Weekly Update

Last week I mentioned a marathon lottery I entered. I GOT IN! YAY!  Now I just need to get serious about getting my butt back in shape. No biggie right, LOL oh boy do I have my work cut out for me, but I can’t think of any better work to do!

As many of you know, I am an after the fact blogger, so I will share where and when after the race. But I will say it's a fall marathon.

On a side note: A friend email me last week curious why I was an after the fact blogger. I don’t think I have mentioned my reason why, for over 4 years. So I’ll share it in case anyone else is curious.

Truth is, when I first started blogging back in 2011 I read a gal’s blog about risks and safety precautions for bloggers. One of her tips was to become an after the fact blogger. So I adopted the behavior for myself and haven’t second guessed it since. While at times I would love to share upcoming things. When you’re a single gal like me, it’s just safer to not let the world know where you’re gonna be until after.

Back to the running front, depending on how training goes during the summer, I’ve also got 4 other marathons on my radar for this fall and early winter. But I am not going to enter any others until last minute if things are going good and I decide I can train my body well enough to do them.

THE DREADED EVENING RUN SWITCH

Due to a new job, I’ve begun my switch over to evening runs. Ughhhh I hate it!!!

I’ve been a morning runner for gosh let’s just say many years and I’ve loved it! I dislike having any food at all in my stomach when I run and running in the evenings now poses a little problem with that.

So, I have two options; I can get up at 5am and run before I go into work. Or I can skip lunch, or eat a very small lunch at 10am and hope it gets out of my system before my 6pm run, then eat a late dinner. I don’t really like either option. But right now it’s too dark at 5am to even think about it, so for now guess it’s going to mean early lunches.

In case you’re wondering, I prefer distance running and all training on an empty stomach. It teaches my body to burn stored fuels and give me an edge come marathon time! For those of you who train same as me, you know exactly what I mean and the increased benefits from it and why I am not interested after so many years to switching back.

ADJUSTING TO WORK PLACE SITTING

Granted long periods of standing for me through the past three years, have been the absolute worst on my body and caused me so many problems. I’ve learned I need a little of both, and not one thing for too long.

My new job has a bit more sitting than I thought it would. It’s been seriously hard on my back and murder on my tailbone. So I attempt to take frequent breaks. My tailbone feels permanently bruised this week.

My sister who also broke hers a while back swears that 100 squats a day strengthens the buttocks and helps her to be able to sit for more than an hour at a time. So I am going to give this a try, at this point I am willing to try anything, LOL (In case you didn’t read my blog a few years back, I broke my tailbone in a skydiving landing accident, and it’s never been the same since. That said I would not take back that awesome plane jump for anything!)

On the plus side, 100 squats a day, could do wonders for my dairy aire, so it’s one of those maybe a double bonus things. Ha ha.

WEEKENDS OFFLINE, GONNA KEEP IT UP!

I’ve decided even though I am going to be doing fewer weddings each month now. I am going to continue with my very little to none on the Friday-Sunday blogging. I adopted that behavior about a year ago. I think having a balance of how much online time I have in my life is important. So it’s a practice I am going to keep continuing with.

IF YOU WERE WONDERING 

WORK INJURY HEALING UPDATES

A few mention they were wondering where I was with the work injury and my back issues. So in case you were wondering, here is an update. 

My tendon injuries I got 3 years ago from a work injury and then prolonged by originally visiting a Dr. who put me into the wrong brace and gave incorrect medical advice. Well I still have them. The swelling is a bit better these days.

I can tell there is a lot of bursitis in it, and as long as I don’t rest too much I can keep that at bay. Also long as I don’t stand for long periods I can keep the tendon issue at bay. Occasionally I will be found sleeping at night with my med boot on to correct a little damage. However, I have a good system for it and I haven’t had a major flare up in a couple of months and I consider this a good sign.

On the plus side, running has never bothered either of these things much, so I see absolutely no reason right now to prolong my comeback to marathons!

Mountains, Amusement Parks, Pumpkin Patches and Lots of Fun

This week has been quite eventful.
I mentioned last week I had purposely worked ahead a little to get Octobers posts all done (except these Monday posts:) and that I was working on November.

Well one of the reasons was the Grow Your Blog, Hop.
I have been working on this for quite some time.  I wasn't sure how much interest there would be in it, last time it took me nearly a month to have 41 participants sign up.

This time, I wanted to do things different and have 80 total.  So I mentioned on a couple of Facebook pages if there would be any interest and the response was overwhelming.
So much so, that since I had it already to go I set it live on 5pm on Wednesday night and by the next morning it was already 65% full.  By Friday afternoon it was about 95% full.  I will check this morning, but I expect if it hasn't already the last 5 spots will be taken sometime today.

Isn't that crazy, and very awesome at the same time!  I am really excited about it.  I have a ton of work to do, but one great thing about the spots selling out so quickly is it's now going to give me an extra week to get it all done.

I really hope that this one turns out even better than the last time.  Last time's hop was also great, but I think with the changes made for this one, it's going to be even better!

Took this last night up near my sisters house, just a beautiful evening so I had to share!

As for an update on the recent injury flare up that happened a bit over a month ago.  Thursday, I finally was able to get out and do a little walking, YAY.  Things went great, so I took Friday's walk up in the mountains.  A little hiking, but on easy very groomed trails.
It's felt so nice to get out!  Sadly, I hate to say this but because I have had to be so inactive to let things begin healing again.  Just walking a mile or two actually made me a little bit sore, LOL
Oh well!  The great news is, I can start slowly building and strengthening it again and practice being on my feet more and more.

Took an afternoon and went up to a farm with my niece, nephew and sister.

They had this great event, with free lunch, free pony rides for the kids as well as corn mazes.  Hay rides for all, and pumpkin picking.  It was super hot out, like 90, but it felt like 100, LOL  So we skipped the apple cider and went for ice cold flavored lemonades instead:)  We sat and at our lunch on hay bails and listened to old fashion country live bands as we did.
It was a fun way to spend an afternoon.

I also spent a little time up in the mountains this week.  A lot of the leaves have already fallen, but in some area's they are still patches of the bright colors on the trees.  It was beautiful either way.  I couldn't help bringing my camera out, even if it was overcast that day.

Also, this is the time of year when our Amusement Park, Lagoon transforms itself into Frightmares, and with only a few weeks left in the season I have a feeling I will be spending some time there each week until the end of the month when it will all be shutting down for the winter.
My sisters and I are supposed to have a girls adult day there soon, we've been planning on it all year. It will be when I can go finally ride all the awesome roller coasters:)  Okay, well at least not alone:)  I ride them with the kids, but depending on which kids some are tall enough, and some are not so much.  I love the kiddo's, but it will be fun to have an adult day and hit up the awesome haunted houses and zombie lands:) that aren't really kid friendly:)

Thursday night I attended my writers meeting, and it was fabulous!  We had a NY Times Best Selling Author Angie Fenimore come and speak.  She came with her fiance, and they did a fabulous job!
Gave me a lot of food for thought on how to better myself.
The topics were pitching to agents and creating a great platform for yourself (website).  The information could be used for that as well as in life for job interviews and I think I can also implement some of the things into my wedding business and even this blog.
I would love to take one of her classes and do more, but with as busy as this year is, I may have to wait until later this winter, before wedding season starts:)

It's back to weddings this week, and life is about to start to get pretty busy.  Additionally the youth group I work with, I am in charge of an activity for them this week, just to name a few things on my to-do list.
Of course, I apparently never think life is busy enough and I am always taking on even more... I really need to stop doing that!

In other news, one of my sisters announced she is going to be having another baby, which is super exciting this will make my 9th niece or nephew:)  Baby isn't due until June, but I am already looking forward to having another baby in the family again!

So that is a bit into my past week.
All my mountain pictures this week are from Big Cottonwood Canyon, which if you have run the Revel Big Cottonwood Marathon here in Utah you may recognize them, as many of them were taken up near the start of where thee race begins.  If you haven't run in, if it's on your calendar then this is just a little peak at what you get to see if you run it.

Tell me something you did last week.  Are you enjoying fall?  Getting out to see the leaves or picking pumpkins?  Tell me what you've been up to lately!

I am linking up with HoHo Runs and Mississippididdlin today for their Weekly Wrap!

Blogging Goals & Updates

I actually have been wanting to do this for a while, share my blogging goals and some totals with you.  Truthfully I didn't get the idea from myself, I saw Courtney over at Eat Pray Run DC doing it.  I don't like to copy other bloggers, but I really liked her idea of sharing.  She actually said she is okay with me kind of copying to share the numbers too.  I just wanted to put that out there:)

August was actually my worst monthly blogging stats (page views) in two years. Which was not surprising since I have cut down on posts and actually had my fewest posts month in a long time too.

Income earned: $203.52 for social media ad campaigns.  I didn't do any blog campaigns this month, I took summer off for these since I couldn't spend the time.

Twitter: I finally broke the 6,000 Twitter follower mark, I thought that was a cool milestone as I wasn't even working on growing in last month.

Instagram: Has turned into my hardest area to grow in, and what I am finding is the most important right now for advertisers.  About mid month I started working on it, and I finally hit 1,300.

GOALS FOR SEPTEMBER

Instagram: I am trying really hard to get this to grow and I am working on a few projects to help in this.  My goal is to hit 1,600 followers by month end.

Twitter: since it's growing at a slow but steady pace on its own I am going to put a little effort into it, and see if I can't hit 6,500 by month end.

I would like to have an ad campaign goal of $150.  I haven't been working on any blog campaigns, so I don't want to set goals for those because obviously they take time to organize.

I hope to make this a first Monday of the month routine and share my goals vs. my actual each month going forward.  Especially if my followers who are also bloggers find this kind of stuff interesting.

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WORK INJURY - 2 years 8 months and fingers crossed not much more, but knowing me it might be!  If you are interested in reading about how this all started years ago, you can HERE. I don't want to keep going into the details and bore those of you who have been hearing about it for so long.

I am going to give a quick synopsis of what has recently been going on, and why I am more than a little bummed lately.

* About 2 weeks ago, something happened and it led to the point where I couldn't even walk. (No idea what brought on the onset of this flare up.  But lets just say the pain was close to or maybe worse than it was when the original injury was at its worst.  It brought me to tears, the pain was so intense.

* I could walk in a 3 inch heel, a little.  But I couldn't even put my foot flat on the ground without feeling like my Achilles was tearing apart.  If I took a step my foot/leg would give out from the pai and I would almost fall, because it was so much pain.

* A week ago Tuesday I visited a new Doctor, only a new one because the one I usually go to had a two month waiting list, and I wanted help now asap.  (I did my research and found a good one, who is also a runner.)

* We did an X-ray and Ultra Sound, which I assumed wouldn't show anything.  All they showed was a perfectly healthy tendon, at least as far as no serious damage.
Despite the fact that my ankle at the time was swollen double in size, you just gotta love life and how it works sometimes:)

* He ordered me to go get an MRI, he also thinks both my calves are really super tight right now, like crazy tight (I agree).  After going over my past medical history, he agree's there are really only 2 options.
One is surgery to cut the tendon to give it a little help to stretch out.  The other is a pretty invasive PT set of sessions that will eventually over time stretch out my tendon and calf.  But there is high risk to both of those.  (The PT could actually rupture the tendon completely if anything goes wrong.)

* He also prescribed me a highly effective steroid, and some anti inflammatory creams that absorb right through the skin. (Which let's just say worked so well, I noticed results only after the first 24 hours.)

* I was put back in the boot for nights, and most of the day for at least 2 weeks.

* The rest of last week went pretty good.  I followed Dr. orders, and followed a few of my own gut instincts.  To skip the heal/not healed part.
Let's just say, as of today things are fairly good, similar to what I hoped.  The swelling has gone down considerably, there is very little left.
The pain, has subsided for the most part.
My tendon is still quite tight, but it actually has a little give in it, I can walk carefully and slowly in 1-2 inch heel lift shoes.
Although I don't dare walk too much, I can at least get around now.  I am beyond terrified of hurting it more right now, so I am being even more cautious than normal.

I went ahead and cancelled the MRI and my Dr. Appt for today.  I think it would be a waste of money.  I am going to let things continue to heal, and then I will begin the original PT program I have already been through.
Once I can walk again, and the tendon is strengthened, which if my guess will be correct I should know in about 3-4 weeks how that all goes. I will meet with the specialist again in a few weeks, unless things take a turn for the worse.
At that time, I am going to proceed with the risky but non surgical option first, which is a very invasive PT program.
Then we shall see what happens.

I have no idea what the rest of the year has for me.  Cardio is mostly out right now at least for the near future, as walking/swimming/bike hurt things too much to do.  So I am really going to have to be diligent and careful with eating, so I don't gain even more weight than I already have.

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Truthfully, the hardest part of all of this is one thing.  Previously to all this, training had been going good.  I even had that 23 mile step day and I actually had started believing my body was ready for marathon training.  I even got so excited I even went online and picked out two races, to consider, one I was leaning toward for late November of this year, the other was early December.  I actually got my heart actually believing one was going to happen, boy it hurt to know it's now completely out of the question.
It was one thing 2 years ago to have to cancel the 19 marathons I had planned when I got the original work injury.  But for some reason, this hurt even worse because I have gone so long, and had come so far only to go right back to what feels like square one.  Sometimes my life can be extremely frustrating, to say the least!
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I wish I had some fun stuff to report, but lets face it when you can't walk much, you can't really do much.

I tried SWIMMING a week ago Monday, but my foot is so bad that just the pressure of the water as I kicked was so intense on the foot I couldn't stand more than a few seconds of it, so I stopped.

PURPLE HAIR
I got really bored not being able to get out and do anything.  So ya I colored my hair tips purple, LOL
Then of course, who could stop there, and I colored a front section as well.
It was all supposed to be temporary and wash out after a few days to a week, but so far it doesn't seem to be haha..  That's okay, I have always wanted purple/brown hair layers and ya now I have them.  I am going to enjoy it while it lasts, I mean it' only hair right:)
Don't laugh, I really like the purple, even at it's most dramatic, apparently purple is one of those colors in my skin pallet that go fairly well together, LOL LOL LOL


I have had a few woe is me moments this week.  But by mid week, I realized everything comes down to attitude so I can't let this set back get me either.  So all things considered, I know I will get past all of this eventually.
I may continue to get frustrated, I am only human.  But I am re evaluating my goals, and although I am not giving up on them.  I am pushing a few to the back burner and I am going to make new ones.
I'm also refocusing a few things in my life, planning a few things out and creating lists to get through some well needed projects that need taken care of.
Hopefully, this will help keep my mind positive and focused on other things instead of dwelling on the what sometimes feels like the never ending work injury.

If you haven't already, and you want to join us, you have a few days left to link up with us for the next giveaway hop HERE.

Me Monday's - Weight Loss - Injury Update - Link Up

All About Me Monday's, where I talk about the going on's of my life and let others link up their own blog posts and share their own life's happenings:) 

- Link Up Your Blog Below -

I have some exciting news to share this week.  First, for those who follow my blog you may have noticed some changes.  I did a little blog makeover, and added a new blog header.
I hired a local college student (Susan) who is going into graphic design, to design the new header for me.  I am loving it, I hope you like it too! I'd love to hear what you think about the new design.
On a side note: if you like my blog header and you're looking to create your own, she does great work, email me and I can put you in touch with her:)

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My next exciting news, is on my injury.  The other day I walked a full mile, and the best part is no pain during or after.  I am waiting a few days to make sure nothing sneaks up on me, but if no increase pain and signs continue to point toward it getting better, I'll start adding walking each day.

To be honest, this is kinda against the Dr. and PT orders.  I also have a sneaking suspicion since I way over did it at a wedding set up, and hurt it horribly that day, that possibly a few things that needed stretching, did just that, stretched..  I have no other explanation as to why it would take a significant move towards healing only after I overworked it so excessively!

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Onto the next great news.  You may have remembered I mentioned last week that I am working on my weight gain problem, which happened mostly during the past year as I have not been able to be very active. Okay, so reality was, I wasn't able to be active at all for the past 6 months, and not much the 6 months before that!
Well I have been being super strict with myself, I have just over 50 days until that cruise, and I am going to loose every pound and inch I possibly can before I go!

My results so far...

I'm pretty stoked!  I knew the first ten pounds are going to be the easiest to drop (I know my body), but the next ten are going to not going to drop as fast.
Because I can't workout like I would like, and cardio isn't really an option.  I don't have to worry about keeping my calorie intake up to make up for the energy I am loosing or need to workout.  I'm not calorie counting exactly, but to put it bluntly, I dropped my calorie intake significantly.  I guess you could say a round about number for my daily calorie intake now is around 1,000.
I am eating healthy, sure I feel like I am starving all the time, but through my experience with loosing weight on and off through the years, that sort of thing is pretty much a given at the beginning...
If what I am doing keeps working, I'll share it will you all in the coming months.  But don't worry, its completely safe and healthy!

I successfully went through last week with only drinking soda 1 day, and I only ate out once.  I've up'd my water intake significantly!  Likely most the weight loss, is from the lack of sugar in the soda I was drinking before.
I've even pulled out my old favorite water bottle.  It's kinda cool, it measures my water intake and tells me how much I should be drinking, how much I have drank, it paces you so you don't drink it all at once, but more throughout the day so you're not spending the entire day in the bathroom.
I've owned it for a few years, but haven't used it in a while.  But this week, the battery on it is going to get some use!  You may have heard about it, its the Hydracoach by Sportsline.  I don't know what they cost these days, but I remember when I bought it, it was a little pricey.

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So far 2014 is turning out to be so much better!  I really think I was cursed last year, I wasn't superstitious before, but I am now, the number 13 isn't such a good number for me anymore:)  Either way, I am super excited to see what 2014 is going to bring!

So that's about it right now:)  What's been going on in your life?
If you'd like to link up below, you are more than welcome to.  If you link up, its not required, but it would be nice if you visit at least 1 other blog linking up.
But as always, you have my guarantee if you link up, I'll be stopping by your blog and sharing some comment love!!

Motivational Monday & Blog Link Up

Hope everyone had a great weekend!  If you were running races, I hope you had a great time and finished in the way's you had hoped!!!  Today is a Blog Link-Up you'll find the link up below.

I am now 2 1/2 weeks into my 8 weeks of wearing a huge boot to help heal this injury.  The swelling hasn't gone down much, but on a good note its become slightly less annoying than it was at first.  Since I have to wear it at night, I've finally gotten used to sleeping with my foot elevated, so I consider that success!
My motivation is purely just getting through this, this is what has to be done so that I can begin PT in 6 weeks and then if all goes well, I'll be able to get back into running by December...

I've struggled with how to incorporate fitness into my life now that I am in the boot.  Many may disagree with my answer, but I have decided there isn't really a way to do it.  I'm not supposed to be walking much, and absolutely no running or jumping or activities on my feet.
It just doesn't leave me with many options.  It even makes working hard, as I have always been a very hard worker.  But its teaching me to have patience and be okay letting others help me out...

So what have I been up too?  Well fall is my absolutely most favorite time of the year to be up camping!  The weekend or one time a year campers aren't up there, the people who come up to play loud music aren't there.  Its just hunters, and mostly people who just love the outdoors.
So I was camping up a week ago, loving the cooler temperatures and the peaceful outdoors.
All the pictures here were taken while up camping.  But I didn't bring my regular camera, the quality isn't the best because I took them all with my phone camera:)

We received quite the set of storms this past weekend, so the colder temperatures and the snow that pretty much dropped all over the place even the lower elevations around 5,000 feet received snow, so this should bring on our fall foliage this week!

Which is why, I am going to be taking off again and heading up into the mountains again this week.
The other great thing about fall camping are the campfires, they feel soo much better when it's chilly outside!

So what fun things have you been up to lately?  Do you enjoy camping in the fall?  
Anyone have some fall race posts they'd like to share?


Today is also a BLOG LINK-UP, so if you have a post you'd like to share, I'd love it if you'd link up!  If you join the link up, try and visit another blog as well.