A DIY Kind of Day

Hi. My name is Laura. I hoard t-shirts. Perhaps you should repeat that phrase as well - because I know you've got a drawer-full, too. What? You have two drawers? Eek. In my defense, I don't go out and buy t-shirts. Not technically, anyway. Whenever I am searching for a 5k, I make sure that I'm at least going to get a shirt out of it (yes, I still need a tangible reward for surviving....I mean, completing.....such a physically demanding task). So I guess that makes my collection very expensive considering each one cost me a minimum of $25. Truth be told, they generally aren't that cute either. My first one (which came from a race that shall remain nameless) is downright ugly. It has a squirrel and an acorn on it if that gives you any idea. They're nice souvenirs, but what can I really do with them? I can't run in them because if you are an athlete of any kind, you know that 100% cotton is not the way to go on a hot summer evening. I figured they would just keep piling up in my closet and drawers until I got sick of them and donated them to Goodwill.

That is until Pinterest came to my rescue.

I woke up this morning feeling pretty crappy. My throat was sore and my lymph nodes on the left side of my face were swollen up like golf balls. Something is clearly wrong and I'm hoping it will just go away on its own. I laid around reading a book for most of the day and napped for a couple hours here and there. This evening I just needed something to do that didn't require a lot of physical or mental effor. I sat and looked at Pinterest for a while and saw this tutorial that I pinned months ago and decided to finally test it out and make a dent in my mountain of t-shirts.

I chose an especially ugly shirt (sorry Jazz Festival!) that I really didn't care about (again, so sorry!) to start with in case I screwed up this seemingly fool-proof project.

Shirt laid out, tutorial up on the laptop. So far, so good!



Cut everything off at the seams. Check!

Finished product!

Obviously, there is a step missing from my pictures (it's hard to take action shots when you're alone and Darcy is not capable of wielding a camera. She's only one for crying out loud!) but this blog post is clearly not a tutorial. I wonder if it's possible to have too many of these? Doubtful, considering I work out six days a week.

Due to my successful first attempt and the fact that it only took a hot minute to complete I decided to go ahead and make another:

My only concern at this point is how well they will hold up in the washing machine. No seams. No sew. Hmm....only time will tell I guess. Good thing I have a vast collection to keep pulling from, right?

I seriously considered doing a third one with said shirt from the unmentionable race but I'm really starting to feel crappy again so I'm going to just mix up some Emergen-C & snuggle up on my couch for the rest of the evening. 

The Day I Only Ate Breakfast

I know what you're thinking. One meal in a day is just not enough. Unless it was one epic meal that caused me to not want to eat another bite for the next 24 hours. Let me clear something up - I did eat all three meals today. They just all happened to be breakfast foods :) Here's how it went down:

This morning I was up bright and early to go have brunch with a friend at Mimi's Cafe. I love Mimi's. Always have. But I love it even more now that they have "Fresh & Fit" options on their menu which means that the entire meal adds up to 550 calories or less. I do want to note that mine actually totalled 558. Do I get my money back?? Wait. I didn't pay. Does Ashley get her money back? Whatever, we can fight it out later. I had their Low-Fat Fitness Omelette for the first time and it was actually pretty good. I don't know if it's as good as IHOP's veggie omelette but I would order it again. It came with a side of dry wheat toast, fresh fruit and a small orange juice. Nice square meal, if you ask me.

For lunch I had leftovers from last night's dinner. Yes, I had breakfast for dinner last night as well (EEK! I just realized that that makes four breakfasts in a row. Maybe I went a little overboard.). I was trying to figure out what I wanted for dinner last night when I was completely blindsided by a craving for pancakes. Of course, I had none of the ingredients so I had to go out and buy everything. Well worth the $6.83 - plus I got more than one meal out of it. Did I ever tell you that growing up we had pancakes for supper every Sunday night? My mom even made up a little chorus about it that we would sing very loudly while dad was grilling them up:

"Pancakes for supper,

Pancakes for supper,

It's Sunday and we always have Pancakes for supper!"

If I only knew how to upload sound clips! Gah!! My leftover pancakes became my lunch with some peanut butter and syrup on them. It was delicious. I ate it like a sandwich. Somehow that made it seem more acceptable.

When dinner rolled around, I felt a strong urge to continue the breakfast theme of the day. For the past six months I've had peanut butter and jelly oatmeal for breakfast nearly every morning. It's one of my favorite things in life. So much so that when I go to bed at night, I look forward to it the next morning. Wow, that seems kinda weird when I actually see it in writing. Maybe I shouldn't admit that in public. Since I didn't have it for breakfast, I figured I might just as well have it for dinner. If you like oatmeal and like PB&J sandwiches, I highly recommend trying this. It's a bowl of amazing (and healthy!) goodness.

I have to say that eating only breakfast foods made for one awesome day. I can't imagine I would make this a habit - or even do it again for that matter - but I felt it was definitely blog-worthy.

Bon Appetit indeed.

Goldilocks and the three......shoes???

I'm sure you weren't paying that close of attention but in each of the pictures from yesterday's post I'm wearing different shoes. After the half marathon in April my trusty Asics were completely shot and needed replacing. I felt like I was ready for a change......like I had outgrown the traditional running shoes I'd been sporting for the past year-and-a-half. I knew several people that had transitioned into more lightweight shoes and I love a good bandwagon so I decided it was time to hop on as well. Thus began my journey to finding my very own shoe utopia.

Shoe #1: I stupidly went to a large discount shoe store to replace my worn out kicks and decided on the Saucony Mirage 2.

All I could think about as I was looking in the mirror at them on my feet was "They are light. They are flashy. I want them." Initially, I couldn't figure out what size to get and frequently have trouble with numbness in my feet and blistering so I thought it would be wise to experiment with a larger size. Made sense in theory, but failed in execution. I ran in them three times and disliked them so much that if it came down to never running again or wearing these shoes while running, I was never running again. The worst part of the situation was that I spent $100 on shoes that I couldn't return because when you go to a store like that, return policies are basically non-existent once you've worn the shoes out in the real world. Expensive lesson learned. Final assessment: Too Big

Shoe #2: After that debacle, I wised up and decided that I needed to go somewhere and get some help (keep the jokes to yourself, please). First stop: a large sporting goods store. Return policy is a little bit better but the inept high school students they had staffing the shoe department just pissed me off and I ended up leaving empty handed. Ok, fine. I'll go get fitted at a specialty running store. Second stop: Fleet Feet Murfreesboro. I probably spent an hour there getting measured and trying on/running in various shoes. The last pair I tried was the Brooks PureCadence from their Pure Project line (please excuse the stock photo - I deleted all the pics of it off my phone much the way I would photos of an ex-boyfriend. What can I say? Break-ups are rough on me).

I really didn't even want to try them on. I'd read that they were a stability shoe and I was certain that was not what I needed. Based on the Mirage Massacre, I realized that, clearly, I am no expert and listened to the knowledgeable salesman and guess what? I loved them. They were lightweight , encouraged my natural forefoot strike, and had a satisfaction guarantee (YESS!!!). I was sure it was a match made in running shoe heaven. Sadly, it was not meant to be. I went out running that evening and could feel my toes smashing into the outside seam on the right shoe the whole time. I went back in the next day to chat with the owner and she felt like it was probably more a style issue than an incorrect size (which turned out to be true - the half size up didn't feel any better - just bigger) and suggested I try the Pure Flow. I was not happy about this considering the fact that I was already emotionally attached to these beautiful shoes despite the fact that they made my feet ache. The store didn't have the Flow in stock, so while I waited for them to come in, I continued running in the Cadence to see if I could work out the kinks. They went from bad to worse and I ended up with a blister on the top of my big toe. Final Assessment: Too small

Shoe #3: It took about a week and a half for the PureFlow to come in.....but it was well worth the wait! I had originally ordered the red/turquoise ones but Fleet Feet couldn't get those in so they ordered an equally beautiful Neon Purple!

They are literally the color of a purple highlighter! No joke! See??

I could tell immediately when I put them on that the toe box was wider than the Cadence and felt so much roomier in the forefoot. I jogged around outside in them a bit and decided they were the better option. Of course, the very same night, Molly and I took to the Murfreesboro Greenway for a test run. Aside from the usual numbness I feel in my right foot sometimes they felt great and I'm very optimistic that come October, these will be on my feet when I set a new PR running The Murfreesboro Middle Half. Just like the Cadence they are super lightweight - coming in at only 7.5 ounces per shoe - and again, encourage a forefoot strike. They're fairly similar shoes but the combination of the wider toe box on this one and the fact that it is a neutral versus a stability shoe made it the winner in the end. Final Assessment: Just Right!

So there is a recap of my search for the perfect running shoe. I am completely aware of the fact that I complicate what is meant to be simple and that this didn't have to be the epic process that it turned into. Between wanting to prevent injury if at all possible during my training and also being careful not to just throw money away without being completely convinced that what I'm spending it on is a good investment, it takes me a little longer than normal to make a decision and slap down the cash for expensive kicks. My only hope is that I haven't jinxed them by blogging about them already.

Time for a quick catch-up!

Wow, I can't believe it's been over a month since my last post. I'm totally slacking. Right after the half marathon I slowed down a bit on the running......and by "slowed down" I mean I did two 5k's in May. On May 12th, Darcy and I ran our first one together - it was called "See Spot Run" and was on the MTSU campus. I was a little worried that the whole event would be a little bit of sensory overload for her. Yeah, she's use to people and pets at the clinic but a gate holds her back and prevents her from going completely bananas over everyone.....sort of. There were probably about 100 dogs there and my sweet girl maintained composure from 0-3.1 and rocked it out in 28:21. So proud of her and definitely looking forward to more in the future.

The next one I did was on Memorial Day. I always say that a paid day off of work should be started out with a race. I was especially excited for this one because I had managed to convince my co-worker, Kendra, to make this her very first 5k. It was a little hot, and a lot hilly but we had a great run (official time was 30:15) and we even placed 3rd in our age group! Shoulda stayed for the awards. I try not to do the same event twice and I think this is especially true for this race. The course went through a crappy beat up parking lot at Greer Stadium and I would be amazed if everyone made it out injury-free. It was an accident waiting to happen.

Of course, my partner in crime, Molly, joined the fun as well. Such a great day for a race and Kendra totally caught the racing fever and wants to do more. I have informed her several times that 5k's are the gateway drug to half-marathons! It's gonna happen :)