Back to the Grind

Happy Tuesday, Sexy People!

I promise I am trying to get in to the habit of posting more often... but I haven't quite gotten back in the groove yet. Internship has officially resumed and I am in the beginnings of my first day of Winter Quarter lectures... wishing that it was over already!!! Not that I am not thankful to be here, but I just wanted a couple more days of winter break.

The end of mine was pretty eventful yet relaxing at the same time. Saturday morning I set out to run 8 miles before sitting in a car for 2+ hours for a trip to Solvang. I almost didn't go for the run, because i woke up with a strange pain in the ball of my right foot. I got dressed and told myself that I would only run up until the point that it started to hurt really bad. Thankfully, it did not hurt at all while I was running and I somehow managed to crank out 9.4 miles instead of 8. I felt good throughout the run and kept a really good pace (under 8:45) for most of my splits.

Now that I have my beautiful new Garmin, I am really focusing on keeping even splits throughout my run. Most of the time I do really well and I think it is helping to increase my speed.

 I went to Solvang for the weekend with Tyler and his family to meet his mother's aunt. Solvang is a quiet little town in Santa Barabra coutnty that is set up as a Dutch/Swedish tourist town that is quaint and sleepy. It was my first time going there and I REALLY enjoyed it. We arrived at about 4:30pm on Saturday night, and most of the stores were getting ready to close up! I was able to just walk around and drink some hot chocolate while Tyler took a nap. Later, we went and visited his Great Aunt, so was a marvelously sweet woman with the most spirited granddaughter. After a quick visit we headed back to our hotel, but we stopped off at Chumash Casino for a quick bet at the blackjack table and some grub. Tyler won $10 and could not have been more proud of himself!

It began to rain before we left the casino and continued all through the night... and into the morning... and on in to the afternoon. Needless to say... we did not get to do much in Solvang :(. We did get to have a delicious breakfast with his family and got to taste Aebleskivers! They're a funny Danish pastry that are  sort of like a large doughnut hole served with Raspberry preserves and powdered sugar. They were DELICIOUS!!! It took all of my will power not to eat the plate of 3 of them.

We spent the afternoon being toured around Solvang by Tyler's cousin Randy who showed us the mini horse ranch and other fun orchards. It was raining pretty hard so we took the tour from inside the car and eventually made our way home. Driving down the coast at Sunset is such a TREAT!!!

I told myself that yesterday was my first day back to "Normalcy"... but that didn't exactly happen. I was suppose to get up and go for a 6 mile run at 6am... but my alarm went off and I went straight back to bed. Payment for my inability to "get my shit together" meant that I was going to have to use the stationary bike in the late evening. Normally I would just put on a recorded show and fast forward through the commercials while I did this, but I was not going to allow myself to do that this time. The new season of The Biggest Loser Challenge America started on Sunday, so i knew this was what I was going to watch... but I was not allowed to fast forward through commercials. Instead, I rode during the show and did Jumping Jacks, Squats, Lunges, Crunches and push ups during the commercial breaks.

This season looks like it is going to be very difficult. They have already lost two players (one voluntarily and one was sent home). The woman who left voluntarily was a woman with an ED who lived in Chatsworth, Ca (Deja Vu?!?!). I was really excited to see her compete and had extremely high hopes for her, which is why I was so disappointed when she choose to leave The Ranch because it was "Too Emotionally difficult". I hope she gets the counseling that she needs and can continue her journey. She was a very beautiful woman and she seemed like she had a beautiful spirit. Then, The disqualified player was a man who was on the show, wanting to lose weight for his son. The story was touching and almost had me crying immediately!!! He gave up in the first workout, but came back fighting during the challenge and the last chance work out. However, he lost the lowest body fat percentage, which meant he had to go home :(

That being said... almost half of Jillian's Team is already gone!!! Jillian is my favorite, and I'm really glad that she came back this season. I'm also looking forward to seeing them work with the three adolescents they have to try and battle childhood obesity. I still have another episode to watch, but I am going to try and hold out for it until later in the week... (we'll see how long that lasts).

I'm planning on doing a run on my lunch break between classes, but there has been someone going around attacking women on campus, so I'm not sure how this is going to work out. I can only do a 30 minute set on the treadmills and I was hoping for at least 6 miles. Wish me luck :)