Happy New Year

Welcome to 2017!

Remember me, Mama Kolb?  I feel as though I have been away for far too long.  Lots of changes in my life since 2014. Remember back then????  Life was simple and I was running and ... then I fell and broke my wrist!

God sure has a crazy way of changing the direction of your life.  After I ran the Wine and Dine Half Marathon, my neighbor/friend called me up looking for help at her office job.  I have known Mrs. P for at least 8 years now.  We met either on the massage table or at church.  She lives maybe 3 blocks from me.  She and Mr. J introduced us to dog fostering!  Well, anyway, when she called me way back in 2014, all I knew was she worked in an office.  I did not know where or what she did. She called me because she needed help for a week during Insurance Open Enrollment and maybe for a few other odd jobs. I took the job, thinking it might lead to something more, but oh well if it didn't.  

It did lead to more.  And thank goodness because maybe two weeks after I started I fell and broke my wrist.  I had to have surgery and couldn't do my massage job so this was great.  

Fast forward to October/November of 2016.  Something in me had had enough.  I heard blips of stories saying sitting at your desk was as bad as smoking!  What?!?!  Over the past two years, I put on at least 30 pounds.  A year ago, I signed up for a running challenge: to run 2016 miles in 2016. One of my massage clients and I made a team: Running Yogis.  (I was running and doing yoga a year ago.  That has since stopped, too.)  We were excited.  (Side note:  I ran the Lakefront Marathon in October 2015. It was painful.  Training was hard both mentally and physically.  I didn't lose any weight!  It was frustrating.  I needed a goal.)

I slowly got into a running grove again, but everything hurt.  I developed a leg issue.  I believe it is an IT band thing and saw a doctor about it. Starting Physical Therapy next week!  So by August of 2016, I stopped running.  Not sure how many miles the Running Yogi team really completed of the 2016, I only contributed about 500.  ☹️

Sometime in September or October, my Ironwoman neighbor found out about a new gym opening in our area.  Has anyone heard of Burn Bootcamp?  She won a free month trial and I signed up for their 30 days for $30! Man has that been tough. But amazing!!!!  I didn't lose weight but did lose inches.

This class/gym got me to thinking about my family, my lifestyle and my real dreams and goals. I decided that I need to focus on my health and my family again.  So, I gave my notice at my office job.  Starting next week, I will be working more at the Wisconsin Athletic Club. 

Today, January 1, 2017, I am working on my plan to become a better me. I am going to start with my diet.  I had success years ago with Marilu Henner's Total Health Makeover. So, I dusted off the books I have and started reading them this last week.  The 30 Day Makeover started on Wednesday.  Now to get my menus together and get some groceries to be successful.

Off n Running,

AnnMarie

PS.  I wrote this early today.  It is now 5pm, and the kids and I wrote up our 2017 Goals.  I will post about them tomorrow!  One of my goals is to get back to blogging.  Wish me luck!

Shaklee Life Plan - The Best, Most Comprehensive Nutritional System in t...

November trip continued...

We had a busy day in front of us.  The race start time for the Jingle Jungle 5K at Animal Kingdom was set for 7am.  They asked that all of the runners be there an hour before the start.  What a fun morning this was.

The moon greeting us in the early morning!

 
We all got to see the sun rise.  We found the Port-O-Lets and then the sun was up enough to take some pre-race photos.  Dancing Princess was Minnie Mouse for Halloween.  I had gone searching for a dress for her costume and found one for me!  I have never worn a costume in a race in my life!  This definitely was a first.  And I have never worn a dress in a race either.  I did buy the polka dot leg warmers for the race, but made the ears for Dancing Princess and all the Mickey Hands for everyone.

They had "Snow Machines" going.  In the photo here you can sort of see the snow falling.  I am sorry I didn't get more of the costumes in this shot.  They were really awesome.

A bad shot of the starting line.  Sorry, I am still perfecting my smartphone shots.  

Mickey was there too!

  What I loved about being in Corral A was that there were NO LINES to take photos with characters!  I came over a little knoll in the course and there was someone waiting to take my camera and capture this AWESOME shot!  Goofy as Santa, perfect.  You can see my costume a lot better here!  (Side note:  A client of mine borrowed me this belt.  I saw the company at the expo and they showed me how to use the bib number ties!  No more pins for this lady, I have to get my client her belt back after I get one for my self, of course.) ;)

  You can see the yellow cones on the right side of this photo.  We took our picture and turned around to head back toward the park.  As we did, I saw all of these hot air balloons.  What an amazing site that was.  Along with the beautiful sunrise and sky, what a great morning for a run. 

I think there might be some mist coming off this little patch of water.  There was a man dressed as a Safari guy holding off crocodiles along this stretch of road too.  

I know I used the Strava app to log this mileage, today was day 99 in my challenge to myself!  What a fun way to mark this special day.  This was not a timed race.  The medal is really a rubber and I think it would be cool if it were really a magnet for my fridge.  LOL!  

I know after we all finished our events, (one of Deanna's kids ran their first mile race and had so much fun!  Way to go everyone.) we headed back for lunch and naps.  The half marathon start time was at 10:00pm.  We knew we would have to wait awhile before the gun went off, so most of us took naps.

  We are ready and at the bus stop.  The forecast called for rain.  We were hoping it would hold off until midnight or so, that way neither one of us would have to run in it for too long.  No such luck.  It was a sprinkly, spitty kind of rain.  I was getting wet and Deanna had to wait longer to start.  I prayed she would keep her feet dry before the race and I avoided as many puddles as I could during.  

A bad picture of the starting line.

My medal, bib and t-shirt.

Tink medal, Wine & Dine medal and Coast to Coast medal.

The rewards from the weekend!

Here are the finished run shots.  Because of the rain, I couldn't get my smartphone to take pictures with my cold wet fingers.  The Epcot photo was taken by SwimChick.  

If I could, I would definitely do this race again on a non-rainy night.  My official time for this half even in the rain was 1:59.01.  I can't believe I came in just under 2 hours.  I was soaked.  I was given a special wrist band to collect my Coast to Coast medal from a special tent.  Even in that tent, I didn't feel warm.  I collected my gear and contemplated going to change into dry clothes and wait for Deanna.  I waited for her at our designated location.

I am so thankful for the lady who gave me her foil blanket, it helped some.  And even more thankful that Deanna finished un-injured and said she just wanted to go home and get warm.  Part of me is sad we didn't take in the party.  Honestly more of me was happy we could get on a warm bus and go home to a hot shower.  In hindsight, I would go change next time and find a dry place to wait.  And I should have taken a HOT bath when I got home.  

This race ended after midnight for me, so I counted it as my 100th day of running in a row, too!  What a fun way to do that.

During this race, I did not see many characters out.  Deanna said there were long lines and lots of characters.  I did see places where I thought there might be characters, but they were not there as I trotted by.  I am thinking they brought them earlier and took them in to warm up and get dry costumes!  LOL!

The next morning, most of us went to Downtown Disney and played at Disney Quest.  My kids LOVED it.  On Monday, we went to Animal Kingdom Resort for a delicious breakfast.  Yummy food was had by all.  That night was the Very, Merry Christmas Party.  My family was so excited.  I highly recommend going and hope to do it again another time.  We saw fireworks, light shows, and an amazing parade.  I have never seen a Parade that smelled of Christmas!  Really as floats went by you could smell cookies and Christmas trees!  We got to eat all kinds of Snickerdoodle cookies.  Dancing Princess loved them so much she asked if we could make those cinnamon cookies when we did some cookie baking for Christmas.

What I am excited to share most is that Deanna completed an amazing goal of running 4 half marathons in one year!  Considering she had not done one ever until we went to California for Tinkerbell, that is an amazing thing!  

My next most exciting thing to share is that 2 of my 3 kids want to run a Disney Half marathon and 1 wants to do a shorter race!  So we are now starting to save up for 2017 or 2018!  

Off N Running,

AnnMarie

November Disney Trip...

So sorry I didn't blog about our time in Florida.  I took several photos, as did SwimChick.  I will try my best to tell you all about it here.  WARNING:  This is a photo heavy post.  And I will break it up into several "days", because of that.  This post is about getting to Florida and the expo.  Enjoy.

Thought this was cute, they are watching the airport crew load/unload a plane as we waited in MKE Airport the morning we left.

And we played a little at the shop in the home airport.  Hehehe!!!!  Gotta love the cheese store.

Dancing Princess was a bit nervous for the plane ride.  She was almost 3 the last time we were on an airplane and does not remember that trip, except for the photos in an album.  We sat next to each other on both legs of the journey, and I could not convince her that the turbulence was like being on a roller coaster.  Her older siblings thought she was crazy for not being more relaxed and enjoying the flights, but we worked through it and made it in one piece.  Overall, she gave the rides a thumbs up!

  On the Magic bus to the resort!!!

We got in at dinner time.  Deanna and I had to do the shopping and took a cab to Wal Mart.  We bought our weeks worth of snacks and meals.  (I don't like going to a new store, I never know where anything is!  It took us a couple of hours and the families were "starving" when we got home with the food!)

This is the walk to our Tree House that night.  It looks a bit enchanting and fairy tale like.

So our first full day we spent a lot of time at the Wide World of Sports Complex.  I headed for the bathroom and lost Deanna and family the minute we got there.  I knew she wanted to buy runDisney New Balance shoes but didn't realize how badly until that point.  As I took my crew to the loo, she headed for the line to get into the shoe store!  I am sorry to say that I did not get a photo of the line or her new kicks.  They are pretty cool looking.  AND you can only purchase them at a runDisney expo!   

Here are some of the photos from the expo that I did capture:  

       Deanna and I by the Official Wine and Dine Poster thingy!  Doesn't she look fabulous!  So proud of her and all she has done to get to this day.  

I stood in a short line to meet Jeff Galloway.  He is the Official runDisney Training Plan designer and an Olympic Athlete!  Cool.

One More Mile is a fun company.  I have ordered some magnets from them and they offer all sorts for funny shirts.  Deanna is always talking about Dole Whip.  Please don't hate me or anything, but i have never had one!  I saw this shirt and thought of her.  I took this photo to text to her when we were lost at the expo together?!?!  (We went back to the expo after eating lunch and left the families at the Tree House!)  I think she bought one, too.  LOL!

I love the expo.  I love that you can try on some of the products you can only get online.  I think I talked a bit about this when I posted about our Tinkerbell run.  I did not plan to spend much money at this event, because I bought a lot in California AND I was taking the kids to Disney Quest and Magic Kingdom.

I had an interesting turn of events at this expo.  As I said earlier, I got there and headed to the loo!  I thought that everyone was heading to packet pick up so when we finished up that is were we headed.  I had signed myself up for the Jingle Jungle 5k AND the Wine and Dine Half Marathon.  So I had to hit two lines!  Many large races these days are putting you into Corrals based on a time you submitted when you signed up to run.  A lot of the time you must prove your time from a previous race.  You have some time before the official race day to update your proof of time too.  In August, I had done a half marathon that was faster than the one I submitted for my proof of time entry.  Somewhere along the line, I hit a computer glitch and could not get the runDisney site to up date my time.  "Oh well, my submitted time is still under 2 hours, it will be ok."  I thought.

When I get my bib numbers, I was in Corral A for the 5K and Corral L for the Half.  I dug out the map of corrals and see that L is the last available Corral.  WHAT THE???  "OK, no worries, I can still run this event.  I am only here for the medal anyway."  I told myself.  But I needed to see why I got placed in the last corral.  So I got into another line and waited.

The girl that helped me looked me up in the computer.  I could see the screen she was looking at and right there it said my proof of time and she says, "Huh?"  Then went to take to the guy in charge.  He came over and looked at the screen and says, "Oh, your one of those!"  Um, what?  He explained that there were a handful of entrants that the computer had a proof of time but the predicted finish time said 7 hours and we all got put into the last corral.  He got out a sticker and put me in Corral D.

In hindsite, I am so Thankful that I contested the placement.  I will write about race day in another post!

Off n Running,
AnnMarie

Race Calendar for 2014

I know it is already April, and I should have put this up a couple of months ago, but here it is as of today!

I have been slowly getting my act together here and will be adding some races yet.  I did officailly sign up for the Badgerland Strider Challenge AND 14 in 2014 challenge over at Jill's site.  I will mark my races and let you know how I am doing here as well.  SO here it is…

January 19, Tinkerbell Half in California^

April 5, South Shore Half* in Milwaukee, WI

May 10, Cupcake Run 5K in Bayside, WI

June 11, Super Run 5K* in Milwaukee, WI
June 14, Hartfest Half* in Wauwautosa, WI

July 4, Firecracker 4* in Hales Corners
July 5, Run 4 the Paws in Crandon, WI  Sign up here!

July 27, Cudahy Classic 10 Mile* 

August 16 ?Madison Mini?  Thinking about joining two friends here.  Not sure yet if I will run this or not.

August 23, Strider Half Marathon* in Milwaukee, WI

September 6, Tosa-fest 5K* in Wauwautosa, WI

October 25, Lakefront Discovery Run 15K* on Milwaukee, WI

November 9, Jingle Jungle 5k with RunDisney in Florida
November 9, Wine & Dine Half wiht RunDisney in Florida^


*  These are the races in the Badgerland Strider Challenge
^  These are the races in the runDisney Coast to Coast Challenge