How many men does it take to fry a turkey?

I have finally made it back to civilization! I spent my Thanksgiving out at my Cousin’s house in the country where there is no cell phone reception and very spotty internet service. It was nice to disconnect for a bit, but now I feel like I fell so far behind, so I’ve been spending most of today catching up on my internet life.

So here’s what has been going on for the last few days. Thanksgiving morning I got up early and walked down the street to participate in a local 10k fun run. It was a chilly 35 degrees but the weather quickly warmed up, especially after we started running. There were fitness challenges at each mile and I chose to try and do as many of them as I could. I started out too fast on the first mile so the 20 pushups were a bit challenging. During the second mile I was trying to keep up with one of the other runner’s so I was pushing pretty hard when we made it to the 20 jumping jacks. After that I had to slow down a bit and managed to do 10/15 burpees at mile 3. I got passed by a lot of people at this point and I was feeling pretty tired. That was when I decided to just skip the rest of the fitness challenges and try to make it back in one piece. Despite a foot cramp at mile 5, I finished in 1 hour 1 minute, which I was pretty proud of considering how bad I was feeling.

I headed back home to shower and grab my stuff so I could drive out to my Cousin’s house. I got there around 11:30 and was ready for lunch. I tried to eat something small since we were supposed to eat at 4pm. I also found these beauties waiting for me.

They were oh so delicious as evidenced by this only 12 hours after being opened.

There was some napping, football watching, and waiting for food during the hours of 12pm-6pm. Apparently, the turkey took longer than they expected so we didn’t end up eating until 6pm and I was past starving.

How many men does it take to fry a turkey?

Due to my desire to keep my stomach from eating itself, I scarfed down my plate full of goodies before I even thought about taking a picture.

Getting our grub on

Fixing our plates

I told my Dad he needs to be my official blog photographer since I didn’t have my camera with me and I forgot to snap a pic of my food. My Dad worked his magic and actually caught me before I devoured dessert to take a picture of the sweet deliciousness (minus one bite)

7up cake, caramel pound cake, and the best dessert in the world, peanut butter pie!

And then one of me about to swallow my fork whole (please excuse the awful hair, it had a long day)

I, of course, ate way too much and felt miserable for the rest of the night.

Friday morning we got up and sat around for a while waiting on our 10am breakfast call. After breakfast we decided to go to Walmart in the small town of Louisville, MS to see what kind of Black Friday deals there were. We figured with it being such a small town and waiting until after all the door buster deals were done, it wouldn’t be that bad. It wasn’t that crowded and the worst part was all of the merchandise taking up most of the floor space, so it was hard to navigate with a buggy. We found good deals on some Blu-Ray movies and I scored this awesome find:

These were $6 so I got one in red and one in dark grey. Once we got back, it was warm enough to get my one mile run in to continue my streak. I tried out my new red top and I absolutely loved it! This is what it looks like on:

After my one mile run, I was famished, so I went and ate some Thanksgiving leftovers and then joined in on the weekend entertainment.

Yes we are standing around watching a stump burn, we stood out there until dark keeping the fire going and enjoying the crisp fall day.

I tried to get some pictures of my Cousin’s pig Ellie because she is a behemoth! I never could get her to face me so here is the best shot I got.

Then I went out front and decided to do some hill training so I could eat more Thanksgiving leftovers for supper. I did one trip and called it a day, but it was fun to get some fresh air into my lungs.

Here is the spread of leftovers we had for supper:

Deviled eggs, gravy, green beans, corn, stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey, ham, chicken and dumplings, corn casserole, black eyed peas, rolls, and homemade sourdough bread. yummy!

Then we spent the rest of the night laid out in front of the TV watching Duck Dynasty. This was my first time watching this show and it might become one of my new favorites, it is so funny!

Okay now that I have caught you up on my Thanksgiving,  I think my brain needs a break. Time to love on Daisy and get some rest before my long day tomorrow.

What did you do for Thanksgiving?

Did you get to spend time with your family?

Try any new and interesting foods?

 

Two PRs in one day!!

When I woke up on Wednesday morning, I was feeling a weird tightness/pain in my Achilles tendon so I decided to do an easy 40 minutes on the stationary bike while catching up on Runner’s World.

I also threw in some strength training with the free weights for good measure. This is the view I got to enjoy during my workout.

I spent the rest of the day relaxing and watching The Avengers. It was the first time I had seen it since we watched it in the theater and the second time did not disappoint. I just love Joss Whedon!

After Chris got home from work we went shopping to find him some barefoot shoes to wear during his Spartan Race on Saturday. There wasn’t as great of a selection as we would have liked but he ended up getting these:

I hope they don’t get destroyed the first time he wears them. Then we got home and watched Big Bang Theory, I’ve only recently gotten into this show but it is so funny! Why didn’t I discover it sooner?

When I woke up on Friday my Achilles tendon was still bothering me a bit so I stretched and foam rolled in preparation for the 5k I planned on running at noon. The run/walk was an AIDS awareness free event sponsored by the Keesler Air Force Base gym.

I just wanted  to run it for fun and see how I did. I started out pretty fast and started fading a bit in the second mile. It was an out and back course, so when we turned around I saw how far ahead I was of all the other women and I think that caused me to slow down a bit because I felt like I didn’t have any competition pushing me to go faster. But, I ended up finishing in 25:09, a new PR for me!!

I was the first female to cross the finish line so the second place female finisher (she was so cute and speedy) and I were recognized after the race.

I also won two $10 gift cards that are good at FSS facilities, which include places like the bowling alley, outdoor recreation, and arts and crafts on base.

I headed back to the condo, showered, ate lunch, and did some more foam rolling to prepare for the  Thumbs Up For Bill 5k that night. After Chris got home, we got dressed and headed out to the Run-N-Tri store to look around a bit before the 5k started. They were giving away some old race shirts they had left over, so I grabbed a couple. Though I didn’t run in those races, Chris did, so I will just say he earned the shirt for both of us (it will just be like I’m borrowing his shirt without him getting mad at me for wearing his actual shirt).

The run/walk started at 6:30 and everyone was glowing with our glow in the dark bracelets and necklaces. The race shirts turned out pretty nice.

They even put our names on the back for preregistering for the run, not sure if you can spot them, but both of our names are on there.

Chris decided to try and pace me to get another PR because he wanted to take it easier before his race on Saturday. During the second mile my legs were like lead and I felt like I had hit the wall, but Chris kept pushing me and I tried my best to keep up with him. He was trying really hard to get me to finish in under 25 minutes but my legs just weren’t having it. Sometime during the 3rd mile I started falling back and told him just to go on but he said no and he kept pushing me to catch up and stay with him. I tried my best to sprint to the finish and managed to cross the line at 25:08, a new PR one second faster than that afternoon! Then I proceeded to stuff my face with Dunkin’ Doughnuts.

I’m noticing that my Garmin is not very accurate. It has been shorting me on the 5ks I’ve been running. Last night I ran right next to Chris the whole race, his Garmin said 3.18, the guy that finished right in front of us said his was 3.16, and mine said 3.07? How could we be that far off running right next to each other? We are thinking about doing a reset on my Garmin, anyone know of anything else we might try?

*I wanted to get this post up earlier today, but we had a very long day at the Spartan Race, which I will try to recap tomorrow after my 10 mile run. I took 460 pictures so I have to sort through them because I don’t think you want to see all of them.

8k recap and my randomness

Here is the bridge we had to run to and then over that wonderful hill and back again, I really enjoyed the challenge

This was the preview of the hill as we were driving in today

As I wrote yesterday, I set out knowing that no matter what I would get a PR in the race today but of course I still had a finishing time in mind. I wanted to finish in about 45 minutes or average a 9:00 min/mile pace. My first mile was 8:00 minutes exactly and as I always do I started out a bit too fast so the rest of my miles were a bit slower but nothing over a 9:00 minute pace.  Following is just a snippet of the randomness that keeps me going through these races:

• All the walkers are messing with my momentum
• Random butterflies hitting me in the face
• Then later on I played a game with the butterflies since they wanted to fly along beside me: they were encouraging me to keep my pace up, flying along and then attacking if i slowed down. 
• Old dude drafting off of me, hacking and spitting all over my back. 
• I should have worn sunscreen, the sun is burning through my skin and into my soul. 
• My  encouragement halfway through was passing the hubby (later on he said I crushed his time and his spirit ha ha.)
• I’m really tired of this downhill.
• This last mile is going to be the death of me, straight flat with the 100 degree sun beating down. 
• I’m celebrating national talk like a pirate a few days late as sweat drips in my eye and I walk to the bathroom with one eye squenched and say arrgggh to my husband. 

In the end, as I neared the finish line I saw that I could definitely make it under 43:00 minutes but knew that if I picked it up I could finish in under 42:30, and what did I do? 

42:29!!! This awesome time also got me first place in my age group and a new trophy for the shelf. Though I don’t set out to run for the bling, just to challenge myself, a little sparkly makes the race that much better.

Don’t you just love the bling?

This is me trying to look as tired as I felt…I swear I am not bald…just can’t stand having sweaty hair in my face so I pin it all back ballerina style.