much as I do, and I just hope that I continue to love it and keep it up this year!
• Idea #2: Try to incorporate other areas of exercise into my weekly routine.  By this I mean try to incorporate swimming or biking into my regimen; run 4 days a week, bike/swim 2, and still have a rest day.  I have always considered doing a triathlon (sometime WAY, WAY into the future and I understand that I would need to do more swimming and bicycling than 2 days a week) so I think starting small would be a good way to see if I like swimming and bicycling and it would shake up my routine!
• Idea #3: Keep running races and challenging myself!  I have the Houston half coming up in less than 2 weeks, the Nike Women’s half at the end of April, and from then on who knows what!  I just hope to find more races that correlate with my work schedule, and some smaller distance races to do as well.  I also think I’m going to stick to a max distance of 13.1 for a race this year, and maybe tackle my next full in 2015.
• Idea #4: Keep up with my blog!  This has been so much fun for me to do, and I’m sure I would enjoy it even more if I wrote more, so that’s what I’ll try to do this year.  I’m not going to set a number of posts that I hope I do, but I’m just going to try to write more so you all can know what’s going on in my fab-u-lous life!  : )

There are also a few things that are for sure going to happen this year.  I’m going to finish my Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) in the summer, which I’m super excited about!  I will also be getting married to Josh, hopefully in April and we couldn’t be more excited!

So I have a few “ideas” for this year and some events that I just can’t wait for!  I’m trying to keep it simple this year so I don’t get too bogged down and overloaded.

What are your goals/ideas/resolutions for this year?  How did you choose them and how will you reward yourself if you meet them?

Hope you all have a SUPER year and as always, thanks for reading!!

What I’ve been up to lately

Sooooo not a whole lot going on here lately, just trying to keep my Runner’s World Running Streak going!  It was pretty tough the first few days that I worked to make myself run when I got home, but I can say now that it’s gotten easier!  I feel like I’ve noticed me even feeling more energized throughout the day, so this streak is doing great things for me!

I finished up with school yesterday.  This semester was frustrating at times.. many, many times.. but I’m glad that I’m done with it and that I won’t have as many classes next semester AND I’m that much closer to being done!  Another fun thing yesterday, I was running and a man with a dog ran past me, we both said hello to each other and as soon as he did I thought to myself, that’s your old microbiology instructor!  (At least I was pretty sure that’s who it was)  So I continued with my run and thought to myself if I pass him again then I’ll ask him if he is who I think he is.  Sure enough after I turned around I saw him running my way and I instantly got nervous, I mean what if I ask this guy if he’s someone and he is TOTALLY NOT THAT PERSON?!?  Anyway I asked, and he said he was indeed my microbiology instructor (from 3 years ago and a lot of people take this class each semester) and before I could tell him who I was he said “Samantha Brown, right?”  You coulda knocked me over with a feather, I never thought that he would remember who I was!  So we had a nice little chat and then we continued on our way.  I like running for that reason, you start out and you never know who or what you’ll see along the way!  Little surprises like that make running that much more fun for me.

Today we got snow and couldn’t make it out to the rail trail so we had to go with plan B and run on the treadmill.  Josh hated it and me, I’m getting used to it.  I can’t seem to get myself to be able to run more than about 35 minutes or so at one time, but some running is better than no running!  We also finally put a TV down in the basement so we’ve got some entertainment while we’re running in the same place!

I also found out this week that…

I WON RANDOM DRAW INTO THE NIKE WOMEN’S HALF MARATHON IN D.C. IN APRIL!!!!!!!!  I was so excited to get the email after work one day this week and find out that I got in!!  I don’t know how many people registered but they were only going to select 15000, AND I’M ONE OF THE 15000!!!!!!!!  So excited!  This is just what I’ll need after running in Houston in January to keep me going and excited throughout the rest of winter!

A lot of nice things happening lately, finishing school, a great job, the run streak, and finding out I was selected for another race!  What cool things do you have going on in your life?

Thanks for reading!!