Sam Costa Half Marathon 2015 recap

I love this race. I ran the quarter-marathon last year and it's just a really great race. It's the oldest half-marathon in Indiana and has a lot of history. It's also got a great venue with lots of bathrooms and a coffee shop and it's got about a bajillion volunteers with 2-5 at every turn (there are A LOT of turns, it's a very twisty race) to make sure you stay on course and to cheer you on.

 Since I'm neck-deep in marathon training, I hadn't paid much attention to this race and was mostly looking at it as a break in my higher mileage long runs. After a month of strong running, I aggravated an old injury on the Thursday before the race and wasn't sure about running because going into the marathon uninjured is more important, but by Friday night it was feeling good enough I decided to give it a go.

My Goals 

•  Good- Run a strong race without aggravating my injury.
•  Great- Make it through a whole half marathon without making a potty stop. (Very important if I ever want to sub-2.)
•  Awesome- PR (2:09:46) I was not aiming to run hard but my long pace lately would put me very close to that PR.

 My Strategy

Start out easy to test the leg, setting into a comfortable but not too hard of a pace. Stay consistent for the race.

Race Morning
This is the first race that I haven't brought my family along to so getting up and getting going was pretty easy. I was there a little early but had lots of time to get my gear together and have a latte. I was supposed to meet two of the girls in our virtual marathon training group but they weren't able to make it so that was a little sad.

RACE TIME!!!
Mile 1- 9:30 I think I started way to far forward as I was being passed like crazy. My goal was to start slow to settle into how my leg felt but honestly for the first half mile, I was getting passed so much that I wasn't sure if I was running 11:00 minute miles or 8:00 minute miles.

Mile 2- 9:13 Once I got passed by all the people I was able to settle into a nice, relatively easy pace. The course is so twisty that my GPS is already pretty far ahead of the official mile markers.

Mile 3- 9:17  I skipped the first water stopjust because I didn't feel like I needed it and I didn't want to break pace.

Mile 4- 9:12 Very pleased with the pace I'm keeping.

Mile 5- 9:26 I actually ramped it up a bit on this mile but did slow down for a water stop.

Mile 6- 9:01 OMG This bit is so *straight* and flat. It almost feels effortless. At this point, I consider picking up my pace and trying to finish in under two hours. In the end I decided it wasn't worth pushing had and set a goal of 2:05 instead since I was pretty certain I was going to PR.

Mile 7- 9:11 I can't believe that I'm half way already.

Mile 8- 9:51 Pretty steep hill climb on this one and I slowed down a little but was steadily passing people. Yay for having at least one hill climb on pretty much every run I do! Also a water break here.

Mile 9- 9:09 What goes up must come down. Not as long of a decend as the ascend but a nice little dip in which to pick up some speed. Again, I thought about picking up the pace and trying for a sub 2:00 Again I decided it was a bad idea.

Mile 10- 9:40 Another water break and a porta john. First one all course. One of my goals was to get though the race without taking a potty break so I smiled to myself as I wizzed by. (See what I did there??)

Mile 11- 9:08 Still feeling pretty confident. Bypassed the last water stop to make up a little time. That sub-two pops up again and if my GPS were matching the official course markers, I could have pushed for it but I was more than a quarter mile off and I would not be able to make that up.

Mile 12- 9:12 I've still totally got this. No matter what I'm going to finish strong.

Mile 13- 9:41 So.... 10 used to be my really hard mile. Now that I'm doing longer distances, that's been pushed out a bit and 13 is an awkward place to have a hard mile. It didn't help that I was running in front of an older gentleman who was obviously trying to make a certain time and was grunting with every single step so I finally dropped behind him.

Mile 13.5- 10:32 I hit 13 miles on my GPS at 2:01 and even though I knew I wasn't going to make that sub 2:00 in the back of my mind, it was kind of deflating. And by now my brace was drooping and my leg was started to get cranky andthere was a bit of a hill climb to the finish so I didn't finish as stong as I could have but it was still a strong race.

Stats

Finish time: 2:05:20

Pace: 9:32
25/35 Division place
122/197 Females
342/489 Overall

Something I hadn't seen at a race before was if you went back inside, (to get your medal since they were only given to those that paid extra) they had a table where you could get a little reciept with all your stats on it. 

Overall, it was silly to set my sights on a 2:00 half-marathon at this point and I took 4:30 off of my previous PR and I ran a really strong race so I'm very proud of that. And I'm pretty sure that sub 2:00 is in my near future.

Star Wars Party (Episode II or V, I'm not sure)

If you are just joining us, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.... I threw my husband a big 45th Star Wars themed birthday bash and I wrote about the details of the set-up and the decorations here. Today, I'm going to talk about my favorite part. The part about the cake and the food and especially the drinks. Let's start with the bar, shall we?

I had way too much fun coming up with a cocktail menu and decided to go with a kinda-cheesey retro vibe for the cantina. We downloaded Cocktails at the Cantina and had it's smooth jazz stylings of Star Wars classics playing in the background. It was perfect!

Photo courtesy of Todd Henning who took much better pics of the party than I did.

In retrospect, I could have chosen a menu that didn't involve a million bottles of flavored rum, but everyone seemed to like them. One of my husband's friends who actually is a bar tender volunteered to pour the drinks for us. The drink in the corner is the Death Star Scotch. My husband loves scotch and I could not resist the Death Star ice spheres. If you decide to make these make sure to use distilled water for best results and there is a white and a blue version of the ice mold, I got both, use the blue ones. They release much easier. One final tip, use a condiment or chocolate bottle to easily fill the molds.

Here are  the Jedi, the Sith and the Qui Gon Gin. They were all very tasty even if the Jedi was a bit sweet.

Photo courtesy of Todd Henning

The Trooper Shooters were too much fun. The shot was my variation of a China White using Rum Chata for the Bailey's because Rum Chata. Need I say more?? I cut the storm troopers out of black permanent vinyl and adhered them to plastic shot glasses. It was a little tedious but not bad. I probably didn't need to make 100 though. But a girl can never be too prepared.

We had non-alcoholic drinks as well. For the kiddos and kiddos at heart, there was Yoda Soda

Photo courtesy of Todd Henning

It looks like it came out of a swamp, doesn't it? The kids loved it! It's gingerale and lime sherbert (we had to go to three stores to find lime sherbet, what's up with that??) and a bit of green Hawaiian Punch for extra swampiness. We also had themed bottled water (mentioned in the other post) that went over really well.

Alright, enough with the drinks, there was food too!

I decided to go extra-cheesey with the food names and Star Wars tie-ins. This is probably NOT what they ate long ago and far, far away.... (And aren't the little Yoda and Storm Trooper the forks are in adorable?? Yay Target Valentine's section!)

The "Help me,  OBI WAN KEBOB-IES, you're our only hope" were on skewers that we wrapped in duct tape and decorated with sharpies to look like light sabers. These were a HUGE hit with the kids at the party. We had 2 pounds of grapes and 2 pounds of strawberries and they were GONE in 45 minutes. "Because he's holding THERMAL DETONATORS" were less fancy (Target brand cheese balls) but just as tasty.

"That's no MOON those are MEATBALLS"  were turkey meatballs in a sauce of cranberry sauce, pepper jelly, soy sauce and fresh ginger and garnished with crystallized ginger, green onions and sesame seeds. "Those aren't the CHEESEY DROIDS you are looking for" were the idea of my four year old. He bought me an R2D2 silicone mold I bought and told me we had to make cheese pops for daddy's party. The "pops" part didn't quite work but we mixed cream cheese, an Italian cheese blend and finely chopped green onion and packed it into the molds and let them set up in the freezer.  They were just as tasty as they were cute.

Last up on the food table was "Seven LEIA Dip" and "DARTH VEGGIES he's more produce now than man." They are both pretty straight forward. I had plans to sprinkle taco seasoning over the dip over a stencil of Princess Leia and her iconic honeybuns but in the last minute crush, that just didn't happen. The dip was tasty anyways. The veggies were served with a cream cheese dip (cream cheese, soy sauce, green onions, milk) and it's a bit hard to see but that's a radish carved to look like a Death Star floating in the dip.

On to the dessert table!! Who doesn't love the dessert table?? I LOVE the dessert table!

Here we have TATOOINE TRUFFLES (I used to live here, you know. You're going to die here, you know. Convenient.) The truffles were Ancho Truffles rolled in finely crushed in cinnamon graham crackers. If we skip to the other side of the table, we have "HAN ROLOS shot first" with a chocolate Han Solo in carobnite. Because when do you not need a chocolate Han Solo in carbonite?? And in the back, we have "Come to the DARK SIDE we have cookies."

Here's a detail shot of the cookies. Aren't they about the cutest ginger bread cookies ever??

But don't think I forgot about the cake! There were so many Star Wars cakes to choose from! We finally decided on a Millennium Falcon cake. Let's get to the money shot of the cake!

Photo courtesy of Todd Henning

The cake is a vegan chocolate cake with butter cream and sculptable butter cream details. I bakes a 12" round cake and a 9x13 to cut the details out of. I always forget how much darker gray frosting dries than what it looks when you first tint it so I meant it to be a bit lighter, but overall, I think it turned out really good! The cupcakes are carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, edible glitter stars and the fighters are mostly white chocolate with just a little dark mixed in to make them just the right color of beige.

We made it to the end! Overall, the party was a lot of fun to plan for and even more fun to be at!! Thanks for reading!

Star Wars Party (Episode 1)

I'm a party person. Well, not really. I'm the girl who will find an excuse to get out of going to a party. However planning a party is a whole other story. BC (Before Children) we had awesome themed parties with costumes, themed food and cocktails, the works. In the last seven years, however, most of our parties have heavily involved cartoon characters. It was time to change that.

My husband mentioned that he wanted a big shin-dig for his 45th and I agreed, thinking that we would have some people in the basement, open some beers and call it a night. That's not what happened.

Lando and Leia. Hey, it could happen....

Instead, an EPIC Star Wars party is what happened. About three weeks before the party, I was sitting at my computer and decided it was time to get organized but that I should probably have some sort of theme in mind so I poked around Pinterest and  messaged my husband:
Me: How about a 70s-themed party?
Me: OHOHOHOHOHOHOH!!!!
Me: Star Wars.
Him: OH MY GOD
Him: OH MY GOD
Me: ....May the Fourty-Fifth Be With You
Him: OH MY GOD
Him: YES YES YES YES YES YES

That was pretty definitive. Less than an hour later, invites had been sent out to over 100 people in I don't know how many states and I had three weeks to plan and execute this whole thing.

When I don't know where to start, I start with water bottles. I try to dress up water bottles for all of my parties because they are an easy way to add to them theme AND they get people to drink water. Win/win. They also give me something to get started on while my brain works out the details. 

These were pretty simple to do. I wrapped the bottles in black duct tape and then downloaded the emblems into Design Space and cut them on my Cricut.

From there I decided to keep it pretty simple with a black, yellow and silver color scheme with silver stars and a free Star Wars Font. So I started with a back drop for the food table.

The "Long time ago was downloaded and cut as it's own image so I didn't have to mess around with finding the right font, although I do wish I had made it bigger. I cut those letters out of vinyl and then cut the "Happy Birthday" out of card stock and mounted both on a plastic table cloth. The stars were from Amazon. Also, there's a Death Star, just sort of hanging out.

Next up was setting the mood as people walked in the door. The party was in the basement and when it's full of people, it can be hard to hear the doorbell or to fight your way across the room to get up the stairs. So I put a sign on the door to let people know to let themselves in and where to go.

We had the score from the original trilogy playing when our guests came in to set the tone. And then they followed the tracks down to the party.

There was a very interesting discussion while I was prepping for the party about what bantha feet look like and what the tracks might look like if bantha didn't have long fur and if they left tracks somewhere other than the sand. In the end, I found an image of an "unknown animal track" and used that and then cut them out of cheap contact paper from The Dollar Tree. They served their purpose, as far as I know, everyone found their way down to the party. 

Then, just for fun, I made some little signs for the bathrooms. Because how cute is that little Yoda?? (Not to mention, if you've had a few to drink, go up the stairs and look for Darth Vader is pretty simple and might spare someone getting lost in my laundry room.)

I kept the centerpieces pretty simple. I found some lunch boxes on clearance at Party City and added some balloons and some silver star confetti because more sparkle is always good.

And then, we have the "Wow, you're really crazy project" for this party. While cruising Pinterest, I saw some party decorations with some paper lanterns that were spray painted to look like planets from the Star Wars Universe. Only, I wanted a lot of them. I wanted the entire area above the bar to be a galaxy far, far away. So I ordered like 50 lanterns of different sizes and a whole lot of craft paint later.....

The Purple Planet, Naboo, Geonsis, Kamino, Hoth, Tatooine, Coruscant, Degobah, Alderaan, Bespin, H'nemthe, Mustafar and a bunch of tie fighters.

These were definitely the focal point of the party! They looked SO COOL lit up from the inside with battery-operated LEDs. 

Here's a detail shot of a few of the planets in various stages.

So, there you go the set-up and decorations for the coolest Star Wars Party (well, not really but close) ever!!! Stay tuned for Epic Star Wars Party Episode II: the food and beverages, which can be found here.

Prosciutto Pear Pizza

Seriously, who doesn't love pizza? Okay, okay, I'm sure that there are several of you who don't like pizza, but I'm not talking about heavy, greasy, sauce-laden box pizza. I'm talking about a fresh, crisp balance of salty and tangy perfection.

Pizza is actually a pretty new addition to our menu rotation. When my son was diagnosed with food allergies, he was allergic to (among other things) beef, garlic, tomatoes, peas (I'll get to why that matters in a minute) and was intolerant to soy and dairy. I believe in eating as a family so this takes pretty much everything Italian off the table. I came up with some substitutions for things like spaghetti sauce but it's not really the same.

Then one day, I was reading some allergy blog and the heavens burst open and the sun shone down! There was cheese for people like us!!! Dairy-free, soy-free, it melts, it oozes! I'm looking at pictures of allergic kids eating mac and cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches and yes, pizza!! So I get on my computer and seek out Daiya Cheese and find it the next town over. I get in my car and there it is in all it's cheesey glory!! I buy like five bags of this stuff (and let me tell you it is not cheap) and I go home and start making homemade pizza dough and roasted red pepper sauce and cook up some turkey sausage. We're having pizza!!

I proudly present this pizza to my son who was about two who was so very excited to be eating cheese! He takes a bite or two and pushes it away. Okay, so the cheese is a little funky but it's not bad.... Then I see the little red spots popping out on his face. I had broken the first rule of living with food allergies. Read every label, every time. I sprint to the fridge and grab the package. Sure enough, to be soy free, they use pea protein. Not a big deal to most allergy families but he was more allergic to the peas then to the milk or the soy.

 Fortunately, it wasn't a severe reaction although he did have an upset tummy for a few days. Those four and a half bags of not-cheese sat in my freezer for over a year before I had the heart to toss them and pizza was off the menu until this summer when my son outgrew his dairy intolerance! He loves, loves, loves all things cheese!

Enough with the trip down memory lane, and back to the subject at hand, I bet you want to see this pizza!

Isn't it beautiful?? And let me tell you, it's even tastier than it looks!

I start with half a recipe of Guy Fieri's Prime Time Pizza Dough. This is my go-to dough. I am lazy and knead it with the Kitchen Aid, but it's a perfect crispy, chewy dough that's perfect a little thicker for the kids and a little thinner for my husband and me. I make a full recipe of dough and let the kids make their own pizzas with the other half.

To get it thin enough, I roll the dough to a rough rectangle on parchment paper and drizzle with about a teaspoon of olive oil and then top with 1/2 cup of shredded Italian blend cheese. Then I arranged about 1/2 of a ripe red pear that has been sliced thin and three slices of prosciutto that have been quartered. That's then topped with another quarter cup of the Italian cheese and a quarter cup of gorgonzola. Bake at 500 degrees for 10-12 minutes or until the cheese is melted and beginning to brown. Finish with bottled balsamic glazed and fresh-cracked pepper. Enjoy!!

Note to Myself as I Begin Training for My First Marathon

Dear Self,

I look back with amused irony that you were the girl in the eighth grade who wanted to lodge a complaint with the office that making us run a whole mile in gym class was cruel and unusual punishment. While you did do it, it was under extreme duress, you took most of the gym period to do it and if I remember correctly, you laid down on the grass more than once claiming you were dying. Yet here you are, mumble-mumble years later (it's not that I don't want to disclose how old I am, I just don't want to do the math) with three half-marathons and well over a thousand miles under your belt about to embark on one of your greatest challenges yet.

Me running my third half marathon.

 Tomorrow is the first day of your marathon training schedule and over the next four months, there are a few things I would like you to keep in mind.

• Tomorrow is the first day of your training plan. It is not the first day of your training. Every run since that first time you decided to try to run to the end of the block over two years ago has lead you to this point. 
• You will bork one of your long runs. You will probably bork more than one of them. That's okay. This is a learning process and every failed run will teach you something.
• There will be days where you won't want to do it, where you will want to do something else instead of go on your run. That's okay. Go run anyways.
• You may at some point resent the time the training takes. That's okay. It will be worth it.
• There will be a run that you will nail and make you feel like you can do anything. Don't forget about that one when you are running the crappy ones.
• Toenails grow back.
• If something happens and you can't run this race, that's okay.  There will be other races. If you don't run this marathon, you will run another.
• This is not the end of your running journey, just a stop along the way.
• Tapering will suck.
• You can do this, I know you can.

And then you can call yourself a marathoner.

Get out there and DO IT!!!

Love,
Me

Allergies SUCK and spaghetti

It's been awhile since I posted anything here and I even thought about deleting it but I re-read my enteries and I think they're worth keeping.

Anyways, Little Dude is now 15 months old and has ALL THE ALLERGIES. Seriously. At the moment, the working list is eggs, dairy, soy, beef, peanuts, onions, garlic, beans,  tomatoes, pineapple(?), coconut(?), and kiwi(?). My only saving grace is that he seems fine with wheat and corn.

I've been angsty about it lately and I walked into the kitchen from doing laundry and saw Little Cutie and Little Dude on the floor of the kitchen with a container of ice cream between them. She was using a fork to free the pieces and he was gleefully stuffing them in his mouth where the rash was already forming. I said to her, "You can't give Baby Brother ice cream, it makes him sick."

She replies in a way that only a four year old can. "I'm not making him sick, I'm making him happy."

And that was enough to make me cry.

I guess I'm just throwing myself a pity party about all of the things I used to take for granted. I could go on about many of the things that suck about having a baby with allergies. But I'm not. Instead, I am going to give you the recipe I cam up with for Spaghetti and red sauce with meatballs after LC requested it. Not that she has eaten any but she has asked for it twice so here's hoping!

Mock Marinara Sauce
1 zucchini, cut into chunks
1 stalk of celery, cut into chunks
8 oz sliced mushroom
1 red pepper, cored and in chunks
~1 cup baby carrot or one big carrot peeled and cut into chunks
1T olive oil
1 jar roasted red peppers (16 oz), drained
1 cup chicken broth (or water)
1T sugar 
2T balsamic vinegar (or more to taste)
1/2 t salt
1T freeze-dried basil
1t crushed red pepper or to taste

In batches, process the vegetables in the food processor until they are a fine mince. (If you can do onions and garlic feel free to add them too!) Put in a big pan over medium-high heat with the olive oil and cook until the veggies begin to soften. Meanwhile, process the roasted red peppers until smooth. Pour the puree over the veggie mince. Add the rest of the ingredients. Adjust seasoning to taste. Let simmer over meduim low for 45 min to an hour.

I serve this over a pound of pasta with meatballs inspired by Speedbump Kitchen, modified to our needs. I used 1 pound ground chicken, 12 oz italian pork sausage, 1 cup of soy-free panko, 1//4 cup rice milk, 2 teaspoons of olive oil, salt, pepper and parsley and followed her method.

Little Cutie as I said, bare touched it  but Little Dude loved it and it met all the requirements of a baby and spaghetti down to i being on his head and that orange mark it leaves on the high chair tray.

Enjoy!

Target owns my soul.

Yesterday I spent about 4.5 hours at Target. Yup, you read that right. Let me break it down for you.

• Go to Target at about 1pm.
• Enquire about a portrait session. They have an opening at three. Make appointment.
• Take three tries to make an eye appointment because you forget about things like Valentines and your hubbies birthday.
• Go get lunch.... Watch as three year old insists on ICEE and Mac n cheese and trashes shirt.
  
• Go look for new shirt and decide on beach cover up.
  
• Browse and pick up a few things as you do not have time to do full shopping. Do not but toy kitchen toddler desperately wants but do buy on sale talking tea set because that's whats going to get you all through the session.
• Browse some more. Check out.
  
• Take everyone to the bathroom with the cart to change diapers, change ruined shirt and make yourself presentable.
  
• Open tea set while you wait.
  
• Feed baby.
  
• Realize you need to pee and take the whole thing back into the bathroom.
  
• Have sitting with stubborn toddler and fussy baby. Consider putting photographer in for sainthood.
  
• Manage to not look like a whale.
• Order pictures.
  
• Have a coffee and toddler has a water.
  
• Go home.
• Do home stuff.
  
• Get kicked out by hubby.
  
• Go to matresss store and JoAnn.
  
• Go back to Target.
  
• Buy groceries.
  
• Buy furniture and stuff for toddlers room.
  
• Buy tequila.
  
• Check out.
  
• Smile as cashier makes a comment about having your mail forwarded.
• Go to bookstore.
  
• Buy stuff.
  
• Have coffee and cheesecake for dinner even though it's not 9:30.
  
• Realize you forgot that one thing your husband sent you out for.
  
• Go back to Target.
  
• Buy thing.
  
• Go home realize you forgot that thing for the baby which was really the start of why you needed to go to Target.
• Make a margarita.

And today I will go again for the eye appointment and for all the stuff I forgot yesterday.