26

It’s my birthday! I’m officially 26 years old — and it feels great!

I did so many awesome things during year 25 and I can’t wait to see what the next trip around the sun brings.

I took a chance on everything I knew and changed jobs, became a Rock N Blogger and grew this little blog (and my Instagram!) I sold the house my grandfather built and the land that has been in my family for 70+ years, I flew for the first time and visited so many amazing cities (like STL, Miami, Naples and more!), ran my first marathon and made so many amazing memories with my husband and pup. I am blessed.

My amazing co-workers showered me with love and food today and the whole family tried a new restaurant for supper.

Today was such a good day. I’m excited to see what this year brings.

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Trying something new — Beachbody On Demand

Hi friends! I thought today would be a good day to check in and let you know what I have been up to lately.

It has been so liberating to run without a training plan. I’ve been running varying distances from 2-6 miles, fast to slow and alone or with Murphy. I also added Beachbody to the mix for something fun, new and challenging.

I follow a few Beachbody coaches on IG, but for the most part, I’m not interested in “drinking the koolaide.” The on-demand program seems like a good way to have access to lots of different workout videos and that’s what I’m using it for! For now, Ryan and I just signed up for the free 14-day trial to see if we like it. I’ll check back when it’s all said and done and let you know if we buy a year membership.

We already had a few weights, a weighted ball and some resistance bands, but thankfully we don’t really need much more than that! Most of the workouts are body-weight based and they are killer! The few workouts we’ve done have left us sweaty, sore and wanting more.

Run Rock N Roll Marathon Series discount!

Use the code in the video below to save $15 at any RnR half or marathon for the rest of the year!

Top 5 tips for waking up early

I didn’t become a morning runner overnight (<– puns. haha)

It took a little bit of work. While I am normally a morning person, during marathon training I would sometimes wake up at 4:30 a.m. in order to get my run in.

My best tips for waking up early are:

1. Start waking up just a little bit earlier every day. Wake up 10 minutes earlier, then 15, then 20, etc until you’ve reached your goal!
2. GO TO BED EARLY.
3. Act like the snooze button doesn’t exist. When you hear the alarm, take a deep breath, get out of bed and get the day started!
4. Drink a glass of water as soon as you get out bed. It’ll help wake up you and stay hydrated.
5. If you’re absolutely miserable, maybe waking up early isn’t the best idea for the current season of your life.

“The time just before dawn contains the most energy of all hours of the day. This has helped me become an early riser and an early doer…. When I wake to see that it’s light out already, I feel the world has started without me.” –Terri Guillemets

Finding my post-marathon legs, spring time and house update

Ready to catch up on allthethings?!

I feel like my life is a whirlwind right now. I swear I barely have time to catch my breath from day-to-day! So let’s play catch up:

It was Spring for like three whole days in Kentucky and now we are officially in summer-mode. It’s hot. It’s humid. It’s glorious (and sometimes terrible?! haha) Everything is blooming, my allergies are the worst and I am sweaty, nasty mess after each and every run.

Speaking of running, I am finally finding my post-marathon legs. I took a little bit off from running after my race and now I’m finally getting back into a daily routine of hitting the roads and pounding out a few miles. I’m hoping to get in a 5 or 6 mile run this weekend, so fingers crossed!

If you follow me on Instagram, you might have seen this in my stories from earlier in the week. Running tan line is coming along nicely.

Also! The most exciting thing from this week was closing on our old house and signing all the papers for construction to start on our new house! I am so so so excited for our new house. The 90-ish days it takes to build cannot go by fast enough.

Whew! That was a lot for one post. Tell me one exciting thing from your week!

Track ladder workout

In high school, one of my favorite track workouts was the ladder. We would run:

100m (basically an all-out sprint)
200m
400m
800m (half-mile)
1600m (mile)
800m
400m
200m
100m

Throughout the workout, I varied my break time to be anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute.

So since I’m not training for anything specific right now, this is the exact workout I did yesterday! It’s so fun and honestly goes by so fast. Ladders are a great way to mix things up and they really get your legs moving — which is great if want to work on speed!

I warmed up by talking Murphy for a walk around the neighborhood and then did some strides down the street.

Since we’re in the process of moving, my beloved (and sometimes dreaded) treadmill is in storage. So I’m doing this workout down the streets in my parent’s subdivision. Each street is .25 miles so it’s pretty easy to gauge how far I’m running. I really wish I had a track to run, but this will do for now.

It’s so fun to run freely without a training plan. I think for now I’m going to take a few weeks to do random workouts and runs of varying distances before starting a new training plan. I might be flirting with the idea of a fall half marathon?! 😉

A quick life update

So. Hi guys! Long time, no talk?

Life has been BUSY since I finished my marathon a little over a week ago. We were supposed to close on our house on Friday, but some paperwork got delayed so hopefully we will wrap everything up in the next few days. Since Ryan was off all weekend (and that basically never happens) we + our families helped up move everything out of the house and into storage.

HOLY MOLY I AM SO SORE. Moving is no joke. In the almost four years we’ve been married, this will be our fourth move. I swear, every time we get rid of stuff, but then when we move it seems like we have so much. Ugh. Oh well, hopefully when our new house gets finished we will be settled for a while.

As far as running goes, I ran once last week. ONCE. Oops. While I think my body (and honestly, my mind) needed the break, I am ready to get back on the roads. Hopefully this week I can run outside a few times!

I’m also wanting to try some boutique-style classes now that I’m not in training, but we don’t have a lot of options in my hometown, so we’ll see what happens.

And lastly, to end this random post I thought I would share my new favorite summer drink. I randomly picked this up at Kroger over the weekend and it so good and refreshing!

I’ll be back later this week with some running posts and maybe even a summer running style guide? Have a great week, friends!

I ran a marathon…now what?

So it’s been five days since RnR Nashville and I am still riding my runner’s high. I did my first run since the race last night and it wasn’t terrible.

But now that I’ve accomplished such a big dream, now what?

For now, I want to work on speed at short distances. I’m not sure if that means trying to break my high school PR in the 5k or trying to break 2 in the half.

But I love running. I love the feeling of accomplishment when I’m done and I love how I can always get better — there is always a new goal to strive for.

Will I run another marathon?

Never say never. While for the longest time I thought I might be one and done with the marathon, now I’m having seconds thoughts. What could I do on a flat course with more training? Could I break 5? Could I come back next year and crush those hills?

While for now, I don’t see another 26.2 in the books, I’m not completely ruling it out. Honestly, marathons take a lot of time to train for (duh), are exhausting emotionally, physically and mentally and they are usually pretty pricey (not including travel, hotel, etc). I don’t have a lot of big races (or long distance races) near me, so deciding to run a marathon requires a lot of thought and planning.

Whatever comes next, I’m excited about the journey!

Officially a marathoner — RnR Nashville race recap

I received a free entry into this race since I am a member of Rock N Blog. All opinions are my own.

First thing first, I AM OFFICIALLY A MARATHONER.

Okay, okay. Now to recap RnR Nashville race day. Ryan (my wonderful husband and cheerleader throughout this whole process) and I stayed at the Renaissance in downtown Nashville. We were just a few blocks away from the VIP setup and from the starting line.

After grabbing some fruit (I brought my normal breakfast bar from home) and using the restrooms, I started to get restless so we made our way toward the corrals. I was in corral 13 and had some time to kill before things really got going.

Once we sang the National Anthem, the St. Jude rockstars got to take off first and then each corral about every five minutes. Before I knew it, I was off and running! The crowd support was amazing throughout the entire race. I know I probably started off faster than I should have, but I was so excited to be racing AND for my first marathon.

I also got to see Ryan at the start! He got a video of me running and I love it so much!

Honestly, I tried to “be calm” (my mantra) and enjoy the race. I knew this might be the only marathon I ever run (more on that later) and I wanted to remember it all and enjoy every step.

BUT HOLY HILLS. I knew the hills in this race would be killer, but I didn’t really realize it until I was in the thick of the race. My quads were killing me about 1/4 of the way into the race and I knew I was going to have to earn the title of marathoner. I started walking up some of the hills and made lots of friends along the way who were doing the same thing.

Oh yeah. This also happened at around mile 9.

The wall at mile 20 is a very real thing. I was in so much pain and was ready for the race to be over. I tried not to wish it away since I had worked so hard to get there, but my feet were in pain, I was chafing and I could my shoulders getting burnt.

But like I said, the crowd support was amazing. That’s what helped keep me going. The cheers, high-fives, puppy power, popsicles and orange slices were so appreciated. People were even giving out shots of beer and jello shots. It was awesome.

The best feeling was when I got to mile 26. I KNEW I could finish. There was a bit of a downhill and then you make a turn into Nissan Stadium. Once I saw the finish line I almost started to cry.

I did it! I was about to become a marathoner!

I definitely didn’t run the tangets and ran a couple miles over the 26.2. But I stopped my watch at 26.2 and I’m so happy with the results!

Three days later and I’m still in shock that I ran a marathon.

This was 16 weeks of blood, (I fell off the treadmill once) sweat and tears. Training for a marathon is physically, emotionally and mentally exhausting. There were so many moments of doubt during this process.

My biggest takeaway from this experience is WE CAN DO HARD THINGS.

So thanks for the memories, Nashville. This was a day I won’t soon forget.

RnR Nashville expo

I have so much I want to say about this weekend, so I’m going to break it down into two posts — expo and race day.

I mentioned last week that the days leading up to the race were crazy. I had to travel for work, so I had lots of driving, flights, workshops in Florida, more driving, more flights and then got home at 2 a.m. Friday morning, only to return to Nashville 12 hours for the expo.

Let me also say, that the biggest race I’ve ever run in had about 250 runners. RnR Nashville had about 30,000 participants. I’ve also only been to two race expos before and they were both rinky-dink. So this was all amazing (and new!) to me.

The first thing I did when we got to the expo was pick up my bib and change my corral since training had gone better than I expected. There were basically no lines and everything went really smoothly. I was so impressed with the organization!

I made sure to get lots of pictures and lots of free samples! I also bought a pullover, long sleeve technical tee and a tank to commemorate my first marathon! *Also, now I was even more determined than before to finish the race. I was not going to wear a finisher shirt unless I did the whole thing!*

One of the coolest things we did at the expo was trying the Rapid Reboot recovery system. It felt great on my legs (especially since they were a little wonky from traveling and being a plane for the two days prior to the expo.)

All in all, we spent about two hours at the expo. We walked around Broadway for a bit before deciding on Margaritaville for supper. Then it was off to the hotel for a quick shakeout run and stretching sesh before going to bed!

I’ll be back tomorrow with a full recap of the race! Check back, you won’t want to miss it!