my friends are getting hitched

It's true. One by one, my list of friends whose last name will be changing within the next year is getting larger.

First there's CAMERON, who will be getting hitched April 10. Whew! A few of the other bridesmaides and I threw her a shower a few weekends ago.





I'm really getting into this shower/wedding/bachelorette party planning thing...it's right up my alley.

Most recently--my dear friend KATHRYN is engaged!



Not to mention...


BRITTANY


LAUREN


HOLLY


LAURA


HEATHER


KATIE


KAYLAN (roomie!!!)


JORDON


Photos graciously provided by: Facebook

Let's just say I have some exciting things in store over the next year as these weddings happen...and I couldn't be more excited!

these are a few of my favorite things

As if the book wasn't good enough...



Not they're coming out with a MOVIE!!!



I am beyond excited. I started reading the book summer of 2008 while I was in Italy, and the whole experience of reading it just made me feel warm and fuzzy. Who doesn't like that in a book? And now I get to ask myself the same question, but in the context of the movie. Besides, I love doing all of the activities described just in the title: eating, praying and loving. So if the title did that much for me, imagine what a wonderful book it is through and through. Hurry up and read it before the movie comes out! Or not, that's just the way I like doing things ;)

try love instead

Can't stop thinking about this video! Kind of a refreshing take on why to wear your seat belt. These days it seems marketers try and implement fear to get people to change their behavior. I prefer this approach.

I did something kind of crazy...

I've decided that I want to try and train for the Disney World Marathon in 2011. MARATHON. As in 26.2 miles. I got such a sudden surge of wanting to do this that I looked up a training schedule and punched it into my calendar. Of course I am still going to run the Nashville Half in April, but a week after that I'm going to start marathon training. Right now, when I refer to said marathon, we'll put quotations around it because it is so remote and hypothetical. "Marathon". That's better.

Did I say 26.2 miles? Well, right now I can barely think past 3 miles (hazard of taking a break from running for several months...) Luckily this "marathon" would take place January 9, 2011. And it sounds like fun. Running through all of the Disney Parks and seeing all the characters and all the rides! You pretty much HAVE to be trained to run a marathon if you ever want to do this in one day. And, well, I suppose I do.

I'll keep you posted on the "marathon". But for now (and the next 11 weeks) I'll be focusing on the half marathon in April!

consequences

So as you know, yesterday I mistakenly went running in my hiking tennis shoes, not my running tennis shoes. And today I am paying the consequences. What might those be, you ask?

Here's the deal. When I run, I do something called over-pronation. In english, over-pronating basically means that my foot rolls too far inward when my stride hits the ground, and doesn't correct itself quickly enough.

This Web site says: Because the foot over-pronates, it doesn’t roll back to the neutral position quickly enough as you begin to push off for your next step. This misaligned foot-fall affects the position of the lower leg, the knee, thigh and hip so that the force of your foot-fall is not absorbed in the best possible way. Some parts of your body like your lower back may bear more strain than it should, leading to back pain.

Looks something like this:



No thank you. Luckily, my running shoes are awesome and I am saved from the pain over-pronation causes in my life (except when I wear the wrong shoes). These babies have never let me down.



In and of themselves they help correct over-pronation, but in addition I have shoe inserts that correct the problem even more.



I swear, with all of this gear on my feet, you might think I look like this when I run down the street.



Even though my foot gear is intense...I'm not quite as bad off as this puppy. So without my foot casts (as I like to refer to my running shoes since they so comprehensively protect my feet) on yesterday, I am in a world of pain. Myyyyy kneeeeesssss huuurrrrtttt. And my back. And my body in general.

It's all starting to make sense to me now why I decided to blog about running--I have an outlet for all of my complaining! :)

hiking shoes

I was planning on running this morning, but it was cold. Many things don't happen because I am cold. Such as: getting out of bed, cleaning my room and moving (in general).

It warmed up a little later today, so I went straight from AK's Coffee where I was doing my homework to the park to go for a run. I suppose since I thought I was going to run this morning, I had myself convinced that I was wearing proper running attire. Here was my problem: I realized about a mile into my run that I wasn't wearing my running shoes--I was wearing these. Solomons were made to hike in, not go running. FYI, running in anything but running shoes is like riding a scooter to school vs. driving. It's much less comfortable and a lot slower.

I had a choice--I could suck it up, or I could stop and walk shamefully back to my car. I'm hard core. I ran in hiking shoes today. ;)

lost

I realized today that I never really mentioned the half-marathon last year on my blog while I was training. Only here, the day that I announced I was doing it. After that, the subject disappears from my blog; one might think it never even happened.

The reason I think this is so weird is because of how consuming training can be...how is it that I had enough other things going on at the same time as training that I barely even mentioned it? I guess this is me, making up for it.

After running last year's race, I had a little problem.

Obviously when you are running, you don't carry a cell phone with you. So after crossing the finish line, recovering for a minute and eating a banana or two, I realized I may never find my family in the sea of 20,000 people around me.

Big problem.

I was sweaty and gross, so asking a spectator to borrow their cell phone was a little embarrassing, but I got it over with and figured out where my family was waiting for me. Or so I thought. I went to the spot I thought they were, waited a few minutes. Still no family. After repeating the process of asking innocent people if a really sweaty girl could borrow their phone, I FINALLY found them. Keep in mind I had just run 13.1 miles so my legs felt a little like jelly.

This year, we're planning ahead.