Birthday Bash!

My sister always tells me I only blog about racing and tells me to blog about other stuff. (Apparently, not everyone is 100% into running and racing... who-woulda-thought?!) SOO- I'm going blog about something completely unrelated and blog about her BIRTHDAY!!

Photobombed by our own mother! haha!

Today was her birthday and she turned 27! (Fun Fact: her and my step-brother are only 16 days apart. He turned 27 on January 7th. Crazy!)

Since my sisters husband was out of town working for the week, we decided to just do a small family dinner tonight. We went to Kona Grill at the mall. (Another Fun Fact: Kona Grill was were 'Mr. Sprinkles and Glitter' and I went for our first date!)

Dinners with these people are extremely entertaining! Everyone got chopsticks and we tried to teach the kids (and my sister!) how to use them for the first time.

I swear I'm going to start bring my camera with me so I don't always have these amazing blurry phones pics.

My niece loved them so much she even ate her chicken strips and macaroni with them! ;)

Meanwhile, boys will be boys and tried to see who could eat the most wasabi.... I don't think there was a winner.... ;)

I got my sister my favorite (also her favorite) cupcake and the cutest card with confetti and glitter in in!!

Since I was actually wearing something other than running clothes and took about 5 minutes to put on some make-up I needed to document it and tried to get a picture with 'Mr. Sprinkles and Glitter'.... this is how taking pictures with him always is!!

From my Instagram: TeamSprinklesAndGlitter

My niece, Taytum was extremely unimpressed with his funny faces... haha! She kills me with her facial expressions sometimes.

After dinner we walked around the mall and all took turns carrying my niece and my nephew. Carsen must of been feeling left out because 'Mr. Sprinkles and Glitter' ended up giving him a piggy back ride to the car.

Happy Birthday Nik, (her name is Nikole but I've never called her that). You are by far the best sister anyone could ever have and I am truly grateful for our relationship- I really don't think there is anything else that compares to it. (Last Fun Fact: we shared a twin bed (with 2 dogs) until my senior year of high school. We both had our our rooms- with our own beds, but we turned one of the rooms into our personal closet and used the bed to layout our outfits.)

Do you have any siblings? How many? I have 2- 1(step) brother and 1 sister.

Are you the youngest or oldest? I'm the youngest. 

1/2 of a Marathon Race Recap!!

So... both me and 'Mr. Sprinkles and Glitter' were signed up to run the full marathon at the P.F. Chang's marathon this weekend, but we both ended up only doing the half marathon. We didn't realize we were also signed up for the Phoenix Marathon which is only 6 weeks away. So we figured we run the half this weekend and then run the full at the Phoenix Marathon- instead of trying to kill ourselves doing both. It ended up being an amazing weekend ending with 2 new PR's.

We went to the expo my mom and had so much fun like last year. My mom and I got our 'passports' from the Brook's RUN HAPPY section and scored these awesome visors.

We were admiring our new visors, waiting in like to ride the Buckin' Shoe, when I got a call from 'Mr. Sprinkles and Glitter' saying that Jackson Carter from The Biggest Loser was at a booth in the expo!! We quickly left the sneaker line and headed over to meet him.

Once we got over there, I was shocked that there wasn't a long line, there was only 1 person ahead of us. SO cool to meet him and he wished me good luck on the run.

We left the expo and headed home to relax for the rest of the day. We made our usual pre-race meals (steak and sweet potatoes for him, pasta with chicken and broccoli for me) and watched Monsters University. SUCH a cute movie!

We woke up pretty early on race day and got ready. My mom picked us up and drove us down to the start line- BEST mom ever! We got there right before it started so 'Mr. Sprinkles and Glitter' left to get in an early corral and I waited for a port-a-potty. Surprising, the lines were not long at all and then I headed to get into a corral.

I there were 22 corrals? SO many runners!!! I loved it!!

I ended up jumping into corral 5. (Since we were signed up for the full marathon, we didn't have corral numbers for the half). It worked out great since a majority of the people in the corral were runners!

It felt like right when I jumped in the coral it was time to go and I took off tried to find enough room to run. While trying to weave in-and-out of everyone I found the 2 hour pace time! I was really, really hoping to break 2 hours so I figured I would stay with them and then (hopefully) take off towards the end to finish a little before 2 hours.

Our 2 hour pace group was FLYING! And I'm totally not just saying that either- someone else in the group looked down at their watch a couple miles in and said we were going so fast we would be walking the last mile to finish at 2 hours! Every time I looked down at my watch our pace was under 9 minute miles. I felt fine but was worried I wouldn't be able to hold that fast of a pace for the whole race.

I stayed with them until about mile 8 and then lost them at 1 of the aid stations and when I finally saw them again they were about 100 yard in front of me. I tried to catch up but never did. I think they changed the course this year (I haven't run the half marathon in 2 years so maybe not?) but the hills were brutal!

It was nice before the biggest hill there was a really cool drum group playing that definitely pumped you up and got you ready to go into battle climb the hill. Then we turned around just on the other side of the hill (ya we got to run up some of it again!) we got to hear the drums on the way back down.

I tried to push myself towards the end- especially when I realized that I hit mile 10 and had 26 minutes to hit my goal. I knew it would be hard but I wanted to try. (One of my New Year Resolutions is to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and get outside of my comfort zone.)

I reached the 2 hour mark and was only at 12.67 miles. I was pretty bummed but finished in 2:03:21. So a new PR for me by a measly 35 seconds- but a new PR nonetheless. I am SO determined to push myself out of my comfort zone and break 2 hours this year!! It will happen!!

'Mr. Sprinkles and Glitter' is amazeballs and PR'd by 5 minutes with a time of 1:43!! He hasn't even been running that much and was able to do that! Crazy!

From Instagram: TEAMSPRINKLESANDGLITTER

Once I finished, I found 'Mr. Sprinkles and Glitter' and then we met up with my mom for a ride home. Everything was really well organized and we got in and out fairly quick (had a little traffic in the morning, but nothing more than what you would normally expect).

We had lunch and watch football and kept with the tradition of getting froyo! So good- it has definitely been WAYYY too long.

Did anyone else race this weekend? 

Do you have to work for Martin Luther King day?
This is the first year I've ever got it off! Woohoo!

2013 By the Numbers

I still cannot believe 2013 is over! This year literally went by SO fast! It was such an amazing/crazy/fun/fulfilling year for me. I accomplished things I never thought I could and had a ton of fun along the way! Here's a quick recap of this years numbers...

*21 races- the biggest one being my FIRST Ironman 140.6!!

*8 year anniversary with 'Mr. Sprinkles and Glitter'. Love him more than ever!

*196,000 meters swam- a lot of which were swimming back and fourth (back and fourth) in the pool. I can see the black line at the bottom of the pool just thinking about this.

*3,267.01 miles biked- yes we are counting that .01. ;)

*777.14 miles ran. Lucky 777, right? I did not plan this either. (My goal for 2014 is to hit at least 1,000 miles.)

Some of the miles were done on the new addition to our family- our tredmil!!

*4 hours spent waiting in line to meet Grumpy Cat!!

*Had a birthday and turned 25. Celebrated in Show Low and raced my first half Ironman the next day at Dueces Wild.

*'100 free kisses' punch card for Valentine's day! Best gift ever!!

*21 Obstacles we completed during Tough Mudder.

*72 hours spent in Colorado visiting family when my brother got engaged!

*0 Tattoos or piercing this year. This is by no fault of my own- when I tried to go get a piercing (behind my ear) and was sitting in the chair ready to go, and the guy said he couldn't do it because my skin wasn't loose enough? Weird right? (I'm also really surprised by the no tattoos- I thought I would for sure get an Ironman tattoo right after Ironman, but I still haven't gotten one.)

*1 brand new computer that 'Mr. Sprinkles and Glitter' surprised me with. For no reason! He really is the best.

I have a feeling that 2014 is going to be an even better year with amazing things to come! 'Mr. Sprinkles and Glitter' and I are going to New York City in March for 11 days to visit his sister- I am BE-YOND excited for this! I've never been to NYC, so I'm glad we will have his sister as a personal tour guide while we are there. ;) Plus, we are both doing Ironman Arizona again. We've both done an Ironman before but never together, so the training together should be pretty interesting.

Happy New Year's Everyone!! 

Do you have any New Year's Resolutions?
I have a few but 2 of the big ones are to set monthly obtainable goals every month and to blog more!! :)