The Vintage Pearl Necklace Giveaway Winner

And the winner is...
Sandra M. #225

Sandra, please contact me at teacher_jenc at yahoo dot com so I can get your lovely necklace to you!
Congratulations!

And thanks to everyone who entered. This was our largest number of entries yet! Keep sharing and reading the blog. You never know what may come up next!

The Vintage Pearl Necklace: A GIVEAWAY!

I was given the opportunity to wear and review a hand stamped necklace from The Vintage Pearl.

I'm pretty picky when it comes to wearing necklaces because they tend to give me a headache depending on how the necklace lays and pulls on the back of my neck. I am happy to announce that I now have four necklaces that I can wear headache-free!  This one is not heavy so it does not pull! I've worn this for several days and many people have commented positively on it! It also comes with a polish pad to help keep it looking new. If you have children like mine who like to look at and and gently touch your necklace, it comes in very handy! I plan to order another necklace from her store as a gift this Christmas.

Now, I have some more good news! The Vintage Pearl has given us a necklace just like this one to give away to one of you! I'm using Rafflecopter for this giveaway. The first entry is mandatory if you'd like to be included in the giveaway.  It starts today, October 15 and closes on October 22 at 12:01 AM EST. One winner will be chosen and announced here on the blog. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Lacing Your Shoes

My feet have changed a bit since having babies, along with other things, but my old comfy shoes just didn't seem to fit right and were no longer so comfy. I figured it was just time to get a new pair and headed out for some cross-trainers a while back. After trying on several pairs, I finally settled on one and had to order them since all they had left in my size was the display. I have had a love/hate relationship with them since. If I get the toe part tight enough so my foot stays put, the top is too tight. So, I loosen the top and it works itself loose again at the bottom and my foot is moving too much in the shoe. I remembered doing "fancy" laces in elementary school and wondered if there was a way to lace them differently for running. Remember, I'm just getting into this whole things as running for a purpose and not because I'm being chased or playing with the kids, so I had no clue about all the different information out there. I actually came across a couple different sites that have information on this! If you are like me, these will help you figure out a way to lace your shoes to keep your feet from sliding around. I now can do cross-training videos and not have aching feet and legs!

How to Properly Tie Your Shoes - Runner's World

katieRUNSthis

A New Plan

Last Monday night I definitely was not looking forward to my run Tuesday morning and had two excuses lingering in my brain. I planned to skip a week and do Week 3 Day 1 for C25K and I was up late Monday night. I was in that state of sleep where you're semi-aware of what's going on but not quite fully conscious when I heard our daughter wake up, jump out of bed, and climb in on top of me. Yep, another bad dream. Somewhere along the way she learned that monsters can be scary and mean, and that darn black moose keeps roaring at her. She is a snuggler and I know once she settles her body down and is as close to crawling back inside me as she can, there's no moving her back to her bed - she is truly scared. I will not trade the loss of sleep for these few times because I know they won't last. So when the alarm went off, interrupting a wakeful sleep, I thought I hit snooze. Not so much. We all woke up about 30 minutes before we needed to leave for preschool, which is doable but I feared how it would influence dropping her off. I got a quick breakfast for the two littles and really wanted to put on my regular clothes for the day. My husband had already dressed for a run since he was home and I knew it was mostly to motivate and support me. Plus, this is a great opportunity for our son to practice his bike skills sans training wheels and ride on the trails. So I put on my running clothes, got everyone and a bike loaded up and left.

After preschool drop off, we headed for a trail deciding our first goal is to go a different route each time. I also decided to skip the podcast for W3D1 and just run. Find a rhythm and go. We ended up running/walking/biking about 2.5 miles and only had two bike incidents! I realized after I got to my turn around destination that I hadn't quite thought that route through before setting out and I don't use any GPS tracking things (we're pretty low-tech here). It was a little farther than I intended to go and by no means did I run the entire way. I did run longer intervals than last week just listening to music and once my lungs finally found their rhythm about 2/3 of the way back, my legs deiced they were done and I had to walk a bit more than I wanted. But we did it! And although the runner's high has faded and the fatigue and soreness are setting in, I'm glad we did it.

The Restart

Well, I set out this morning for my restart after dropping off our daughter for preschool. I gotta admit, it felt great to have my running shoes on! I wear sandals/flip flops 95% of my life so even just enjoying the feeling under my toes and how light they were was a surprise! I had my son's bike in the car already and convinced my husband to go along with us since he was home and did Week 1 Day 1 of the C25K - 60 second run/90 second walk. Like I said earlier, our son has just begun mastering his biking skills with no training wheels so I knew there would be distractions; helping him get started again, brushing him off a few times, and talking him through slowing down for the declines. (Makes me thankful I grew up in the country where it was pretty flat!) Since my husband was along he helped our son get started again when he happened to stop in the middle of a running interval. Maybe the key for me is having multiple distractions? A young biker, a husband/friend, an ear bud in one ear telling me when to run/walk, and other trail users (so I focused on keeping our son on the right side and not crashing into them!) to distract me from anticipating when my next "rest" would be. This run was so much better than my initial run the first time around! My finishing thought was, "Wow, that was almost easy. Almost!" I'm optimistically cautious as to what the next couple runs will feel like. If When I get past Week 5 Day 3, I have hope that I'll be okay. I also have a feeling I will be calling on some running buddies to get me through the "long" runs.

Excuses

If there were a pageant for Queen of Excuses, I'm pretty sure I would be in the top three for the crown. Even a fellow Sole Sister agreed that I can find a justification an excuse for almost any situation! My biggest excuse had been that I couldn't continue running because of my husband's schedule (which there actually is quite a bit of truth to that) and I can't leave our kids alone to go. So, I told myself I would start up again once our son mostly mastered his bike skills so he could ride along with me on a trail while I push his sister. Well, that happened this week so tomorrow's the day! Now I just need to find a wide, mostly flat trail so I can't use the "there are too many hills for him to keep up" or "we can't go down hills because he freaks out and can't stop" (which is true at this point) excuses. I think the worst part of all of this is the starting over. I was up to week 5 in the C25K and had been cross-training consistently through May. Tomorrow, well, I'm starting over from the beginning and I vividly remember how that felt in March and I am not looking forward to it. Not at all! However, I am counting on my new running buddies to keep me just as entertained as they did when I used my workout DVDs in the basement! Although, I'm not sure they'll dress up as Super Heroes. Maybe they should, then the people who see us will focus on them and not me hyperventilating! :)