If you haven’t listened to it yet, I highly recommend you check out the latest project from Shauna and Carla a.k.a. DietGirl and Miz Fit. These fab ladies have overcome time zone differences and the winter sniffles to bring you a fitness podcast called Two Fit Chicks and a Microphone. They solicited names for the podcast a few weeks ago, and this title is far more clever than the only one I could think of, which was “Not the Jillian Michaels Podcast.” Hey, it’s got great SEO! (Half of you are now mumbling, “What’s an SEO?”) This week’s episode is all about running. New podcasts should be published every two weeks or so, and you can even find them in iTunes! Congrats ladies, and keep up the good work!

If you haven’t already, be sure to enter the $100 gift card giveaway in association with BlogHer and Pepperidge Farm. The contest is open until November 2.

Finally, a big congrats to my friend Stephanie O’Dea, who appeared on Good Morning America today to promote her new book, [...]

• Continue reading "A podcast, a giveaway, and congrats!"

Unlike my first running of the IrishFest 5K, I didn’t witness an unofficial “Escape The Cops 5K” on my way to the starting line. This year’s race also wasn’t at night like the one two years ago was, so they did not hand out any glow sticks :( But by God, there were bagpipes!

I sat on a folding chair waiting for the race to start, when a thirty-something man in a grey shirt and square-frame glasses came up and said, “Excuse me, but do you know what pace you plan on running?”

“I have no idea,” I told him honestly. I haven’t been tracking the distance I’ve been running while training, just the amount of time I spend running. “Maybe a 12-minute mile pace?” I said optimistically recalling my average pace a year and a half ago.

“Do you mind if I pace off of you? I haven’t run a 5K for almost two years and it would help a lot if I could pace myself with somebody.”

“Sure,” I told him.

“I just thought I’d ask you…because you [...]

• Continue reading "IrishFest 5K, Part Deux: Revenge of the Bagpipes"

I used to exercise because I knew it was the only thing keeping the world from exploding. I would dash onto the trail immediately after work so I would have enough day light to complete my runs. I would lift weights as I watched Good Morning America. I did Pilates so much I found myself able to roll backwards and then leap up off the mat. I did this for months and months after I got my horrible, awful, no-good headache. I did it because I knew if I didn’t the universe would collapse and we would all die, because it was only the force of me exercising five times a week that was preventing total world annihilation.

But after about 8 months of the pain and the pathetic push-ups, I stopped. The running shoes stayed in the closet and my Pilates mat stayed in the corner and my weights just stayed put, period. And the world did not explode. The universe did not end. This was a very bad thing to discover. I needed to [...]

• Continue reading "Technically it should be “Loveseat to 5K”"

I was 21 years old when I looked in the mirror in the computer science building’s bathroom and saw the first grey hairs growing out of my scalp. It was that same year that I started to see small grey flecks of dust in my vision when I looked up at a clear blue sky or at a white wall. My eye doctor told me these were floaters, little blobs of protein that develop in the fluid in your eyeball. Near-sighted people like me get them quite frequently.

A couple years later I woke up in the middle of the night and wanted to scoop my gallbladder out with a spoon. The surgeon did it with a scalpel and a tiny camera instead, and I was only 24. Then my knees started to hurt when I climbed up the stairs. By this point I’d also lost track of how many cavities I’d had filled, caused by too much Mountain Dew and too little dental floss.

A friend my age told me over dinner she is fighting acid [...]

• Continue reading "My body doesn’t have a warranty"

.

On Saturday I climbed 37 stories of the One America building with a Flip Camera in my left hand to capture all the coughing and hyperventilating. You can view my video blog about the race above. If you have dial-up or can’t discreetly watch videos at work, I will spoil the ending for you: I got to the top without keeling over. We were also one of the top 4 fundraisers for the event, an honor for which I won a mug. Instead of dividing it into 50 little pieces and mailing it to all my sponsors, I will let you have a sip from it if we ever run into each other.

You can view pictures of the event taken by The Indianapolis Star here. I’m not sure what my official time was because, quite frankly, the official race site sucks giant donkey balls. (Yes, that is my professional opinion.) I think I got in at just under 14 minutes. The fastest people did it in just under 4 minutes, which make me wonder if [...]

• Continue reading "Bop to the Top"