Blubber To Runner

(My Marriott friends are getting a kick outta the title for sure…)

Been a minute so I wanted to kinda catch everyone up on what’s been goin’ on – which is A LOT.  Mainly what’s happened  – and what’s gonna be happening in the near and not-so-near future!

So my last weigh-in I hit another milestone… 50 lbs lost.  Pretty big deal for me; I JUST missed it (by .6 pounds) at my previous weigh-in so I’m now at 52.2 total pounds which is awesome.  I just keeeeep on shrinking – and apparently I have a CHIN!  🙂

I kid… kinda.  But seriously, that was pretty cool to see – and just like with breaking 300 lbs the previous week, I have y’all to thank.  So once again:

Now, as I’m sitting here relaxing after completing my first ever 10 mile run :), I kinda wanted to to tell yas what I have coming up.  I’m seriously doing this for 1 reason only – because if you wanna come out and run with us you TOTALLY should do it.  We’re kind of a fun bunch, the group I run with, and we have 2 major reasons for running:

1)  The free gifts (we LOVE us some T-shirts!), and 

2)  The brunch afterwards, which has some of the best conversations ever.

It’s pretty neat too, because it definitely cross-pollinates people from different parts of my life.  Now, I make NO secret of how… wait for it… “uncomfortable” 🙂 this normally makes me – but not in this case.  I actually kinda like it.  I think it’s because we all have one thing in common (running) when at other times, the only common denominator was me.  But, it’s a great way to make some new friends and find some new running peeps to get outside with.  This is great because – I don’t know about y’all – but I HATE running alone.

So anyway, here’s the schedule (EACH EVENTS NAME WILL HAVE A HYPERLINK IF YOU’D LIKE TO SIGN UP AND JOIN US!!!):

Sunday, March 25th – Duke Island Park in Bridgewater, NJ – Run From Winter 10K: there’s 6 of us running this one, but the more the merrier.  I know it’s next week but just know that even if you haven’t run in a while you’ll still beat me and my ‘smooth and relaxed’ pace.

Sunday, April 22nd – Rutgers University, East Brunswick, NJ – Rutgers University Unite Half Marathon: This is gonna be a fun day… and a day I will probably cry when I finish because I’m a big (literally and figuratively) pile of mush and this is a huge goal of mine. If you think you can knock out a half (13.1 miles) and wanna join us BY ALL MEANS come on out.  We’re gonna run in a paced group (between 14-15min miles) and just enjoy the experience of doing something so big – together!

Saturday May 12th – Sunday May 13th – South Lakes HS in Reston, VA – Relay For Life Reston: this is less of a race and more of a cause.  I am once again representing The Pineapple Avengers as we walk to fight cancer at this truly life-changing event.  My mother is a survivior, several of my teammates are survivors… plus we have the #1 fundraising team AND the #1 individual fundraiser right now.

We have an amazing group of people doing amazing things to fight this disease, and to be a co-creator of this team knowing, between the last Relay and so far for this one, we’ve raised – just a group of friends doing something good – over $20,000 for cancer research is honestly one of the greatest accomplishments in my entire life.

** If you are unable to participate but you’d still like to donate please CLICK HERE or if you’d like to join, hit me up! **

Sunday, May 20th – Tamaques Park in Westfield, NJ – Westfield’s 5K and Fun Run/ Walk: So this is just a random 5K the week before Memorial Day just for fun.  But to me this might be the COOLEST RACE EVER.  Why?  It’s gonna be my Mom’s FIRST 5K EVER! Ever since I’ve been home she’s been saying she wants to do a 5K – so I found her one. 🙂 I just think it would be awesome to see all these people cheering her on – may be another one of those mushy moments for me… not gonna lie… but anyway if you wanna just do a 5K and don’t wanna do it alone – THIS is your race!

So that’s the ‘DEFINITE’ schedule.  What I am going to give now is the ‘PROSPECT’ schedule; these are the events that I (and in most cases already several friends) are planning on doing, but haven’t committed to 100% – mostly because they haven’t set them up yet OR we just haven’t gotten around to it.  But, if there’s anything you’d like to do with us, LET ME KNOW and I’ll totally keep you in the loop!

*  Cranford Jaycees Firecracker 4-Miler (7/4/12) – I mean seriously… I grew up here, live here now, and saw/ heard about it just about every 4th of July.  Of course we’re gonna run it… we just haven’t signed up yet!

*  LBI 18-Mile Run (Date TBD) – this is done every year, usually on Columbus Day weekend, and you run from 1 end of the island to the other… all 18 miles of it!  2012 details have yet to be released so I don’t have exact dates on it yet (the hyperlink is for the FB page)

*  Tough Mudder Tri-State (10/22-23/12) – no big fanfare from me on this, but I said I’m gonna do this at some point – and I plan on it.  My friend Naveed and I are in, but we wanna get a team together so if you’re up for it HIT ME UP and we’ll get rolling on a plan.  Before you do that, please look at website for course info as well as cost because both may be prohibitive!

*  The Las Vegas Marathon (12/2/12) – nope, not kidding… it’s totally on the radar.  It’s the 1st weekend in December and – GET THIS – you run it AT NIGHT.  Seriously how freakin’ amazing is THAT?!?!  Depending on how the Rutgers Half goes, my running friends and I are gonna sit down, probably sometime in mid-May, and decide if we really wanna move forward with this.  I’d say right now it’s about a 75% ‘yes’… or you can just come to hang out w/ us, cheer us on and hit Vegas 🙂

So this posts long enough – thank you all for reading… I do appreciate it.  🙂

AND DAMMIT – HIT ME UP IF YOU WANNA DO ANY OF THESE THINGS WITH MY FRIENDS AND I…