Race Week

I love the week leading up to a race weekend. I love how I get butterflies in my stomach whenever I think about getting to the starting line and the gun going off.

Here’s a list of what is making me nervous and excited about the Cowtown Half Marathon this week…

• What am I going to wear?

• What do I need to pack?

• Will it rain?

• Where are we going to have dinner Saturday night?

• Will they have the pink sparkly Sweaty Band I want at the race expo?

• What are the race shirts going to look like?

• What am I going to wear? (This is important when you do races with people that like to take pre-race and post-race pictures.)

What I don’t do well with during race week is resting. I am working on taking advantage of my rest days, I really am. It is hard though. When someone says you should run for 30-40 minutes easy a few times during the week leading up to a race my first thought is “What’s the point?” I have said many times in the last six months that three miles isn’t worth getting my clothes dirty for and now I am telling myself to only run 3-4 miles easy.

It’s a good thing I don’t do these things all on my own. I have a FANTASTIC group of girls heading to Fort Worth with me; Kim, Abby, Rochelle, Patti, Laura, Angie and Kelsey. What could be better than a girls, trip planned around a half marathon? I hope we have room in the vehicle I am borrowing from my BIL.

I only have to pack a few things:

• Shoes

• Socks

• Race pants & capris

• Long sleeved shirt & short sleeved shirt

• Sports bra

• Garmin (It didn’t happen unless it happened on my Garmin, right?)

• Rain jacket (I am hoping to not have to break this out.)

• Gloves

• Ear warmer

• Regular jacket

• Hat (Only if it rains.)

• Sweaty band

• Spi belt

• iPod (I never run with music anymore but you never know what I’ll feel like on Sunday.)

• Camera

• Sunglasses

Well that doesn’t seem like too much stuff. Maybe I should print this out so I don’t forget anything.

I LOVE RACE WEEK!

Happy running. 

Making Baby Gifts…

Technorati Tags: crochet

I learned how to crochet a few years ago.  The daughters of the CEO of the company I work for own a yarn shop.  At one of our company picnics we could learn how to knit a scarf.  I didn’t really spend much time working on it and about a year later the girls’ girl scout troop went to the yarn store to learn how to knit.  I volunteered to go and knitting just took off for me.

About a year ago I decided that I wanted to learn how to crochet.  I knew how when I was a kid, but hadn’t done it in years.  It is amazing what you can learn on youtube.

It seems like everyone is pregnant lately. 

My cousin Greg and his wife Tabatha had a baby two weeks ago.  I found the cutest pattern for a blanket and a hat with a sock monkey theme that I made and sent to them.  I got a picture of Landon with is new blanket and hat.

I think he will have to grow into the hat a bit, but he looks so cute!

My friend Kendra is pregnant.

This is us at the Norman Conquest bike ride last summer, pre baby.

I decided that the pattern I made for Greg and Tabatha was a good one so I made another version of it for Kendra.

I have another one to make for my friend Tara.  I am so excited that she is having a baby girl so instead of blue it’ll be pink, of course.

 

 

Soccer Sugar Cookies…

Technorati Tags: sugar cookies,soccer,Ateco

I haven’t baked any sugar cookies since I baked dozens of holiday sugar cookies for a couple of our sales reps to give to their customers before Christmas.  I had been suffering a little burnout.

I also had some technical difficulties with my royal icing with the Christmas cookies.  I had run out of my Williams Sonoma meringue powder and it appears to be unavailable now.  In a pinch I went to Hobby Lobby and picked up the Wilton version.

Worst baking purchase ever.  I had all kinds of trouble with this.  While the icing still tasted good on the cookies, getting it on the cookies was a nightmare.  I had trouble with it piping, and even when I thinned it out for flooding the consistency was just strange.

I immediately ordered my second favorite brand Ateco from Amazon.com.

So much better!

I had a friend ask me about soccer sugar cookies.  I did a little research for pictures of soccer designs and thought “No problem!”.  After I committed to making two dozen I did a little more research and discovered that all the feedback on making soccer sugar cookies was negative. 

While they were a tad tedious, I was very happy that I decided to purchase some non-toxic pens to draw the pentagon on the cookies to begin the pattern.  If I hadn’t done this I would have been in big trouble.

Pentagons are not easy.

The birthday girl is number eight on her soccer team.  I just love what the black icing does to kids when they eat it.  Overall I think they turned out very cute.  It was good to make sugar cookies again.

Up this week?  Cupcakes for a wedding shower on Friday and a baby shower on Saturday.

Something New; Week Six…

First let me say that I have made stir-fry before.  I got my wok a while back on sale at T.J. Maxx and I have used it quite a few times.  For a vegetarian, stir-fry is a quick and easy meat free meal.

I have tried to cook with tofu before.  I have been very intimidated by it.  It has never turned out well.  It is frustrating because my favorite Asian restaurants, O Asian Fusion and even Pei Wei have tofu on their menus and it is always wonderful.

I decided to do a little research and see what kind of help I could find for tofu.  Turns out if you buy extra firm tofu and then wrap it up and add some weight to it you can remove any excess water which helps in the consistency when you cook with it.

I decided to try this and give it another go.  Note to self, if you put something too heavy on it you can damage it a bit.  Next time I try something less heavy.

In all I had quite a bit that wasn’t too smashed so I cut it up, and put it in the fridge to marinate it a bit while I got everything else ready for my stir-fry.

It turned out very well.  I used a Hoisin based sauce and I added brown rice noodles to it.

Mushrooms, broccoli, carrots, zucchini, and edamame. I thought it was yummy, Josh didn’t like the tofu much.  Oh well.  I do need to practice restraint when it comes to stir-fry.  I made way more than I would ever be able to eat.

I have renewed my confidence in tofu, and look forward to trying it out again.

My New Toy…

It’s funny how excited a new cookbook can make me.  I happened to run across some information about a new Cupcake cookbook that one of my favorite bakers contributed to.

It was a bonus when I ordered this from Amazon and I had a free trial subscription for Amazon Prime because of the girls’ new Kindles they got for Christmas.  Free 2-day shipping was icing on the (cup)cake.

I can’t wait to try out some of the recipes and tips that are contained in this big awesome book.

New Things; Week Five

Last Friday we took the kiddos to a new restaurant in town.  The Big Tuna Fish Joint replaces a Mexican restaurant that replace another restaurant that had previously been in the same location.  I wonder if this time it will work out for them.

I must say it was pretty good.  Not the best place I’ve ever eaten at, but for the price and atmosphere it was good.  Bonus points for the fact that the girls liked it.  We don’t get to eat at new restaurants too often so when we find a new one it’s like winning the lottery.

You order at the counter and then they bring the food to you.  It was pretty busy since it was a Friday night and it was the new restaurant in town but they had staff that made sure that they had a place for you to sit before you ordered the food.  Gotta love good customer service.

I had the Spicy Shrimp Tacos and a Tabasco Caesar Salad.  Carson let

Technorati Tags: Restaurants,The Big Tuna

me steal her hush puppy and there were French fries.  It was probably not the best meal to have the night before a 11.5 mile run, but it was yummy. 

January Marathon Training…

Technorati Tags: Memorial Marathon,Cowtown Half Marathon

January is coming to an end and so is the first month of marathon training.  The OKC Memorial Marathon is April 29th but I have a couple of races before then.

First up on February 26th is the Cowtown half marathon.

This race is a girls trip and I can’t wait.  I booked our hotel rooms at the Sheraton Fort Worth Hotel and Spa, which is the host hotel.  It’s nice to stay at the hotel that has the race day and expo shuttle.

I can’t wait for the expo.  I know that lots of people don’t get as excited about race expos but I love them.  I can’t wait to get a new Sweaty Band, and I am thinking it should be one of these.  Probably pink.

I am also planning on a new pair of my Injinji socks.

But back to marathon training.  It has been a good month.  I got my new pair of Brooks Adrenaline 12s a few weeks ago.

We have been lucky to have some pretty awesome weather in Norman this month.  Not a snowflake in site.  It has been cold, but even the wind has only been really bad once or twice.

Technically this doesn’t include Monday’s run so my total for the month should be a little more than 112 miles.  That puts me well on track for running over 1,000 miles this year.

In all it’s a great start to 2012 and I can’t wait to see what February has in store for me.