Corn! and Sun! and Corn!

I had a great fucking run today.. I swear I must be solar powered. The last thing I wanted to do when I got up this morning was run, but then the sun came out and I figured I should put a couple miles on my NEW shoes before tomorrow. So I reluctantly dragged my ass out the door, no real destination or mileage in mind. I'm bored with my neighborhood so I decided to break out and cross the state line... it was time to run in Miss-our-ah. Luckily I only live a mile or so from the border, so it's really not that hard. I took the pedestrian bridge under the highway and over the river and hit the West Bottoms, which is a yucky industrial area that is slowly being taken over by art studios and lofts.. unfortunately where I was running was not the art fag area. I wandered throughsome shady areas and got lots of "what tha?" looks.. I guess the truckers aren't used to seeing a girl in bright pink shoes running through the area! Found my way to the City Market and did a couple of laps through there. I was feeling great and loving the sunshine and my new shoes.. did I mention I got new shoes? Thank you Dad & REI.
On my way home as I was crossing the pedestrian bridge that takes me back into Kansas.. I heard this loud boom and at the end of the bridge it looked like it had started raining. As I got a bit closer it turns out a semi had over turned trying to get on the highway and spilled his corn kernel load.. I was about 3 minutes from being buried in corn kernels! It was about knee deep as I waded through and watched as the fire trucks & ambulances started arriving. Crazy! If I hadn't taken a wrong turn at one point I probably would have been right underneath! Disaster narrowly averted. I got back having done a bit over 9 miles and I feel fan-fucking-tastic. Obviously my cold only lasted a day YIPPEE!!
Now I have some shopping to do and then later a "Congratulations you fucking quit that hell hole that is Sprint" party to go to for my friend. She's starting her own personal chef company, and since she's such a great cook, I know she's going to be uber-successful at it.

JINX!

Haha! I totally jinxed myself by blogging about how healthy I was... today I am sick. Stupid!

Enjoy your health!

So the other day when I was at Whole Foods, the bagger told me to "enjoy your health" as I was leaving. My first instinct was to roll my eyes and think "fucking hippy" but then I started to think about it....and I realized I really, really do enjoy my health. Today is the one year anniversary since I went Raw Vegan and it totally changed my life. I was a crappiest food eating, alcoholic, smoking, lazy, fat, aging girl... in one day everything changed, DH & I threw out all the food we had in the house, went to the farmers market stocked up on fresh fruits and veggies and started eating our way to health. The first few weeks were ridiculously hard, we both went through major detox as we had given up caffeine, alcohol, sugar, salt, meat... all in one blow. Let me just say that I hated fruits & veggies, I would only eat them if forced to, so for me this was a real leap of faith. We persevered through the rough patch and just continued eating nothing but fresh, raw fruits & veggies & drinking nothing but water. Once my body got used to what I was feeding it, my energy levels went through the roof and I dropped 15 pounds like it was nothing.
It wasn't the easiest thing, commercials for pizza were driving me crazy and our social lives suffered since very few places serve raw foods.. salads were always too small and overpriced and since we had stopped drinking even bars were no fun. It was just supposed to be a 30 day thing.. which then crept to a 45 day thing and then a couple month thing and here we are a year later. We've adjusted a bit... we'll drink red wine sometimes and we've gotten better at knowing which restaurants have good stuff, now the way we eat is just 2nd nature.




It has totally changed me, in September I started running because I couldn't sit still any longer and running sounded appealing, and if you know me, you know that I always swore I'd never become a runner. Oddly, I took to it like a fish to water, getting up at 6:30 am to go run is something I look forward to! I know that it's all due to giving my body the best, freshest foods possible and avoiding anything that is processed and has un-pronounceable ingredients in it. So back to the Whole Foods bagger... I really love my good health, I love how I feel in the mornings, I love how strong my body is, I love how it all seems to work right and I love that I feel much younger than I am. I'm sticking with this whole healthy eating and running my butt off thing.. cuz life is so much better like this.

sloppy slidey lovely mud

One of my uber talented friends was nice enough to draw up a super cool design for Sophia & I for Brew to Brew. I'm so lucky to have talented friends that are kind enough to share their talents with me. Travis Fox does hilarious comics for the KC Star, spot on political rants and has great taste in music. I'm so excited to see how this looks on some shirts!

It was a great run today, we did 20 out at Clinton Lake again. I really just love those trails, I can't wait for the race! There was a big turnout this morning and we even had an additional 4 women! They didn't go the full distance but it was nice to see some other ladies on the trail.. especially funny ones that gave as good as they got. There was plenty talk about faux lesbianism, cocks, certain runner harassment, and mud... plenty of ooey gooey mud. I had forgotten it poured rain all day Monday so things were still pretty wet out there. By the end Greg was stomping in mud puddles hard enough to soak everyone. It was pretty hilarious. I felt pretty good, and it seemed like we were moving along at a pretty good clip, I haven't compared my Garmin data to other runs but it felt quick today. Took a couple of S-caps and maybe that helped contribute to my feeling so good. My toes didn't fare quite as well, I really have to get this blister issue under control... it's the same two toes every time... Once my shoes dry out I'm going to try the lacing style that Ben recommends... I'm hoping it'll help! If I could get my knee & toe problems under control, I'll be golden!
On my drive home I saw I terrible accident..SUV lost control, went off the highway and up a hill and ended up flipping all the way over, first time I've had to call 911 in ages. I didn't stop since the 5 cars in front of me were pulling over and since I have no first aid training I figured I'd just be in the way. I really hope the person(s) are OK. Made me slow down a bit and call DH and tell him I loved him.

Happy Spring!

Sophia named our Brew to Brew team"Bad Ben's Mud Babes" Hilarious! Brilliant!
I was a bit of a mud babe today.. did a loop out at Wyco Park and it was almost too hot! Almost! I was silly enough to wait until midday to run.. at the hottest point of the day, but I wanted to wear just a skirt and tank to run in.. that's it, that's all... OK, well that and my pack with water, dates, phone, keys, camera & iPod. I felt like a pack camel today! I don't usually carry my camera since it's not small and light nor do I usually run with my iPod on the trails but for some reason I took it today. It was a fabulous day, and surprise, surprise it wasn't very muddy!!! I acted like a little kid today and just had a great time running around, taking pictures, and dancing on the trails.... it made up for the last wretched time I ran out there. The park was packed with people but I had the trails to myself until the very end when I ran into a guy carrying a huge frame backpack wearing flip flops (?) Things that make you go HMMMMM. Most everybody else was either fishing or playing on the playgrounds, I did have to watch a bit more carefully on some of the road crossings since all the roads are now open.
My iPod quit at about 4 miles but I'm really glad it did, otherwise I would have missed the million croaking frogs at about mile 5.. it really sounded like summer. Unfortunately the weather isn't supposed to hold.. Saturday in the 50s, Sunday in the 40s. I'm hoping that the trails at Shawnee Mission will be open tomorrow, I'd really like to do a few loops out there.

I picked up a pair of Injinji socks at Gary Gribbles on the recommendation of pretty much everyone and amazingly they fit! I had been holding off getting any because I have such small feet & toes I thought there was no way they would work, but yippee skippee they do! Ran in them today and had no blister problems, and got them all muddy. I think I'll go back tomorrow and pick up a few more pairs.. maybe in black this time.

Spit-take

This morning I had a real bonehead moment when I got back from my run. I must have still been in a "zone" because the first thing I did when I walked in the door was spit on the floor. WTF? At least it wasn't a snot rocket, but still! So classy.
It was a pretty run this morning, it was all sorts of foggy, so it looked like downtown KC, MO had totally disappeared. Knee hurt for the first mile or so but then loosened up, I would really like to be done with the pain all together. It's really starting to get old.

I found this picture of even- littler- me the other day, I must have been 8 or 9, Arbor Day 5k.. I can still remember how hot I was that morning. I was wearing a turtleneck, t-shirt and my oh-so-cool purple jogging suit, it had been cold when I started, but then got warm real quick. I wish now that I would have actually been serious about running back then.

NERRRRDDDDDSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!

Yesterday at Clinton Lake there was a Nerd party on the trails! Got there at 7:15 and met up with 5 others to do 17 miles. It was chilly and overcast but not bad, the knee was feeling pretty good (thank you advil!) but I ran pretty cautiously for the first few miles... I also had to pause and give the rocks I fell on last week the middle finger. The run included the usual mix of silly stories, dirty jokes and good knowledge. A few miles in we ran into 4 other nerds, they had had already done a lap! There was a bit of socializing and picture taking and then we went our separate ways. One of the guys in the group had just done his first 100 at Rocky and finished in 20 hours.. YIPE! I can only dream about that, but since I don't actually do any speed work, that's all it will be.. dreams. The knee started talking to me the last few miles, so I was glad to see the cars (the mud the last few miles didn't help either).

When I got home DH was just getting home from rock practice and we decided to treat ourselves and hit the Bluebird Bistro. It was the first time we'd gone on a Sunday and it was packed! Unfortunately we ended up with the horrible waiter that I had just been bitching about a few hours before during the run. DAMN. We waited forever for our food, but no big deal since it was busy and we were people watching and talking. At one point a group of girls randomly broke into song, and oddly enough they sang a bit of "Strawberry Fields Forever", which just happens to be my DH's most favourite song ever.
Sadly, when our food finally arrived it was pretty freakin' awful. We thought about sending it back but by this time we were starving and didn't want to wait another 40 minutes for our waiter to check back with us, so we ate it anyway. Between the crappy food, dirty utensils that I had to keep sending back, and in-attentive waiter, it wasn't the best way to spend a Sunday afternoon. If it had been the first time we'd been there, it would have been the last time too. It just taught us not to go back at "brunch" time.
We finished off the day by watching "No Country for Old Men" and "Dan in Real Life". No Country was good, Dan was OK. I found myself going back over bits of No Country in my head all day today, I think I like it even better today than yesterday.