Biggest Loser Finale....

I can't believe no one has talked about this on their blog yet (Kate and Jen! LOL!). I just watched the Finale late last week. I must say, I was in TOTAL shock! I just KNEW that Tara was going to win.
When they announced that Mikey would be in the final 3, and Ron wouldn't, I was afraid that Ron would win the "at home" portion, which isn't fair since he was on the Ranch the whole time. Thankfully this wasn't the case! Yea!!!! I was so Proud of Jerry and his wife, they definitely deserve to win!
Then for the final 3. Again, I just KNEW that Tara was going to win. She had never fallen below the yellow line, had won almost all of the challenges, etc. But then I was SHOCKED to see that Helen won! Pink Team won again, 3 seasons in a row! Wow!!!
Were you all as shocked as I was????

Free Registration! Yea!

Race Follow Up E-mail contained the following pictures of the flooded course. Guess it was a good thing they cancelled the Half-marathon after all.

We also received the following information:
"Refunds and Rescheduling Questions ...The industry standard policy for race cancellation due to "acts of god", like the flash flooding this weekend, is to not issue any refunds as most costs are incurred leading up to race day whether the event occurs or not. Furthermore, resources are typically not available to allow for the rescheduling of an event of this size within a reasonable timeframe. But we're runners too, and we know that while these things happen, it is disappointing to not be able to run a race you've been training for and so looking forward to! We will be holding another Half Marathon and 5K on Sunday, September 27, 2009. All May participants will receive a FREE entry into the event that they were signed up for in May.

You will not receive another event shirt, because you received your May 2009 one. When half marathoners cross the finish line, you WILL receive your May 2009 finisher medal. "

So, there you have it. I have taken advantage of this offer, and am registered for the September event. :)

Half-Marathon Disappointment

(First off, a huge {{HUG}} and thank you shout out to my dear friend Kate! Thank you for checking in on me this morning, to see how how my marathon went. Your words of encouragement, and the fact that you remembered and were thinking of me means so much to me. You're such an inspiration!!!!)

For anyone else who may be interested. We went over on Saturday, and stayed the night in a Hotel close to where the Half-marathon was to be held. On our way there, it was storming really bad and we heard that there was a Tornado warning close to where we live. So we were saying a prayer that we would still have a house when we returned.
We got over there, and I picked up my packet. (My shirt, my number and safety pins, and a bunch of free samples.) Then we went over and checked into our hotel, and immediately the boys wanted to go swimming (I made sure to get one with an indoor pool). After we swam for awhile, we got ready to go eat dinner. I had called Ken, but my Aunt Linda and cousin Taran weren't there yet, and our boys were "starving", so we went ahead and went to dinner by ourselves.
We then came back and took the boys swimming again. We got them in bed around 9:30pm, since we were going to have an early morning on race day.
I of course didn't sleep very well. I was having nightmares about over-sleeping and being late for the race, and then I was having nightmares that drug dealers were taking over the hotel, and I was fighting them and tyring to get away, while yelling at Stephen to shoot them! (crazy, i know!) So I was relieved to get up at 4:30am, when my alarm went off. We got up, got ready and left our hotel room at 5:20am, to take the boys to I-hop for breakfast. On our way there, my Aunt Linda called me. The race had been cancelled. At 3:40am that morning, we were getting some major storms, with hail and high winds, and flash flooding. The race route was flooded, and they called the race off because more storms were expected that morning. I was so utterly disappointed. What made it even worse, was that once we had got up at 4:30 that morning, it wasn't storming and it never stormed or rained a single drop for the rest of the day! I guess the route could have still been under water though. But still, it was a total let down, to have it cancelled at the last minute.
So, we took our time and enjoyed a nice quiet breakfast. Then we went back to the hotel and let the boys swim again. We then got ready and drove over to Cabellas. We had never been there before, but heard it was like Bass Pro, and since we were so close, why not. It was really fun. We spent most of the morning and early afternoon there. (We took a few pictures at the hotel before we left, and then I also snapped some at cabellas. click here if you want to see them, they are on my other blog). We were all exhausted, so we came home and crashed on the couch and watched some movies. It was a nice, relaxing evening, and we got in bed early. It was great and I was sleeping like a log, until every device Stephen owns was ringing or beeping at 1:30 am this morning....he got paged into work. When I woke up to my alarm at 6:20 this morning, he was cuddled up to me in bed, and whispered to me that the coffee was ready for me. He is such a sweetie!!!! (The word "Coffee" is definitely music to my ears in the morning. LoL! he then caught a few more hours of sleep before getting up and going back to work).

So it was a fun weekend, even though I didn't get to run the half-marathon that I have been training for, for the past 13 weeks. Hopefully they will re-schedule it. If not, I will just find another one to start training for.

Training, and BL thoughts

Training is going well. My half-marathon will be here this coming Sunday. Yikes! This is my very first race, and I'm crazy enough to be doing a Half-Marathon! LOL! (But at least I'll be doing it with my Aunt, and her daughter and step-daughter.) I'm excited but nervous all at the same time. Any tips or tricks from you seasoned racers, would be greatly appreciated.

I ran 10 miles again on Monday (I was supposed to do it Sunday, but we were out all day). So after my run, I had another raw spot on my lower back, from the tag on my panties. Gah! Is something like this going to happen every time I run over 10 miles? I was shocked; I had no pain to indicate that this was happening. I only noticed because when I went to get in the shower, I saw a new red spot on my lower back, a little lower than where the other one was (that just recently healed up). Figures. After this long run, I made dinner, and once Stephen got home he said he needed to lift weights. So we both lifted weights, and then I stretched and did some ab work.

Last night (Tuesday) I missed the first 30 minutes of Biggest Loser, but thankfully I had gone in the other room to watch Biggest Loser while on the elliptical and figured out the recorder wasn't working. So I fixed it, then jumped on the Elliptical to workout while watching the rest of it. I did a full hour on the Elliptical, then finished watching the show while stretching and doing abs.

So, what did y'all think of Biggest Loser last night?! It was Good! I started watching it right as Allison was telling them about their challenge. (carrying all that weight over the 16 sand hills). That was a good Challenge. Tara is so driven, and motivated. I love her "I can do it" attitude. I was shocked that Filipe and Ron were below the yellow line. Since they both weighed in first, and dropped such huge numbers, I was afraid they were going to send someone else below the line. But everyone had stepped it up, and they all lost really big numbers. I was so proud of Tara and Helen. I was hoping to see Ron go home, but if I was Tara and Helen, I would have voted Filipe off to. You know Ron isn't a threat to them. I'll be surprised if he loses much of anything after going home to the real world. Did you notice when everyone threw their bags of weight over that ledge, they all said things like "good riddance" "I'll never see that person again!" etc. Well, I couldn't help but notice when Ron threw his over, he said "see ya later!". I immediately thought "yep, you probably will!".
I am proud of Tara and Helen. I secretly hope Tara wins, but it would be awesome to see Helen win too. Either one of them, and I'd be happy.

Biggest Loser thoughts

Stephen and I finally watched Biggest Loser last night. It was a good one. I was shocked that Kristen went home. Ron is so conniving. He kept his promise that he wouldn't write her name down, but he helped his son find the loop-hole to get rid of her. I was just sitting there with my mouth hanging open thinking "wow! how can he say everything just so correctly, so that he isn't technically fibbing about any of it?! he is so conniving!"
I personally hope Tara wins. I think she has the drive and the determination to win this, and her head seems to be in the right place. Mikey is getting arrogant and cocky, and I'm really beginning to dislike him almost as much as I dislike his Dad. So Tara is my choice. Helen is ok, but she is much to whiny for me. Her and Kristen both are such Drama Queens. I couldn't handle listening to them all day. Of course I can't stand Filipe. Ever since him and his cousin Sione acted so childish and refused to train with Jillian, blew up with her, and then went whining to Bob...I've been out on them both.
Anyway, it was a good show, as always. :)

Training Schedule

Well, my training schedule is a week short. It has it laid out, as if my half-marathon was this coming Sunday, so I'm currently repeating last week's training.
I missed Tuesday's workout. Stephen came home from work with a high fever on Monday, and even with Advil I couldn't get it to come down. So I re-scheduled some of my work appointments and I took him to the Doctor on Tuesday morning. We found out he has Strep Throat. Yikes! Luckily I have avoided catching it so far.
But with him being sick on Tuesday I didn't run..he was in bed and our treadmill is in there, so I didn't want to bother keeping him awake, etc.
Yesterday I did finally run again though. I ran 5 miles. It felt great! :) (Except for my poor feet. They are peeling like crazy all along the bottom and even on my toes. it is so gross and uncomfortable! So I keep lathering them up with cooling foot lotion each morning, in hopes of helping the uncomfortable thick dry skin feeling).
Gotta get to work.
Later!

Nutrition...

Jen, this is in answer to your comment, wondering if I am still following the clean eating plan.

For the most part, yes I'm still following the "clean eating" lifestyle...just not that exact nutrition plan. I change it up a little bit from day to day, depending on what I'm doing that day. But I feel great, and am trying to stick with fresh foods, and trying to avoid processed foods. It seems to be working. I'm at 123.2, as of this morning. I was at 120.2 last week, but it's almost "that time of the month" (explains the weight gain...water/bloating....blah!)