Back to Buffalo

Hello from Orlando, for the last time [tear].  I’m sad to go, of course, but I’m excited to have a night with the husband before heading down to St. Thomas for the rest of the week.  Although I’m actually a bit worried about my trip home, St. Thomas’ airport is not very handicapped accessable, i.e. you must take stairs to get on/off the planes, and right now stairs and I aren’t getting along too well!

Shockingly [sarcasm] my bar food breakfast didn’t fill me up very well and I ended up eating 1-2 servings of Stacy’s Pita Chips not long afterwards.

What can I say, Camile was on the road, Kristen was at work, and I was saddled up to Hulu!  This is why I never ever buy Stacy’s chips though, it is impossible to pull yourself away from them.

Packing took forever [shuffle, shuffle, limp] and I was more than ready for lunch when I was done.

Yoplait Greek yogurt with a chopped nectarine, topped with pb and jelly.

The Yoplait Greek was surprisingly good, I hope this comes to Buffalo soon.

And as soon as Kristen gets home we are headed for the airport.  I have a nonstop flight [yay!] so I’ll be back in Buffalo before 8:30 tonight.  Which is good because my flight leaves at 5:20 tomorrow morning!!!  I’m not sure what my posting schedule will be the next week, my parents don’t have internet at home, but I’ll do the best I can.

Yeah, yeah, the Olympics are great….What shows are you excited see back on television?  I am pumped for Modern Family and Bones to be back off hiatus.

Mostly Monday

Sorry for the lack of postage yesterday; Monday ended up being a bit crazy, in a good way!  The crazy combined with my diminished appetite means my eats for the day were just a bit off.  I never did get around to eating the rest of lunch, as soon as I hit publish I passed out into a hard-core nap.

I got woken up from my sleeping beauty session around 4 to ….. get tattoos!  I’m not showing any picture yet, because I’m getting a tiny touch-up this afternoon, but I got a small bow on my back to celebrate my first half marathon.

Camile’s tattoo was painful and ended up being a pretty long process.  I drank half a purple Rockstar to refuel.

This probably wasn’t the smartest snack choice but we spent the entire weekend hunting for purple (I really wanted my favorite flavor the morning of the half) and when I spotted it in the gas station I just couldn’t say no.

Camile needed ice-cream post-tattooing so we hit up Jeramiah’s again!

I had half of this small gelati; strawberry lemon ice with vanilla soft serve.

The combination was perfect, tangy and creamy go really well together in my opinion, but my stomach just wasn’t having it.  Honestly my leg hurts so badly it’s making my stomach hurt 😡  Which is why dinner never really happened either.

Although I did have an awesomely spicy Bloody Mary while we were out with some of Kristen’s guy friends.

I never munched on the appetizer plate the rest of the table had but I did take home the leftovers.  I’m having them for breakfast 🙂

P.S. Check out this tea package Olga’s giving away.

Blue Skies

It’s been a good day so far, and we have even more excitement planned for this evening.  I leave Orlando tomorrow afternoon so we are trying to fit in as much as possible, even if I do have to lurch around like Quasimodo to do it all!

I woke up around 9 this morning and by the time I was dressed and done stretching a breakfast breakfast didn’t sound very good.  Instead I ate my Pad See Eiw leftovers from last night.

Kristen had to work today but Camile and I took the opportunity to pamper our tired tootsies with pedicures!

This is my first pedicure in forever due to my foot problems so it was especially exciting.  My right ring toenail is probably going to come off soon but for now it’s looking good in sky blue.

We went to Publix afterwards to buy Kristen some ‘thank you for driving us at 3am’ flowers,

so I did lunch in the car.  A mini white chocolate macadamia Luna Bar from the expo,

and a apple banana Buddy Fruits.

I see some yogurt and a diet soda in my near future as well.  I’m not saying what the evening entails but I will tell you that I am so excited 🙂

What color would you pick for a pedicure now?  I felt like blue was the perfect spring color, but I was eyeing the purples pretty hard too.

P.S. I have no idea why my pictures are not in their places.  Here they are gallery style, for you to peruse at your leisure.  I suck.

13 Miles = Ice Cream

You guys!  Thank you so much for all the congratulations on my race.  I truly appreciated all of your comments, they meant a lot to me.  My leg is painful but I’m still so happy about the race.

We spent most of the day laying around but finally I managed to get ready for dinner.  Royal Thai was our pick for this evening.  I wanted to try to pack in a few calories so I started with a Thai iced tea.

For meal I ordered Pad See Eiw noodles, with tofu subbed in for meat.

I am just not hungry still, I only ate about half of my meal.

Not hungry, however, did not mean I couldn’t make room for Jeramiah’s when we drove by  😀

I went with small gelati; mint chip ice with twist soft serve.

Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum!  I’ve told Kristen about a million times that I’m moving in with permanently!

We are going to watch a bit of tv, and I am going to do some more stretching, and then it’ll be early bedtimes all around.  I hope everyone else had a great weekend!

What is your favorite icy treat?  Other than soft serve I actually don’t really like ice-cream.  I am a much bigger fan of froyo or gelato.

Testing

Camile taught me how to embed a video directly into a post so just for funsies I’m posting the video Adam and I took when I had my foot surgery.  Also, the horribly embarrassing video she made last night.  Enjoy, I hope

I Ran a Half Marathon!!!

I did it!!!

I am still disappointed in myself that I didn’t train, but I finished it and I had the time of my life 😀  The entire experience was seriously a blast and I can not wait to (train first!) and do it again.

I ‘tracked’ myself and had the updates sent to my e-mail so I could check my pace later.  Here’s the final e-mail:

EMILY WAX, 02:37:55 (NET) @ Finish Pace 12:02 .

Waking up this morning at 3:15 was no where near as painful as it should have been, I think I was running on excitement.  I had layed out all my stuff the night before so the morning could be pretty stress free.  Kristen lives 45minutes away from Disney so we dressed and checked our stuff and then ate breakfast in the car.

I had a bagel with a little bit of strawberry cream cheese and a Rockstar.

I also packed some mid-race snacks into my new belt pack.

I took way too many things but I wanted to be on the safe side.

Camile and I were both running in the race and it was really nice to have Kristen to drive us there, soo much less stressful than finding parking.  She actually slept in the car for most of the race!  We reached the course around 5am and began the 20minute walk to our starting corral.  I drank a TON of water last night with dinner and it definitely caught we with me; we used the porta-potties 4times before the race!

It was pretty cold out (40*) but once we got into the corrals I was so excited it didn’t even matter.  We were in the last corral so our start time was about 30minutes after the original group.  Sadly the five corrals didn’t do much to help the bottlenecking, I felt like the the race never really thinned out.

My longest training run (more than a month ago) was only 6miles so I really wasn’t sure what to expect.  I wasn’t even positive I was going to finish, although I’m pretty stubborn once I set my mind to something.  In the end I ran the first 8miles, a pr in and of itself 🙂  I did the run/walk method for the rest of the course, although I attempted to run the last mile.  I never really stopped to walk but I was definitely dragging from 12 – 13.1.  I got something to drink at all but 2 of the water stations; I walked through them but never stopped running for more than 30 -45 seconds to drink.

Here’s a breakdown of the race (approximately) –

  • I started running as soon as I crossed the start line
  • mile 1 – mile 5: running
  • mile 5: stopped for 7minutes to use the restroom
  • mile 5 – mile 8: running
  • mile 8: at 1hour and 33minutes
  • mile 8 – mile 12: running and some walking
  • mile 9: took an Espresso Love Goo (this was really tasty!)
  • mile 10: at 1hour and 58minutes – apparently I was really booking it between 8 and 10!
  • mile 12.1 – mile 13.1: running, but dying, I really really wanted to sprint here but I was just spent

When I saw that I crossed the finish at 2hours 38minutes I was shocked!  I figured that if I finished I would take at least 3 hours.  AND I feel pretty darn good!  My already injured leg hurts a ton (8+ out of 10) but the rest of my pieces feel pretty ok.  I did ice my legs in the car though.

With ice from the gas station where I got a Big Gulp of Coke Zero.

Mmmmmn!  I told my husband after the race that I’d probably go home with the first man to hand me a diet soda but thankfully Kristen was able to fulfill the craving for me 😉

Here are Camile and I post race.

Looking happy!

Camile got pulled off the course around mile 8 for not maintaining pace so she was a little angry.  She pr’ed as well though with 8miles and I am super proud of her.

We left from the race to go get breakfast at Perkins.  I wore my heat rate moniter so I know I have a 1968 calorie deficit to make up but sadly my hunger is pretty stifled.  I ordered sunny side up eggs which came with buttered toast and breakfast potatoes.

I was not hungry enough to kill this whole plate,

I’m definitely still a good 1000calories in the hole.  I feel pretty good though so I’m not sure I’ll force myself to eat if I’m not hungry.

Today was a great experience.  I did learn a few things:

  1. I was in the wrong corral.  I spent the first 4miles running much slower than I was able to and weaving in and out dodging people.  Next time I think I will list my pace as at least 12minute miles so I can start off at full force.
  2. I should have taken another Goo closer to the finish.  Next time I will aim to take one every hour or so.
  3. I need to get my leg checked out by a doctor, asap!
  4. This experience, which was probably the best day of my life, would have been more fun if I felt like I had earned it.  I am so excited to start actually training once my leg heals!

 Have you done any half/marathons?  What was your experience like?

Bad Decision

It’s 10:30, my alarm is set for 3:15, this is the dumbest post on Earth.  My leg hurts right now.  Not terrible, like a 2 out of 10, but it’s a bit concerning because I’ve yet to start running.

Lunch at Chili’s.

Chicken and green chili soup and spicy cole slaw.

I also had a strawberry mojito.

I kept lunch light because we were heading back to Menchies!

Dulce de leche and pistachio with cheesecake, cookie dough, berries, and a bit of fluff.  Pistachio rocked my socks.

Shopped all day, outlet mall = good deals.

Dinner at Macaroni Grill.  Carbo-loading.

Bread, baked chicken and shrimp pasta with cream sauce.

SLEEP!

Hopefully when I see you all again I will have run 13 miles.  However, it’s more likely I’ll have run 4 or 5miles.  Please be proud either way?

Oh the Places We Went!

Hey guys!  My second day in Orlando was so much fun; we are having a great time and eating lots of tasty foods.  Sadly, I feel like I need to keep this post quick because it’s bedtime and I’m tired.  It’s funny how the better the quantity of blogging material I have the more the quality of my posts go down.

Kristen was great about getting food requests to have in the house this weekend.  Breakfast was Dannon Greek yogurt with a chopped nectarine, topped with a tsp of strawberry jelly, in a go cup.

The nectarine was so delicious, Florida is definitely the place to be for fresh fruit right now.

After breakfast we trekked to Disney to pick up our race packets and hit up the expo.  I had a good time checking out the fun shirts and stuff but didn’t really have money to spend.  I did pick up a belt pack (i.e. fanny pack) which I proceeded to wear for the rest of the day.

We did lunch backwards today, dessert first then grown-up food.  First things first, Menchies!

I’ve been jealous of Meghann for months and my envy was totally justified, this place was ridiculous!

I got original tart yogurt with fresh fruit and a small dab of marshmallow sauce.

YuuuuuuuuM!

Lunch was not new to me, but is something I’ve been missing in Buffalo – Whole Foods salad bar.

I got seitan and veggies, bbq seitan, kung pow chicken, a stuffed grape leaf, and some roasted veggies.

Then we met up with a bunch of our friend’s friends at Universal Studios.  Seriously?!  I could not have had more fun today.  This was my first time at Universal and it was amazing.

Even if I did get a little wet.

My favorite part was the Dr. Seuss area.

Fun fact – my tattoo was partially inspired by the star bellied Sneetches.

It was so great to walk around all day and stretch my legs.  When we left the park I, ahem, refueled with a white chocolate and heath covered marshmallow stick.

Our dinner plans were for Seasons 52 but sadly there was an issue with our reservations and the plans fell through at the last minute.  We had driven past an Elephant Walk on the way that my friend Camile was super excited about so we ended up going there.

I had a diet coke and amaretto to drink before dinner.

And I ate 2 pieces of tempura salmon sushi for an appetizer.

I really wasn’t sure what to order for dinner.  The food choices were more American-Chinesse than what I usually prefer (authentic as possible Thai).  They had honey shrimp, sesame chicken, and similar things that sounded good but I knew would be unpleasantly unhealthy.  I ended up ordering tofu and veggie stir fry and asking for the sauce on the side.

My meal ended up being pretty tasty, I was definitely not disappointed.  I didn’t eat any of the rice but I pretty much decimated the rest.

We had big plans of heading out after dinner but we were all so tired it seemed much more pleasing to come home and go to bed.  I know 11:30 isn’t exactly early, but it will make for a better wake up tomorrow than a night of drinking would have!

What is your favorite Dr. Seuss story?  I am a really really big Seuss fan.  The Sneetches, Yurtle the Turtle, and The Butter Battle are all favorites but Oh, The Places You’ll Go really has my heart.