Merry Christmas!

It's 3 days 'til Christmas!! I LOVE Christmas!

Remember to enjoy yourselves, spend time with crazy family, and rest!

And I'll remember to run like the dickens! Along with the rest of it. :)

And why not give a fulfilling Christmas gift by donating to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society! Click on my face at the top to donate!

Have a very Merry Christmas!

A Girl On A Mission

Random picture of the week! Got my hair chopped off! :) I highly recommend Will at Trim Nashville - he's the best!

This week was less difficult than last, thank goodness! I have stopped coughing as much, so a lot of my energy is coming back! I ran a good bit more this week, and on Saturday, I ran 4.5 miles! I haven't done that in a very long time. I could tell that my heart was in better shape than my body in that run. My heart was doing well, pumpin' how it needed to be pumpin', but my legs and knees hated me. Now, every time I get up from my work desk, I can almost hear small screams from my thigh muscles. Multiply that by about 2.3, and that's what I have ahead of me. Oi.

This is the precise moment where the "rubber meets the road." The little perfectionistic man (I'll call him 'Ed') that sits right in between my heart and my head, tells me I can't do this, that I am not strong enough to finish a 1/2 marathon, and this is when I kick Ed's butt by sternly reminding him that I can totally do this, not because I know the outcome of every scenario, but because of the Spirit within me that pushes me through every mile. I am a girl on a mission... and that mission isn't always about me; it's about something greater. You can help live for something greater along with me by donating to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society - a group of doctors, scientists, and all-around geniuses, who improve the lives of people with blood cancers, and are inching closer and closer to a cure. I would be honored to receive your money donation that will go directly to LLS's Team In Training, the wonderful fundraising organization that I am running for. Just click the link at the top of the page, and it's super easy from there! No donation is too small!

Week 3 = a doozy.

Well... not my best week. I caught ANOTHER cold! I'm assuming it's because my immune system is down from the Swine Flu and Bronchitis I just got over (yuck). But I am happy that this cold is less intense than the last; perhaps this whole get-over-viruses thing is a step-down process. :) But I still have the chesty cough, occasional stopped-up nose, and soup-head stuff going on. I walked uphill on a treadmill for 30 min. on Monday, then ran 3.1 miles Wednesday and Friday, and I have to be honest, they were really tough. I did a little bit of strength training (push-ups and ab work), but not as much as I would have liked. This week, I will hopefully feel better and be able to do more.

I found a new workout toy that I like, though, and thought I'd share. It's called a "Harbinger Balance Trainer." It's a little, round, blue thing with spikes on it. (How's that for a description!). I have been doing crunches on it, and it is awesome. It makes me less dizzy than doing crunches on a stability ball, and, and it's made my muscles more sore than I expected! Find it on Amazon.com.

Any more tips you can give me for running in the cold/with a cold/anything to do with cold, would be greatly appreciated!