Setting goals (and achieving them)!

In the past year, I've realized that I'm a far more productive person when I have a set goal and work toward achieving it. I know that sounds pretty hokey and kinda like "duh!", but it's really true.

This past week was a good week for meeting goals. On Thursday, my weight hit 143.8 lbs., which doesn't sound incredibly awesome except for the fact that I've now lost 60 lbs. I was pretty ecstatic Thursday because it's taken me a very long time to go from losing 50 lbs. to losing 60 lbs. I'm also now within a healthy weight range for my height. I think the last time that happened I was probably 8 years old. Now I've got 20 lbs. to go and it will probably take a long time to get there, but so be it! I'm not 100% sure yet if 125 lbs. (technically, 124.4 lbs.) will be my final resting place. Because I'm now concentrating so much on becoming a strong runner, I know that the lighter (and stronger) I am, the faster I'll be able to go. Distance running chicks are super thin (I've started following a lot of different women's running blogs, so now I'm getting a sense of what I really need to do to improve.) Truly, I think 115 lbs. would probably be an ideal running weight for my height. So, I guess we'll just have to see. My plan is to get to 124.4 lbs. and then reevaluate.

Today, I decided to "woman-up," go outside, and brave the ice and snow. We got between 5-6 inches at our house with the top layer being a very solid sheet of ice and today was an absolutely gorgeous day. Not a cloud in the sky. It was cold, but because of all the snow it was so bright that it didn't feel too bad. There was also very little wind! So, I decided to head out and do this weekend's long run. I had spent all week being really annoyed that my run was going to messed up by the weather. Friday night as I was laying in bed with the snow swirling outside, I decided that I was going to do everything I possibly could to do my run on Sunday. I mean, really, people in Boston and Michigan and Denver and Minnesota still run when there's snow, and I am not one to be outdone by a bunch of non-Southerners!

So, I woke up this morning, ate my bowl of steel-cut oatmeal (with Craisins and pecans) and my bowl of Boston Creme Pie Yoplait and then let it digest for an hour and a half. Then around 11:30, I put on my layers, laced up my shoes, and headed out into the elements for my 9.5 miles. Surprisingly, the run was pretty easy. It didn't get bad until the last mile when parts of the road were getting really slushy. I left our 'hood and headed east on Old Faison Road, turned south on Bethlehem Road, then eventually took a right on Grasshopper Road, then a left on Poole Road, and then a right on Hodge Road, which took me back to Old Faison Road. I also had to run a little bit on Clifton Road (a deadend off of Old Faison) and then a little bit past our house to get my 9.5 miles in, but I did it, I didn't stop, I didn't fall, and I didn't die! (Here's the Garmin map of the run: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/23652581). It was by no means fast (1:55:33 at 12:09 min/mile), but I'm OK with that since I was on a sheet of snow and ice the entire time and I was purposely being cautious because I absolutely didn't want to fall. I'm just super proud of myself that I did it! (My dad and Clay also had long, cold, windy runs today. Dad did 10 miles from Morehead City to Fort Macon and back and Clay rocked out 8.5 miles at a 7:39/pace!! I am so proud of them!)

My legs felt so funny when I stopped running. It was like they had formed a memory of the running movement and it was hard getting my brain to tell them to walk. So weird. When I came back in, I had a granola bar and a huge glass of soymilk and then stretched for a long, long time! After a shower, lots of water, and a Zone bar (~200 calorie lunch-type bar), I laid down on the bed for a long time and just stretched out my legs. It felt SO good. Brian and I ventured out for a super early dinner and I had a hearty portion of salmon with creamed spinach on the side and a yummy salad. I was under no impression that the creamed spinach was good for me, but it tasted SO good! :-)

Speaking of exciting running news, Brian just figured out that our hotel in Queens this weekend is super close (one block away!) to Flushing Meadows Corona Park, which is a really nice and HUGE (1255 acres) park that hosted the 1939 and 1964 World's Fairs. Here is the ABSOLUTE BEST PART about it. The park was built over an old swamp and ash heap site that was what Fitzgerald called "The Valley of the Ashes" in The Great Gatsby. I am SO excited to be able to run in the Valley of the Ashes!!! Brian and I always joke about it and Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, so to be able to go there is a dream come true for this English major!!

And to bring this post full circle, I've also set a new goal for myself. I've been really frustrated with myself and my lack of reading lately and I've always been annoyed that I haven't read too many classics. So, my new goal is to complete the BBC Top 100 Book List in the next few years. I've read some of the books before, but I think I am going to reread most of them again because I'm really bad at remembering them! I'm starting my list off with The Catcher in the Rye in honor of J.D. Salinger's death. Here's the complete list: http://www.gribblenation.com/personal/laura/BBC_Book_List.pdf

The ones in bold I'm not going to reread because I've read them pretty recently and remember them (Lord of the Rings series; Harry Potter series; The Great Gatsby; The DaVinci Code; The Handmaid's Tale; Lolita; Memoirs of a Geisha; and The Lovely Bones). I am really excited to have good, diverse book list to conquer. I plan to blog a little bit about each book and what I thought of it. Some of them will be a challenge (Complete Works of Shakespeare and the Bible?)! Should be fun!! Oh yeah, and I'm not reading them in any order!

Fire & Ice (& Rain)

Rain

On Thursday night I was in a wreck. Fortunately, I'm OK, my car is OK, and no one else was involved. It was rainy and generally gross and I over corrected on a curve (twice), twisted my car around, plowed through some lady's mailbox, and ended up in 8 inches of mud and hay!

I was on Fox Rd. coming from my dentist's office to the Honda dealership on Capital to meet Brian to drop off my car for an inspection, oil change, and some other work. I drew a picture of the whole thing on Photoshop so that you can get a feel for what happened. The red line is the path my car took and the blue line is the mail box I plowed through:

I'm super, duper lucky that no other cars were coming because I definitely crossed over into the other lane before I jerked back. When my car finally stopped, I had landed in this lady's newly grass-seeded front yard in 8 inches of mud and hay. It was GROSS, but I'm really lucky that the mud slowed down my car or I probably would have hit a tree. I'm also really lucky that I went clear across her driveway and not over the huge ditch that probably would have sent my car airborn.

Right after it happened, I immediately called Brian who was pretty close nearby and two people stopped to make sure I was OK. One of the people who stopped was the guy named German (he's Hispanic, so it's pronounced Herman) and he was super, super nice. He stayed with me until Brian got there and then helped Brian get my car out of the mud.

After the car was out, we went in to me the lady who owns the property and it turns out that she owns an African-American beauty shop and had all these customers in there. They were all very nice, but it was incredibly evident that Brian and I are extremely white. It was so out of a comedy movie!

One of the customers has a husband who does yard work and other handy work, so he came over and talked with Brian and he agreed to fix her yard and put in a new mailbox, so all we had to do was cut her a check for parts and labor. Yay, for small miracles.

After we got settled up, Brian was able to drive my car to the Honda place, where, luckily, we already had an appointment scheduled! Turns out, the only issue with the car was that the alignment was out of whack and the bump stops and the right strut needed to be replaced. I have no idea what these things are either.

It also passed inspection, had a bunch of other already-scheduled work done, got an oil change, and had the A/C fixed! My A/C and heat have been broken since August 2008! But, I've been too lazy to go get it fixed! But, now, all is well! :-) So hopefully, if nothing catastrophic happens, my car should be in good shape for the next couple of years. Our goal is to not have to replace my car until we get the new car paid off. No thank you to having two car payments at the same time!!

Fire

After we picked up my car today, we went to Lowe's to pick up a few things. We finally got around to buying a firesafe. It's not like we really have anything really valuable to put in one (none of grandma's old pearls or anything like that), but we did want to have our super important paperwork protected in case of a fire or something like that.

As I was putting the stuff in it tonight, I started thinking about the differences between a fire safe and a safe deposit box at the bank. I'm not really one for conspiracies or anything like that, but I can't imagine paying to have our stuff "imprisoned" in some box at some bank that you can only access at the most inaccessible hours known to man. Maybe I'm foolish and maybe I'll regret it if our house burns down and the fire safe doesn't do what it's supposed to do, but at least I'm the most comfortable with the decision. Who knows?

So, anyway, this is the safe we got; it's not too big, but it should be just right for what we need it for:

Ice

While we were at Lowe's, we also bought a freezer to put in the garage. As you can see from the following pictorial representation, our regular freezer is packed to the hilt and it is not uncommon for something to fall out on your foot when you open it:

The new one is going to be delivered by Lowe's on Sunday (for free!!). We were originally going to get a chest freezer, but as we looked at all the ones available, we realized that a chest would be really impractical and it would be super hard for us to get to the stuff in the bottom, so we decided to get a regular freezer:

I am so, so, so excited about it arriving. It will be incredibly nice to be able to buy stuff when it's on sale and have enough space to freeze it!

Midget Feet

So, for Christmas, mom and dad gave me and Callison a picture frame and plaque with our bronzed baby shoes. Because Callie and I both wore the same sets of shoes, mom decided to give me the smaller set because I have the smaller feet. Here we are simultaneously opening our gifts:

As you can tell, I was excited. (My mom has the same exact type thing of her baby shoes.)

When I got back to Raleigh, I took one of my baby pictures to Kinko's and got it sized correctly for the picture frame. This was my final result (via my camera phone):

Pretty cute, huh? :-)

So, anyway, it was an awesome gift, but it should have been a portent!

A few days after Christmas while in Morehead City, I went to my parents' local running shoes store. This is the only place I buy running shoes (and running socks) because I really like the people there and they have all my information in their little computer.

So, we roll up, give the guy my info, and he brings out their new model, super-duper, overpronation running shoes that are just right for my feet.

Size 7.5.

I stand up, go for a little in-store jog and the guy does the little toe mashing deal and goes "Whoa! Those babies are too big!"

So they go back and get some 7s.

More toe mashing. Still too big.

Then he puts me barefoot into the little cold metal measuring device.

Size 6.

No, I'm not kidding.

So he puts me in the 6s and does more toe mashing and sends me outside to run up and down the strip mall. (I did this for each pair of shoes I tried on and I'm pretty sure the people in the clothing store next door laughed at me each time I jogged by.)

The shoes are perfect. I'm like gliding. It's completely crazy. Sized exactly right.

While I'm running outside like a fool, my parents are talking to the shoe guy and evidently when you lose weight, you also lose weight in your feet. I had NO idea. Makes sense, but who would have thought? I've been running in the new shoes for the past few weeks and I haven't tripped over my feet once. Completely crazy. Now that I think about it, I did used to trip over the extra mesh at the end of my toes before!

So, just in case you're curious, here are my new shoes! Aren't they pretty?!?

And the sucky thing is that now I have to buy running socks for people with feet sized 4-6.5. I figure that when I lose the last 20 lbs., I might be able to fit back in my bronzed shoes!!

Half Marathon Training

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I'm training for a half marathon. The race is the Raleigh Rocks Half-Marathon and it's March 27, 2010. I registered for it last week, so it's now for real (although I started training for it back in December).

My dad also registered for the race last week. Unfortunately, it's going cost him $354.95 to run it (whereas, it only costs me $54.95).

It's more expensive to run it if you're old.

HAHA. Just kidding. My dad signed up for the race and then realized that the date of the race was the same date that he and my mom were scheduled to fly back from Florida where they are going to the Braves' spring training. So, they changed the dates of their trip, but because they were using frequent flyer miles it costs $150/ticket to change the flights.

If that's not dedication to running, I don't know what is!!!! :-)

We're very excited about the race and we've been lucky enough to do two of our long runs at the same time because I've been down here visiting.

Over Christmas, our training run was 6.5 miles, so we decided to run from Cape Carteret to Swansboro and then back to Cape Carteret (http://bit.ly/8x4blz). This was a crazy day to run. It was 25° with an 8° wind chill! Some of the wind gusts were so insane that I thought I was going to blow away! We both did pretty well despite the conditions. I averaged 11:17 splits and dad averaged 9:38.

Yesterday, our training run was 8 miles. (The general gist is long runs every other weekend, increasing by 1-1.5 miles each time.) So we decided to run from Cape Carteret over through Emerald Isle and then back to Cape Carteret (http://bit.ly/61Hq67). I averaged 10:37 splits and dad averaged 9:31. Not too shabby!

Yesterday's run was pretty much amazing. The weather was PERFECT! It was about 63° with little-to-no wind and some cloud cover. It was absolutely beautiful running the huge bridge across Bogue Sound and there's a really nice greenway through Emerald Isle. Both of us felt fantastic. I, legitimately, could have fun 10 miles yesterday. Everything just felt super smooth and excellent.

The next long run will be 9.5 miles on January 30.

I am even more excited for the half-marathon now. Completely inspired. It's so much fun to set a goal and work toward it.

If everything goes well with the half then I think we're looking at the Disney World Marathon in January 2011 (me, dad, and my friends Adam and Maggie).

Christmas, travels, etc.

After all of the craziness that we had with rushing off to Cleveland, it was really nice to have a pretty low-key, relaxing Christmas. We spent Christmas in Knightdale and then the week after Christmas at my parents' house in Ocean.

Brian had to work for most of Christmas Eve, so after he got off work, we headed over to his parents' house, ate some dinner, and hung out over there until Midnight Mass, which, contrary to Midnight Mass at the Vatican, actually started at midnight. Brian's mom played handbells and sang in the choir, so it was fun to see all of her performances. We got home around 2:30 a.m. and immediately crashed in bed.

We were planning to head over to the LeBlancs around 10 a.m., so when my alarm went off at 9 a.m., my first thought was total panic when I realized that we had forgotten to start the bread machine (we were making bread to have with our Christmas feast). FORTUNATELY, my loving husband had realized that we had forgotten the bread around 7 a.m. when he got up with Gatsby and had started the bread machine then. Whew...Christmas crisis averted! :-)

Christmas day was lots of fun and pretty relaxing. After we ate dinner, we went back to the house and picked Gatsby up and took him back over with us. This was the second time that we have taken him over there and he did really well this time. He made friends with Mike (who he was very scared of before) and spent the night sniffing out everything in their house while we played Trivial Pursuit. The highlight of the LeBlanc Christmas was that we got a very sweet HDTV to put in our loft. It's so nice (for me) for Brian to be able to go upstairs and watch his hockey games upstairs in HD! ;-)

The Sunday after Christmas we packed up the Civic with like 11 thousand tons worth of stuff and headed to mom and dad's for the week. We had a fantastic week! I spent a lot of time transferring our old home videos to DVD, which takes a long time because (1) we have a ton of home videos and (2) you have to play each one in its entirety. I think I did like 25 of them over the week and I'm still not done. I LOVE watching our old videos because Callie and I were the cutest kids ever and we have so many funny things captured on video.

The highlight of my Christmas was getting my Garmin Forerunner 305, which is a very pimp, wrist-top GPS device that tracks your runs. It keeps track of your distance, heart rate, calories, and a million other things and then let's you upload it to your computer and track your progress on Google Maps. The online component creates RSS feeds of your data, which I've added to the right column of the blog, in case anyone cares. If anyone REALLY cares, you can also just subscribe to the RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/GarminConnect-LSLeBlanc82. (PS: I know that no one else cares but me and my dad, but I like to pretend that others do.) :-)

Our Christmas pics are up on Picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/lsleblanc82/Christmas2009 (the first few are Christmas with my dad's mom and sister in Raleigh and then the rest are at my parents' house in Ocean).

While we were there, my dad got a new handgun (a Springfield Armory 1911 .45 caliber), so we went to the gun range twice. Shooting that gun is SO much fun. It's heavier than his other ones, so you can be really accurate. We were all fantastic shots with that gun--even Clay, which is like a miracle! ;-)

We took a few pictures at the gun range in Jacksonville that are up on Picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/lsleblanc82/ShootingInJacksonville. (Brian didn't go shooting with us because he was at Harris Teeter with mom. I'm not kidding.)

I'm off work for MLK Jr. Day, so I came back down to my parents' house for the long weekend. Because I work remotely on Fridays, I was able to leave Thursday right after work and work down here on Friday. (A very nice perk!) We've had a nice weekend with lots of yummy food and exercise. Sushi is for dinner tonight!!

Our other exciting news is that Brian and I are going to New York City the first weekend in February. Brian is going to cover a Canes/Islanders game, so I'm going to tag along and we're going to do the touristy NYC things. I've only been to NYC a few times and only as drive (or fly) throughs. Never an actual visit. I AM SO EXCITED! We're going to drive to Baltimore after work on Thursday night and then we'll only have about 3 hours to NYC on Friday morning. Our anticipated itinerary is as follows:

• Friday night: dinner and Broadway
• Saturday: touristy shopping, like visiting Macy's, FAO Schwartz, etc.
• Saturday night: Brian to the hockey game and Laura shopping at a mall on Long Island
• Sunday: NYC touristy stuff (Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, bus tour, and maybe a tour of Radio City Music Hall)

I'm planning to take lots of pictures and do a full blog report when we get back. (I'm trying to remember to blog more!)