From the ashes

... of my often unposted (and even more rarely read) blog, here's a new post! Yay! My excuse is it's hard to keep up with a blog when I have four kids, go to school full time and do half marathon training, but maybe, just maybe, I'll post more frequently than once a year :P Today I reached a milestone on the scale. I debated about if I wanted to get into a weight loss post or not. Mostly because there's the whole embarrassment fact of even having a weight-loss struggle, but I am feeling indulgent and am going to post a hooray for me moment. With the 1.8 pounds I have lost since my weigh in three days ago, my running weight loss total is 50.4 pounds! Yes, I have broken through the half century mark! And I have 28.4 pounds to go until I reach my goal weight. Nothing about it has been simple and I haven't leaned any easy trick to make the weight come off. It's been a lot of waking up at 4:30 am during the week to get a run in before DH goes to work and skipping the sleeping in on weekends so I can get my 2-3 hour runs in. It's a lot of trying to convince myself that the salad is what I wanted, not the pizza a fries. It's a lot of sipping ice water while I watch DH and the kids have ice cream. But there's also a lot of accomplishment. I am fighting my way back to myself and I have fought for every pound lost and when I am where I want to be I will have earned it. And that's worth something, too.

Tomorrow's run

Can’t believe I’m going to write this, but I am looking forward to tomorrow’s run. It will be 9 miles. I haven’t done a long run in a few weeks. Last weekend my SIL went running with me and we did 4 miles since her longest run before that 2.5 miles and I wanted her to see that she could do longer distances. I’m sure if I can convince her to do one of the runDisney races, DH will agree to a Disney trip, so it’s wasn’t a totally altruistic move on my part :P The weekend before that was a 5K at the kids’ school. The weekend before that was 8 miles, so, as I said, it’s been a couple of weeks. And I admit that there is a part of my brain that hasn’t completely let go of the full marathon idea. During the week I do runs on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and depending on DH’s schedule, they are either in the morning or evening, which is good since the F&W run is at night, I need to practice for that anyway. Before I started distance running, a mile and a half was my long run. Now my mid-week runs are 4 miles, and I call those short runs! I admit, I feel kind of proud about the change. On the down side, I still haven’t really lost weight, but I remain confident that if I keep working out, I will start slimming down. SO I can’t get discourage. Keep moving forward, right?

To marathon or not to marathon?

Lately I have been toying around with the idea of upping my goal from doing a half marathon to doing a full marathon. Let me be clear, here, that it is not any regular marathon- it would specifically be the Wald Disney World Marathon, because seriously, that would be the only place I would willingly run 26.2 miles through. This year is the 20th anniversary of the WDW marathon, so it’s a slightly different course and has some “special surprises” which since this is Disney, will either be awesome of super lame; they really have no middle ground when it comes to surprises. They either blow it out of the water or screw it up entirely. I have spent days thinking about it, imagining myself crossing the finish line and getting my Mickey medal and the incredible feeling of pride that will come with that. But then I started imagining the training. The problem is I am a sloooooooow runner, so running 26 miles will take me between six and seven hours. And I have four small children and a husband who works crazy hours and goes to school full time while he works on his Masters degree, so there isn’t a whole lot of opportunities to take virtually the whole day off to jog around the neighborhood. It might be different if my kids were old enough to be able to watch themselves, or if I had ANY family in the area who could help out watching the kids, it would be a different matter. Right now I wake up when DH and all the kids are still asleep and get my long run in before everyone wakes up. If I wake up at 6 I can still get 13 miles in and be home by 9. It’s not a huge sacrifice for me sleep-wise. But for marathon training, any run that is 15 miles or longer would be more than 4 hours, and there would be a lot of weeks of those. Regrettably, I don’t think a full marathon is going to be something I can do until all the kids are in school- I can train during the day when they are gone. And by the point, Isobel will be 12 (!) and old enough to baby sit the sibs. I feel like I’m letting myself down a little, because once I got it in my brain that this is something I could accomplish, I feel bad that there will be no follow through or testing the theory. But it’s not NEVER, it’s just not NOW.

Every mile is magic?

Ok, so after this blog has remained dormant for *cough cough* years, I am reviving it as an online journal as I train for a half marathon. I am a stay at home 32 year old mother of 4 (DD7, DD6, DS2 and DS16months). I am a Navy veteran, but have been out since 2006. I would love to lose 60 pounds to get back to my post-kids weight, but realistically would be pleased with losing 40. I am currently following the Jeff Galloway training program for beginning runners (found here: http://as1.wdpromedia.com/media/ewwos/pdf/rundisney/training-programs/WnD12beg.pdf) I am six weeks into the training. When I started I was smart in saying that I was only going to work on the distance and then work on running faster, but of course, I did not do that. I have been going further and running faster each and every week. The problem is that I am overweight and my body is not used to carrying this much weight over this long a distance this quickly. The pain in my knees has been, well, intense to say the least. At its worst it was bad enough to keep me awake at night. I took the last week easy and the pain has (mostly) subsided so for my first run this week (tomorrow) I will be easing up on the speed quite a bit. And, yes, I do realize the irony in this- I started running to lose weight, but now I’m realizing I’m going to need to lose weight to be able to run! Even when I was in the Navy, running was torture. I hated every mile of those forced “fun” group runs. Yet here I am, willingly running. My life has reached the point where I am glad to get the chance to get out of the house and be alone with my thoughts and the relief that comes from FINALLY doing something good for myself. When I started this more than a month ago my goal was to be able to run Disney’s Wine and Dine Half Marathon in November. Because running has to be more fun at WDW- everything else is! Plus, I love that place. I would walk through hot coals to be able to go there, so comparatively, running 13.1 miles is easy, right? Unfortunately that plan has hit the rather regrettable snag of my husband doesn’t want to pay for (another) vacation to Disney World. So I am going to have to dig down and find the real motivation to keep going. Hence the blog. It serves as my journal as well as a public declaration of my intentions. Whenever I start to diet or work out, I keep quiet about it so when I inevitably fail, no one knows. Not this time. Join me for my journey, because I am in it for the long run :)

Hi, Shannon! I'm sure you are the only person who still holds out hope that I will someday post again, and here is your reward: my first post using my iPhone. The girls are putting their stuffed dogs in diapers, Baby Robert is playing with his gumball machine( I refer to it as his Servo, but it's merely for my enjoyment as I'm the only o e who gets the reference).
I am thinking about your post about Push the trash can and that led to the thought of the talking Mickey heads they now have, and as cool as being able to chat with the Mouse would be, I almost don't want it to happen. Because the only other two attraction with the live interactions are the Laught Warehouse and Turtle Talk. And the voices are really hit or miss. And to have a miss with Mickey's voice would just be wrong. Like when you see and ugly princes. It's jarring and distracting and instead of getting caught up in the illusion of meeting Aurora instead you are wondering how old this woman is and is Disney really that hard up for pretty people that this is as good as it gets and if they've lowered their standards so maybe I can get a job here too. See how distracting that is?
I just don't know if there are enough people in the world who do a good enough Mickey impressionwho are also willing to work for Disney pay.

Faith and trust

Okay, I've given in. I'm blogging. I'm a blogger. You have been blogged. Hopefully I'll do this more often than I update my Facebook page, but I make no promises.
I thought that name of my blog fit because of the Disney connotation and that fact that I don't clean ... much ...
The girls are in bed, Robert is ready to be fed and America's Next Top Model is on my DVR, so this is it for the first post.
As Conan said, maybe someday Twitter, Facebook and YouTube will combine to create YouTwitFace, but until then, this will have to do.