12/27/14

Shooting With Soul Challenge: Week 2: Your Reflection

After a super busy week, it was refreshing to get outside in the mild weather with the kids to shoot this weeks Shooting with Soul exercise: Your Reflection.



I love this photo!! I mean look at those sweet smiles!

I can't believe that it actually turned out exactly how I envisioned in my very uncreative mind.  That happens never!

These faces are a reflection of me as a mom.

Love my three.

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Be sure to link up your reflection photo with Hannah (The Ever Eclectic). Be sure to use #shootingwithsoul and #theevereclectic when you post on Facebook or Instagram.

12/21/14

Marathon Training, part 1

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Monday, I will be finishing up week 8 of marathon training, marking the halfway point.

I have been following this schedule pretty closely.  I made the schedule in Numbers based off of the Hal Higdon Novice 1 Marathon Plan. You may have to zoom in to get a clear look.

THE PLAN


THE REASON
Since I completed a half on October 19, I knew I could start with higher mileage. I chose the Novice 1 plan because I wasn't happy with how my runs had been going leading up to my half. I'm very happy with the decision to drop down to a 5 mile long and build from there.

HOW IT'S GOING
So far, my training runs have been great. Most have been faster than planned, and felt great.

Sure, I have missed a few runs, and strength workouts over the course of the last 8 weeks. I have also needed to move days around as our schedule required. Over all, I've put in the work. I'm looking forward to the 8 weeks ahead as my mileage continues to build and I run new distances in training and finally the marathon.

FUELING
Starting with my first 9 mile run, I tried out Generation UCAN. I am a believer. I have since ditched all other forms of fueling and use UCAN exclusively for runs over 6 miles. For those long runs, my routine includes a LaraBar and a banana an hour before I run, and then drink UCAN 30 minutes before I run. I have used UCAN as fueling at all times of the day, from early morning to later in the afternoon and have had the same results each time. (I was not paid to say this, I love UCAN, and I'm not embarrassed to tell you).




POST RUN
At the suggestion of Mandy over at Paleo Running Mom, I found a really great protein powder at Costco. If I'm not going to eat a meal pretty quickly after I run, I blend up chocolate milk, protein powder and a banana to help aid recovery. With UCAN, replenishing protein in enormous amounts isn't as necessary since it burns fat and not protein. Even with that knowledge, I still either eat or drink a protein shake pretty quickly after a run to help replenish energy burned.



CHANGES
As the midweek runs are starting to increase, I'm having a hard time getting my body up early enough to fuel and run. For the remaining 8 weeks of training, I am going to even out the 3 weekday runs, keeping each run between 4 and 6 miles, keeping the mid week runs.  This will help me run the miles early in the morning on just a LaraBar and a banana.

I'll be sharing the second half of my training plan in the next few weeks once I work out the kinks.

12/19/14

Shooting with Soul Challenge: Glimpse of You

This week, the exercise included taking a photo of myself. But more than that, showing you a glimpse of me.




At the beginning of each week, I sit down with a cup of coffee (that cup was handmade by our sweet friend, Jada) and plan our week. I gather our various schedules and make sure they are in one place and to refresh my memory to what commitments we have. I plan our meals, the grocery list, and I plug in my running schedule where it fits.

There are some weeks that I feel I'm too busy to take the hour or so it takes to make the schedule, meal plan, and grocery list. Those are the weeks that often blow up, in a matter of speaking. Things get forgotten, lunch for the kids is whatever I can find rather than balanced, dinner is either picked up by Chad on his way home from work, or is less than desirable. And I just feel on edge. Because we have had too many of those weeks, I now make myself sit down and take the time to organize our life, if only for a week.

A Glimpse of Me.

12/15/14

Photo Challenge & Update

What a busy busy fall! I'll get more into that later, but first, the reason I'm joining you again after months of silence.

I'm so excited to announce that I will be taking part in a photo challenge hosted by my friend Hannah over at The Ever Eclectic. You can check out a into to the project here. And the post of her first exercise here.

Each week, I'll post a photo as it relates to the exercises found in the book Shooting with Soul.

The Ever Eclectic











Stay tuned for the first exercise: "Glimpses of You" later this week. I hope you guys link up too!

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Now, I'm going to give a little catch up of the last few months. You can stop reading, if you want, I won't be offended. Or just scroll through the pictures. I do this more for me, than for you - I like going back and remembering too.

I started (and finished last week!) some classes online from a local community college. I'm working on the requirements needed to sit for the IBCLC exam.

Of course, the kids started back to school. 5th and 1st grade. How does that happen?



Lydia turned 2:

















I ran my second half marathon. It was quite possibly the most difficult thing I've ever done, except child birth x3...That's a sore subject, so we'll leave it at that.











I registered and started training for the Myrtle Beach Marathon on February 14. Just under 9 weeks to go. Training is going great. Maybe someday soon I'll share my training schedule.


















We had our first snow day!















We had a student of the month:


















We had our first ever (of many!) band concert. Fifth grade band is about as good as it gets, haha!


















The last few weeks have been busy with the big kids basketball schedules. Juggling 2 schedules is hard sometimes. Thankfully, we have very few games that overlap. So while I will be doing a lot of driving between now and March 1, I will get to see the majority of the games.