Rad Marathon Training

I've been so busy being RAD and doing summer activities that I've been slacking on the blog again.  When I say being RAD, I'm not being full of myself, I'm merely referencing the Color Me Rad run I did this past weekend.  Last year I did the Color Run, which was basically the same race.  The only difference, besides location, was the efficiency of the race.  Last year, the parking for the race was far enough away that people needed to be bused to and from the parking lot.  Unfortunately, there was a major accident on 495 that day, which ended up holding up traffic for hours.  A lot of people spent more time waiting for the bus than they did running the race, myself included.  So while the race was fun, I wasn't really interested in going back to that particular course again.  Color Me Rad was in Brockton and there were no parking or traffic issues.  We got in, we ran, had some fun, and left.  Since we ran as a team, and every team needs a theme, we decided to run as Jem and the Holograms.  I must say, we looked fantastic.  People were hating all over the place.  We started off nice and clean but by the end, we were hardly recognizable.  It was a good time though and I'd definitely do it again next year.
Marathon training is coming along.  I don't really know if it's going great, or terribly.  We did 13.1 last night, just over 2 hours, but I wasn't too happy by the end.  My entire lower body was sore.  I honestly had a moment of panic in wondering how I can possibly run another 13.1 after that, when I felt like I couldn't possibly take another step at the end.  Today, in an effort to get used to running on tired legs, I went out for a 6 mile run.  But I went at 1 pm, which was possibly the worst choice, as the weather was hot and humid, and the sun was out.  Nevertheless, I made it 5 before I decided it was best if I walked the final mile.  The 5 took me about 44 minutes.  Not bad I suppose. Next weekend our long run ups to 15, so I need to mentally prepare for that.  I think I also need to figure out a fuel for the middle of the run. The sports beans are good, but I feel like they're not cutting it for what I need.  Burning sugar and carbs isn't going to be enough.  I need to be able to sustain the muscle power for the other half. So any suggestions on that would be helpful.
The Wednesday night runs are still going strong.  We've taken to having a little party in the parking lot afterwards, usually margs and chips. Don't knock it til you try it, it's fun, cheap, and a nice way to see everyone for a little bit.  Ryan also bought me a Garmin Forerunner 10 GPS watch.  I'm pretty pumped about it, because I was getting sick of using my phone for everything.  I knew I'd need something for the marathon anyways, because I didn't want to use my phone and drain the battery.  I'd prefer to have the battery at least halfway charged, in case of emergency.  I love the watch and it's been great, but I did notice that I've already started a new habit that I need to break.  When I know I'm getting close to the last mile, I can't help but keep looking at the watch every few seconds and watching the time tick away.  That's going to make everything seem so much harder, so I really need to stop.  If you want to view my new routes, you can check me out on Garmin connect, awwie15.  Now you're all caught up, so here are some pics.  Enjoy.

Wednesday nigh parking lot party

Enjoying our parking lot party

Before. So clean

Porta-potty shot, a race pre-req.

After

I was caught mid-color bombing!

I'm melting

It's too hot.  To run, to move, for life in general, it's just too hot.  There are a lot of times in my life where I dream about living in Louisiana.  Today is not one of them.  Currently my living room temperature is at 89 degrees.  Oh sure, I have the windows open and the curtains closed to block out the sun but that's not helping at all.  Yes, there's also a fan on.  You might wonder if I have air conditioning.  I do.  So why not use it? Well, it's been in the 90s for the past 13 days here. That's not a guess either, that's an accurate count.  13 straight days of a/c can do a number on your electric bill.  So I'm trying to conserve energy.  (Save money, whatever) But it's just so HOT.
 Part of it is the humidity.  Right now it's 89 and feels like 93.  I, for one, am not impressed.  I don't mind the heat, and I really do enjoy the Southern lifestyle going on right now.  But it's killer for running.  I'm stuck in a rut of not wanting to run because it's just too hot, and needing to keep on top of things for my marathon training.  What's a person to do? Tonight I have the run in the woods and I'm already dreading that.  Yes, I still have four hours to go, and yes I'm already praying that a magical rainstorm blows in and cools everything down by 20 degrees.  How can I possibly get ready for a marathon if I can't even get a short run in during the week?  I still haven't made it past 13 miles and I really need to start tacking on extras.  I think by September I should be in the 20s.  No, scratch that. I HAVE to be in the 20s.  I'll never make it 26.2 in October if I'm not up to at least 22 in September.  Writing this out makes it even worse.  In the words of Charlie Brown, AUGH

Sunday, Busy Sunday: or, The Time I Crafted a Brooch Bouquet and it Turned Out Awesome!

Don't worry, I'll start with the running, since that's the deal and all. But, mostly, this is going to be about my bouquet and how I made it, so if you're here for my running stats, you'll only need these first few sentences.  It was hot and humid today, even at 8 a.m.  We went for a 9 mile run and it was pretty awful.  If you want the deets, you can check out my mapmyrun for the info.  Spoiler alert: my fastest was a 9:14, my slowest was an 11:13. I told you it was miserable.  

And now for something completely different!

My bouquet! My fabulous, gorgeous, awesome bouquet of brooches and other fancy jewelry, the idea of which I got on none other than the all powerful Pinterest.  I've been going back and forth on what to do about the flowers for the wedding.  Personally, I don't really see the need to spend a ton of money on a bunch of flowers that will wilt and die.  "Oh, but you could dry them out," says everyone ever who I talk to.  But let's be realistic here.  I don't know how, nor do I have the time or concern to attempt to learn or try to dry out a bouquet.  Plus all the flowers I liked were exotic and therefore ridiculously overpriced, and I mean, come on, budget, hello!  Since I've been cruising the wedding section on Pinterest and seeing all those brooch bouquets, I decided to create one of my own.  (See previous post for more details about the brooches.)  Yesterday I went to a couple of estate and yard sales with some friends of mine and we found some pretty nice stuff.  By Saturday night, I had all my brooches wired and ready to be wrapped. By 3:00 today, I had my bouquet together.  Sure, I have no idea where I'm going to store it for the next 9 months, but that's a problem for future me.  

So you might be wondering how a person who started this project on a Monday was able to finish it in under a week.  Well I'll tell you; pure and simple, not being too picky.  If you Google DIY bouquets, you'll find a lot of ideas, tips, and stories.  I found a common theme of people having to comb through tons of shops and spending 100s of dollars on brooches.  Let me tell you right now, if you are willing to accept that you don't need a 100% matching color scheme bouquet, you'll get a lot further.  Oh, and thrift shops, estate sales, and especially the clearance stickers at Michael's should become your new favorite things.  But back to not being picky.  Our color scheme is yellow, blue, and gray.  However, I wasn't going to limit myself to finding only yellow, blue, or gray brooches.  I did look for those colors first, and I did try to make sure I had enough for that to be the most common color scheme in the bouquet though.  Here's what I did, that really worked well, and it saved a ton of money.  First, I checked the Christmas Tree Shop.  For those of you who don't have one of those, it's basically a giant bargain store, think along the lines of Ocean State Job Lot, Big Lots, etc, except for some reason, it seems a whole lot cleaner inside.  I got lucky and apparently blue and yellow are in right now, because they had a ton of earrings in both colors.  The best part is, each set was only $1.99.  I was able to get 20 pieces for $10.  Right off the bat, I am a money saving queen, as you can clearly tell.  After I struck out at Target, Ocean State, and Marshalls, I went over to Michael's.  Lo and behold! They have obviously learned to cash in on the brooch business while it's hot because they had an entire wall of brooches and pendants, right up front in the jewelry making section.  I will warn you that many of them are at least $4.99, but once again I managed to find the perfect items on clearance for under $2.00.  THEN, I got a 40% off coupon, so I went back to buy the $4.99 brooch that I really liked, still keeping it fairly low in cost.  I know, I know, no one bargain shops like I do.  Lest you think I'm lying, I also got a giant ziplock gallon sized bag of brooches and earrings for $45.  I used half of it.  Definitely worth far more than I paid, especially if you break it down per item.  Basically, what I'm saying is, you can easily keep your cost down and find pieces that are under $2.00.  Your bouquet doesn't have to be $700 like they charge on Etsy.  Sometimes, you can get a good deal on Ebay, but as a warning, a lot of the lots and even the individual pins are WAY overpriced.

So, now you know how to get your brooches.  Or maybe you already have some, and you came here to find out how to put them together.  When I started, I saw two different methods.  The first method required wrapping floral wire around each individual piece and twisting that into a stem.  The second method also involved floral wire, though I did see someone use pins, and required you to stick the wire wrapped brooch into a styrofoam ball.  Wrapping wire seemed like a lot of work so I was pretty interested in the styrofoam ball approach.  What I couldn't find was a comparison.  What looked better? Which worked? Did anything go wrong with either method? So, I did what any normal person would do, and I tried both methods.  

First, I started with the styrofoam ball.  The directions said to paint it, so I did.  Or rather, I watched the paint slide all around the surface.  So, after a trip back to the store to purchase a non-floral arrangement styrofoam ball, one that is clearly porous, I tried again.  This time, the paint stuck, but it did take a while for it to absorb.  There was also the issue of the size of the ball.  4", 6", half of an 8" sphere, there were so many ideas online. I tried a half of a 6" and a 4.5".  Neither looked good.  It was just too hard to fill all the gaps, you could hear all the brooches clinking together, and let me tell you, it is damn hard to get floral wire into a styrofoam ball.  Don't even BOTHER with the floral ball.  The type that's smooth and hard and you can't poke a finger into it and looks like it's made of super packed styrofoam.  You'll be there all day trying to get your wires in.  

After the styrofoam balls didn't work out, I did indeed spend the time wrapping the wires.  Some people said it was a lot of work, and it was.  There's no way out of that.  However, I wouldn't go crazy trying to find the 20 gauge floral wire that everyone seemed to use.  I had a ton of 24 gauge wire left over from previous wreath crafts, in gold and red.  I saw no need to go out and buy more in green.  Instead, I used what I had and then covered that in green floral tape.  Some brooches required more wire than others, just to hold it up, but it really didn't take that long.  Just a few nights.  If you can get some friends in on your crafting, you can have it done in no time.  

When I had my wire stems made, I wrapped them in green sticky floral tape, which was gross.  It's double sided and leaves everything sticky, but it covered the wires and made them look more stem like, so I suppose I would keep that step.  Towards the end, I got a little sick of wrapping wires, so I cheated just a little bit. I cut off the backs of the small earrings and hot glued them into a small clump of fake hydrangeas I had.  A tip on wire wrapping: some of the pieces don't have backs or clips to wrap the wire around. I found that many of them did have small holes that you could poke the wires through and then meet around behind.  Even if the piece is silver or gold and the wire is red or green, it's not noticeable in the end. Or, you can hot glue the wire to the back, if you have the glue gun out anyways.
Once I had everything wrapped and ready, I took my clump of fake flowers and used that as my exact middle.  Then I started adding in the big brooches.  To keep everything together, I wrapped up the add-ons in green duct tape every few pieces.  I was also concerned about my bouquet rounding out too soon.  Luckily, I had a perfect size piece of pipe in my basement, so I stuck my main middle piece through that, and then added more on the outside.  This kept the top a little bit flatter and a little bit wider.  You can't see the pipe at all, and I just continued duct taping things on as I went.  In the end, it came out pretty awesome, and I love it.  

So let's recap:

Don't be too picky.

It doesn't have to be expensive OR take forever, especially if it's yard sale season.

Styrofoam vs. wire stems, I say wire stems all the way, the styrofoam is tricky.

Have fun.

Here's some pictures and a list of things you might need.

- floral wire: 24 gauge works fine, but you can go higher. The smaller the number, the fatter the wire

- pliers that cut wire

- floral tape

- duct tape

- a piece of pipe (though I'm fairly certain you could use a toilet paper roll, it was about the same size and not nearly as heavy)

- hot glue (not necessary, but helpful)

- time

hot glued hydrangea

my piece of pipe with some green to be more stem like

the flowers, ready to go

TA-DA!

Another fabulous view.  I plan to wrap the stem in ribbon soon.

Fabulous weather and sweet deals!

The ridiculous humidity finally took a break and so today was a lovely day for a run.  Unfortunately,  I did not go for a run.  I did, however, go for a 3 mile dog walk with both puppies.  We went for a faster than leisurely walk through Lynn Woods.  Partly it was faster than leisurely because I wanted to get some exercise in some form, and partly it was because we saw another dog  coming towards us  so I had to turn back and out walk that person and her dog.  I must say, having Nala certainly adds a bit of cardio to basically any walk you go on, whether you want it to or not, so there's that going for her.
During our walk I could feel tons of little rocks poking into my feet, rocks stuck into the bottoms of my climacools.  When I got home, I thought you might appreciate a picture of my shoes, just to see what I'm talking about.  Listen, these shoes are pretty great, but I could really do without the rocks.

Here are the bottoms of my shoes.  If you look at the heels, you can clearly see rocks stuck in between each flexy piece.

This is the pile of rocks I then pulled out of the bottoms of the shoes. No joke.  It's definitely no fun walking/running with all that stuck in the bottoms of your feet, poking into your heels.

I did do a little bit of running in the walk, just a few quick runs up hills.  I have a long night of making brooch flowers, so I wanted the dogs to be tired and I wanted to feel like I got some type of a workout before I sat around.  Speaking of brooch flowers, today my mom and I went exploring the thrift and antique shops in Salem to see what we could find.  There were a lot of nice brooches at the shops, and a lot of not so nice price tags to go with them.  But then I found this.

OH YEA! This is exactly what you think it is.  A giant ziplock bag full of brooches, necklaces, and assorted clip-on earrings.  Trust me when I tell you it was a fantastic price.  So, this was a nice star even though it was basically the only major score we got.  My mom bought a few pairs of earrings we found at another jeweler, but other than that, no awesome brooches to brag about.  I did get some green ones off ebay, which I intend to use as the lower base, to blend with the leaves that I may or may not be using.  I figured I could resell all the extra jewelry from that big bag up there to the next person who might need something for their bouquet, when the time comes.  Tomorrow, I'm going to an estate sale and really hoping that there is some pretty awesome brooches there too.  If not, then I think I'll change my bouquet into an earring and brooch bouquet.  I really don't mind have a ton of smaller pieces if I can't find enough large pieces.  We'll see what happens, but in the meantime, here's some more pictures of the assorted jewelry pieces I have so far.

These are the green ones and the ones I chose from the giant bag.

These are the larger ones that I got from Michael's, wired and wrapped, ready for bouquet making!

A question about weddings, a little off topic

     I've been working on a brooch bouquet and it's actually coming along nicely.  I read a lot of the diy tips on the various websites before I started, which I highly recommend.  Here's my problem.  I tried both the floral wire and Styrofoam ball method and cannot decide which one I like better! The floral wire gave it a more flowery type feel, but after much thought, I don't think I want to back it up with flowers, I really just want the brooches.  It seems like a lot of those who went the floral wire method used a base of fake flowers as well.
    The Styrofoam ball makes it a lot easier to stick everything in, but I'm concerned about some of the brooches coming loose and falling off.  So, what I want to know is, for anyone that has made a brooch bouquet, did you try both methods AND which method did you find worked best?  For the life of me, I cannot find any comparisons of the two, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

     For those of you who are reading this to follow my running, I ran 6 miles on Monday and 6 in the woods yesterday, and both were miserable due to humidity.  So there's that for you.

MCM

My big goal this year (even though it would have been 2014 technically) was to run the Walt Disney World marathon.   Then the engagement happened.  Now instead of paying for runs, I'm saving all my money for different wedding costs.  Which is completely fine with me, of the two, I'd rather have a wedding over the marathon. A few of my running buddies managed to get into the Marine Corps Marathon this year before it sold out (in 2 hours).  So those four crazy kids are running that in October, and training starts this week.  Exciting stuff, I know.
Monday morning though, I got a text from Cynthia.  She's been working on finding me a bib transfer for the MCM and I can honestly say, I didn't think it was going to happen.  BUT IT DID.  That's right, she found one.  DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS!?!?!?!?  I'm sure you do, but in case you didn't quite follow, it means I am now running the Marine Corps Marathon October 27, 2013.  So, instead of January 2014, I have to be ready by October 2013.  Maybe that doesn't seem like a big deal, but when it comes to long distance running, a couple of months can be make or break.
I know I can do a half marathon.  I know I can run 26 miles spread out over the course of a week. What I don't know is how I'm going to run 26.2 miles at one time.  Really what I mean is, I don't know how I'm going to run 26.2 miles without having to stop for potty breaks or having to walk it. Yes, yes, I know, plenty of people walk parts of a marathon.  But I hate walking when I'm running.  It always seems like I can't run as fast once I stop.  Also, running for 4+ hours seems a bit nuts, even to me.  What does one do to stay entertained the entire time? Oh sure, there will be spectators and the likes, but is it really enough for 4 hours?  At least in Disney World I felt like there would be plenty of scenery to enjoy.  In Washington D.C. though?  There are the monuments but after that, what else is there?  Where does this marathon even go? Why didn't I think of any of this before I agreed to this?
Apparently I have a lot of questions.  Time to do some research.