Get Ready, Get Sweaty!

Some of the worst things about getting back from a week long vacation include:

-the insane credit card bill that even when I go over it closely proves was all me.
-buying/drinking whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. More eyeliner and beer for breakfast? Sure thing!
-trying to reduce calories down from the high school linebacker-style consumption I managed last week. Seriously, one day I hit daily calorific intake before I finished breakfast.
-getting back into a running schedule after a week off...feels like starting over.

But you know what helps offset the post-vacation blues? Coming home to this!!!

Sooooo much better than a bill!

HURRAY! My snappy Lululemon shorts had arrived while I was away!  And how cool is the shipping paper??

When I eagerly tore that off, there was ANOTHER cool pattern underneath on a zippered thing resembling a giant pencil crayon case.

Not sure what to use it for yet, but trust me, it'll be something cool.

OMG so much better than white.

When I opened that, the shorts were revealed in all their stripy glory. Hurray! They look just as good in real life as they did online.  Plus, they fit great!!!

No point of reference, but trust me here, they are TINY.

Wait...let me clarify. They are not too tight or too baggy, and they are comfy as heck. But, let me be clear, they have a TWO INCH INSEAM. You know what that means? Like, what it means with regard to PANTS? Well, the tag for the pants hangs 3 inches below the hem of the shorts. They are so short they require built in underpants. They are so short the underwear I was wearing when I tried them on was actually clearly visible above and below the shorts. I'm no seamstress, but I bet less than half a meter of fabric was used in their construction. And I can assure you they will NEVER see the light of day outside in Calgary. But I AM pretty excited to wear them on runs in other countries...I will be in Jamaica next month, so they won't have to wait too long to see the light of day.

Just in time too...Happy June 3......the Seawheeze Training Program kicks off today! And while I don't have a snappy iphone that I can download their awesome app onto, I am still able to follow along oldskool on the web!  

Day 1 started out with Vancouver-style rain at 5am which seemed fitting since the race will be there too. Undeterred, Princess Chris and I met at 530am and did the 50 minute run on the schedule and cheered as we checked it off on the app. Kind of rough after a few weeks off, plus the rain didn't make it easy to get up and out of the house, but it still beats the treadmill!

Yoga tomorrow...hurray!

Shoes + Disney = AWESOME

Now, I know I've written of my love of shoes before, but I think this bears repeating. I LOVE SHOES. It's usually the first part of someone's outfit I notice. I have shoes in my garage, storage room, front hall closet, spare room closet, linen closet, bedroom closet and in my filing cabinet at work. Obviously, if I could stand it I would always wear 3 inch heels (hey, is only way I don't have stumpy elephant legs, plus it lowers my BMI into the normal range, hahaha!) but I can't last all day even in the comfiest of heels. Oh, plus I run kind of a lot, and with a "heavy footfall", which I think is the running store saleperson's nice way of saying "like a fat kid", but I'll stick with the scientific term, heh. So when I find a good pair of running shoes, it's time to shout it from the rooftops...errr....Internet.

This year, Disney teamed up with New Balance to create a pair of Mickey and Minnie inspired running shoes for their RunDisney program. The men's shoe is based on Mickey in his classic tuxedo and the ladies Minnie shoe draws from Minnie's polka dot dress and yellow heels look of yesteryear. As soon as I discovered they existed, I was smitten! Behold how cute they are!!!

Mickey on the left, Minnie on the right...LOVE THEM!

So it was very scary to further read these babies were limited edition and only available at Run Disney expos. How handy that I was heading to one of those in a few weeks! And even handier that I have giant man feet and might be able to scoop up a pair of men's shoes at a women's run! Never had I been so excited to have big feet...with any luck, there wouldn't be many ogres registered in the run who might also be interested in the size 11 women's shoe because we weren't going to be able to be at the expo when it opened.

Long story short, we waited in line for probably 20 minutes to get a pair to try on as people around us lamented the sizes they were already sold out of. Like the clever princesses we are, we researched the model # of this shoe and tried them on here at home ahead of time so we knew just what size to ask for. I had decided I liked the Mickey ones better for running, but quickly got caught up in the hype at the expo and asked for both gender shoes. We waited with baited breath as they searched....and returned with boxes of shoes!!!! I was able to snag both a Mickey and a Minnie thanks to my big ol' feet, but Christi being the daintier princess was sadly only able to get a pair of Minnie shoes. Nonetheless, we fought off the women desperate to grab our shoes if we didn't want them (seriously, this shoe buying experience was cutthroat! I could NOT let those Minnies go) and gleefully bought our shoes before heading over to....pick up our race packs. That's right, we went for shoes before checking in for the race, we were already hours late! 

Now, the first rule of running a half marathon is don't talk about Fight Club  don't wear new ANYTHING on race day. Not headband, shoes, pants, socks, anything you haven't tested for chafing first. But Christi decided her shoes matched her Snow White dress perfectly and decided to throw caution to the wind and wore her brand new shoes on the race....

In 21K and over 22000 runners, we didn't see a single other person wearing these shoes.

But GUESS WHAT?!

She loved 'em! No problems at all and she looked every bit the princess at the finish line in her gorgeous new shoes!  A few blisters, but she always gets them after a half and these were way less problems than she's had in the past with tried and tested shoes. Don't try this at home folks, it was a Disney Miracle!

The second miracle is that I've now worn my Minnie shoes for a 6K and a 5K this week...both on the treadmill thanks to the dump of snow we got on the weekend, but I also love them! I figured I would use them for crosstraining instead of running, but they matched my outfit better those days. They are comfortable, well fitted and have just the right amount of support I need, which I wasn't sure of the first time I tried them on. Plus anytime I started getting annoyed with the treadmill, I just looked down at my feet and felt all happy again! Thanks Minnie!

Luck O'the Irish

We might have dropped the ball in 2012 as far as distance running, but St Patrick's Day 10K marked our first race of the year! It seemed like the perfect race for us  since it encouraged costumes, was sponsored by Steamwhistle beer, (the race included a random draw to win your weight in beer) as well as post race goodies by Cobbs Bakery. Basically, all the fun stuff that has nothing to do with the actual run itself.

Side note: I'd like to say I bulked up to increase the number of beers I could win, but to be honest, I just like pizza. At least I know how to motivate myself to run?

Anyways, St Pat's dawned sunny, clear, no rain/flurries like the forecast had called for and about 2C. I've discovered recently that 2C is probably my perfect running temperature; a bit chilly at the starting line, then nice and cool all the way through the run. We donned our green argyle socks, St Patrick's Day shirts, green boas, green wigs and shamrock headgear and we were ready to go!  Too bad neither of us had run more than 5K in the past 2 months...nonetheless, we were here to have fun and hoping only to finish in under 70 minutes.

The race started right on time without much fanfare---I guess this is why this race was a quarter of the price of a  Disney races.  To be honest, I was a smidge letdown at the starting line, I like me some pre-race fireworks, music and characters! Anyway, we thought we looked awesome and the crowds of people at the starting line let us know they agreed.

It felt like the the first and second kilometers flew by and my confidence grew. Training, schmaining, a 10K is easy I thought to myself as we easily kept pace. Plus I was all excited to see Daryl Janz at the Steamwhistle truck shouting numbers as people ran by (I never figured out what they were for, come to think of it?) In fact, the first 5K felt pretty awesome, the kind of run that makes me LOVE running. I started having fantasies of breaking an hour. By 6K, as the runners starting spacing out more, I was faltering a bit. I'm pretty sure they were spacing the markers further and further apart and I was getting a bit tired as we chugged past 7K. Somewhere around this point I started hating the wig as it filled with sweat and the boa as it kept flapping in my mouth or slithering off my shoulders. I think around 8K I started whimpering involuntarily and Christi was forced to dust off her Disneyland 2011 Mile 12 Peptalk (patent pending), bless her heart!! I cursed myself for double knotting my shoelaces so the stupid things couldn't come undone and earn me a quick "break".

We turned the last corner at about 9.5K and there it was...the finish line. Right in front of us. Like, just down the street. I knew we only had maybe 3 more minutes of running, but I was dying---I felt like my quads had been beaten with a cane and I SWEAR the finish line was actually getting further away instead of closer.Once we got close enough to see the timer and realized we had a darn good chance of breaking 1:04, I was able to finish in what felt like a pretty strong finish.

I didn't realize we got medals, so that was pretty exciting to see what was quite a nice 25th anniversary metal shamrock.  Post race, we were treated to Irish stew, CHOCOLATE CHIP MINT SCONES and Lucky  Charms, which I may have never tried before because I'm pretty sure I'd remember such tasty little sugar nuggets!! We didn't win our weight in beer, but the post-run awards and prizes were really fun. And those scones were too delicious to stick to just one.

Clearly this is the first half as I'm still smiling.

What next? Guess I'd better take this lesson to heart and start running more than 5K stints. And we're planning to register for a few runs this week to get us motivated and our training on track!!

The Work Song-based on a true story!

OK, it took a few hours, a paring knife, 2 needles, and quite a few pokes in the thumb, but we now have two (hopefully) awesome running tanks with Minnie Mouse sleeves!!!

As the mice would say...

She goes around in circles Till she's very, very dizzy

Still they holler Keep a-busy Cinderelly!

We can do it, we can do it

We can help our Cinderelly

We can make her dress so pretty

There's nothing to it, really

[Gus:]

I'll cut with these scissors!

[Jack:]

And I can do the sewing!

[Girl Mouse:]

Leave the sewing to the women

You go get some trimmin'

And we'll make a lovely dress for

Cinderelly!

(Thanks for not suing Disney!)

Now we just have to wait for the skirts to be ready and we're off to the races!

How to break a seamstress's brain

We have two weeks to go from today!  So yesterday was our last run...we ran around the reservoir to get our 16K in. Gotta say, it sure felt a lot easier than the last time we did it! Not only did we chirp along letting our mouths run the whole time, but when we were done we felt great instead of like curling up in a ball and dying like in January. True, it was 25C warmer and no snow to navigate over, but I think the "less is more" approach we tried this time around actually worked! (that's right, it wasn't laziness, it was a technique!) Plus, when we got to the hill at the very end and were about to give up on our chugging up the hill, a group of strangers we passed starting cheering for us..."eyes on the horizon, head up, chest out ladies, keep that form up, YOU CAN DO IT!!!!!" Sure enough, we could! Plus at the end, we thought another 5k would be no problem.

We headed to Christi's for quick showers, then over to the alterationist who would turn our child's size 6 dresses into Awesome Minnie Running Outfits. We thought it would be simple enough...chop the skirt off to make a tutu, and remove the puffy sleeves to make new ruffled sleeves on our black running tanks, an effect that would keep us cool, look awesome and not be too pricey.

As it turns out, we know nothing about sewing. Our Lady fretted and clucked as she stretched what she had to work with and measured our adult Canadian bodies. She was worried the dress would be too short and the top would be too tight, and we were having trouble conveying what we wanted done. At one point, she was going to build us elastic blouses to wear over our tanks, and we started getting nervous about how much this was going to cost. We kept insisting we just wanted to basically baste the sleeves onto our tanks for a one-time wear in a warmer climate and she kept insisting it wouldn't work.

She kept getting more and more agitating as we kept trying to explain they just needed to be worn for 3 hours as we sweated all over them, saying it wasn't going to look good. Now, she knows her stuff and we trust her implicitly, but I think she was trying to make us sturdy lifetime garments instead of cobbling a dress into an adult skirt and sleeves like we wanted. Eventually, after 45 minutes in the shop, we ended up taking the sleeves ourselves and leaving her with just the skirts to make. This afternoon, I'm going to take the sleeves and hand stitch them to the tanks and see if it works like I hope it does...like I said, it doesn't have to be fancy or permanent, just hold up for 3-4 hours around Anaheim!

Oh, Ebay, is there nothing you can't do?!?!

Last week, we RAN TO WORK. Gotta say, it was pretty keen...bright and early the morning after a rainstorm as the sun came up on a cloudless day was pretty great. Plus, since my desk faces downtown, I spent all day gazing at it and thinking "hell ya, I ran from there this morning!!" Much better than out and back, I'd say!  Plus we did our 18k with no problem and felt great all day. We're back in top running form, I'd say! (and not a moment too soon, have you checked our countdown? eeek!)

Like I said, we were starting to panic about our running outfits. We had our headwear and our plan, but that's it. So, last Wednesday I do another desperation fueled search on Ebay for what we were looking for and lo and behold...the company I bought my Belle dress from had another match. This time, for $5.99 I could get a kid's Minnie Mouse dress with matching headband. SOLD! And I mean sold, they even let me buy two so Princess Chris could have the same one. Check it out!

It IS as short at it looks!

So, dresses bought, and after a brief conversation, the rush shipping charge of $22 is paid, to ensure they arrive within 3-5 business days instead of 10-15 days. Totally worth it, since I leave for a week to Mexico and didn't want Christi to have to take care of everything while I was away.  Plus, it keeps our dresses under $20, which I'm guessing is less than we'd have paid for fabric.

Now, I pay my invoice last Thursday, and get a notice Friday that my item is shipped. On Monday night I'm puttering around the house when a truck pulls into my driveway.

It's a DHL truck.

I skyrocket off the couch and down the stairs to the front door, flinging open the door with a shriek to find a cowering DHL lady meekly stating I have a package. I respond by shouting "IS IT FROM HONG KONG!?!??!!" and when she replies yes, jump up and down clapping and then reward her speediness by breaking her electronic signing pen in my haste to snatch the package out of her hands. She's just happy someone is home to sign and drives away as quickly as she can (side note, I notice our stolen tree has been replaced with a new, non-dead tree. HURRAY!)

I rip open the package with my teeth in the front hall and dance around with joy at what a wonderful world I live in where with a click, a $6 dress can come from the other side of the world to my house in less than 2 business days. Amazing!  And the dress exceeds my expectations, it's quite a quality garment!  I am slightly concerned as the dress is stretchy on top and snug on the bottom unlike my princess dress and it will definitely require shorts underneath. But combined with black tanks, we can add the puffy sleeves to make cap running sleeves, plus the skirts will be more like tutus, which is sort of what I was hoping for in the first place.

In short, Best. $22. EVER. And if you're EVER in need of a child's costume, please visit this ebay seller because they are AWESOME. Am already searching for  Halloween costumes for my niece and nephew (and, ok, for self) and will get that started once these outfits are all set!

Running out of time

So, in just over 5 weeks we'll be leaving for Disney.

HURRAY! 

Um, at which point we'll need to run another half marathon.

CRAP! 

I'll be honest, we're not quite as prepared as last time. We're finding summer is actually tougher than winter training and man, do we miss that snow (for running! We still love summer!) There are more bugs, more sweat and less time to do things like...well....run 15 or 20km at a time.

As far as the trip, we have booked our hotel, we're not renting a car for this trip (Disneyland is so easy to get around, we figured there's no need) and our flights look fine, so that's good.

Ummm....we don't have costumes yet either, and this is just as stressful as the lack of training.  We know what they're going to look like, but haven't gotten around to buying/making them yet.

Never fear, the upside is that we still have 5 whole weeks to get back into shape and whip up some snappy running outfits. We're starting with tomorrow's 15k run at 545am...yeah!

Costume update…

Well the trip to Edmonton turned successful with finding a great running tank for my costume. Then I spent my Saturday night at my sister’s place ‘costuming’ and was able to talk her into using any ‘crafty’ like skills she might have ever acquired to assist me with completing this last minute costume change. The belt she created was simply amazing!!

Well it does seem like the pixie dust was falling last night and the stars aligned again so I was able to find the last remaining items to complete my costume… the perfect shirt for over my running shirt, dye to dye it the perfect colour and the “skill” to ensure the whole thing came together perfectly.. and it did!! It took a couple of hours, but I’m totally happy with the outcome.

It was awesome having enough of the costume completed to run this morning and as Princess Felic mentioned.. we both were able to run with no major “malfunctions” and came away from our morning run knowing what needed tweeking and our dignity in tack. Thank goodness we have the treadmills at work and our ‘regulars’ at the gym so we were able to do a test run without the questioning eyes of a whole gym watching us!

2 and a half more sleeps!!!

Test, Test!

This morning Christi and I did a practice run in our dresses (alas, Crystal was trapped in a tower by an evil witch. OK...she had to work late last night. But I bet she had to sweep chimneys or something while she was there). Since we live in Calgary and average temperatures right now are around -10C and our outfits are designed for the 20-30C we'll be running in at Disneyworld, we had to run inside.
We met at 6am at our work gym and spent about 10 minutes prancing and preening in front of the mirrors and giggling...it was the first time we'd seen each other in our princess gear and if we do say so ourselves, we looked fantastic!  When we were finished adjusting tiaras and bows, we headed out and hopped on adjacent treadmills. Before we even started moving, we had a few comments from other people at the gym who were feeling underdressed.  We smiled and did our best princess waves and we were off (well, not off, we were running in place).

We each ran 3K and figured that would be a good test of any outfit fails.  Christi's new top stayed up and didn't run (it was freshly dyed) but she wanted to ruch up the skirt a bit, and I realized immediately that the collar I had pinned on was going to have to be sewn into place. And it took less than 10 minutes before we had both worked up a bit of a sweat. Both valuable lessons that will be easy to fix, and other than that, it was fantastic!  We looked great and felt great, no chafing!  We especially liked running with the satiny skirts swishing around, and considered running in poufy skirts from now on! And even if we felt a bit silly, we brought smiles to everyone else at the (surprisingly busy considering the snow and time) gym.
We tried to get a picture, but we had a camera snafu, so no visual documentation of our awesomeness. So I'll leave you with these instead...click on the link for more lessons!

Lessons from a Disney Princess


if you don’t like how things are going, it’s totally cool to run away.



...especially if you don’t want a man to see you without makeup.

Pifff, I'd never leave a shoe that pretty behind!

Mulan vs Tiana ...

Sooo… we’re coming to the 11^th hour, when thoughts are (should be) on the nutrient and fluid intake, the last week of training etc… Unfortunately this is the time that Princess Crys and I decided to change princesses. I mean why not, we both work second jobs, are still training and really don’t have a lot of time on our hands. It sounds like a perfect time to throw a wrench/many wrenches into our pretty smooth plan!

It all started after our run on Saturday I decided that maybe wearing a two layer robe in Florida in February (temp today is +23 degrees Celsius) might be a little too warm to run in so I should probably try to figure out another option, just in case. Off to the Disney store I went. Costumes for the official Disney Princesses ran at about $65+ for children’s sizes (no where were there adult options). Huh.. ok, let’s try the 75% off rack. Good choice Christi.. $14.99!! Oooh.. size 6/8 .. huh.. ah, ok, we’ll make it work.

When I get home I carefully cut off the miniature top of the costume and see of the skirt will work ... Ummm .. Not exactly fitting over the hips. Let's try over the head, oh thank God.. We have a winner that we know won't slip over the hips! Yay!

Next action ... bring the skirt to easily the best tailor in town to shorten into a 'running skirt', check! $10 and the bottom is sorted. Now the top .. Easy right? Just find a white synthetic strappy tank top and add the extra material for effect. Yeah, so far, not so easy. I spent my '15' minute break at work the other night driving to Zellers, Superstore, La Senza AND Sportmart.. nothing! Last night my break was spent at Winner's. This weekend, I have to find some time to get to the Nike, Reebok and Addidas outlets in Edmonton. The way I see it, I still have 1 week to find something, there has to be something.. oh and to work on the nutrient, water training thing. I hope Princess Crys is having better luck!!

7 days and counting...