Today begins my candy challenge!

Full disclosure here... I love sugar.  In fact, I love every food that is bad for me from candy to chips to ice cream!  This time of year is particularly tough for me with Easter candy. I love jelly beans and Cadbury mini-eggs, they are my absolute favorite! Each year, I look forward to when the Valentines displays roll over to Easter because that means, mini-eggs are coming!

Because I overindulge in sugar and candy at this time of year, I have decided to give up sugar for Lent, starting today. I am going to miss my Starburst jelly beans and Cadbury mini-eggs, but I am committed to getting healthier this Lenten season and eating better. I am looking forward to getting back to the food basics and hopefully, having more energy for those early morning workouts!

And, so 40 days begins today. So long candy and mini-eggs!  I am going to miss you, this will be hard, but I am looking forward to the challenge!
 
 ~ Bea

What's on your phone?

Recently, I put together a list of top smartphone apps to share at my neighborhood Home & Garden club and thought it would be fun to share here!

What are your favorite apps?  How about your favorite fitness apps?  I love MyFitness Pal, Mind Body Connect app to book my fitness classes and my Up band (and app!)

Enjoy!

Bea

LIFESTYLE

• Amazon
  Access to full Amazon catalog, streamlined for mobile. You can even search with your voice or with your camera and compare products before you buy.  Access to Amazon Prime from app as well.
• AroundMe
  Allows you to quickly find restaurants, gas, ATM, etc around you based on your location. It quickly identifies your location and allows you choose the nearest bank, bar, gas, hospital, movie theatre, restaurant, and more.  You can also check out Find Me GF, an app focused on finding you the closest Gluten Free options.
• Houzz
  Design ideas that allows you to browse by style, room and location and save them to your virtual ideabook. They even have children’s app called Houzz Kids.
• Groovebook
  Ability to create personalized photobook with pictures you take with your iPhone. For $2.99 a month, you can a monthly book of photos. You can upload up to 100 photos.
• Starbucks
  App is designed to allow you to pay and have easy access to My Starbucks Rewards.  You can track your rewards status and continue to build rewards by paying with the app. You can also redeem rewards using the app.
• CVS
  Manage prescriptions, scan to refill prescriptions, send ExtraCare rewards to the card, and upload and order photos directly from app for pickup.

• Publix
  Allows you to see weekly ads and manage digital coupons by clipping coupons and adding them to your account. It’s tied to your phone number so you will need to enter your phone number when you checkout for the coupons. 
• Pulse
  A news app designed by LinkedIn allows you to customize your news reading experience with customized feeds and easy to digest headlines.
• Yummly
  Recipe search that allows you to search recipe sites you love, create digital recipe box and receive recipe recommendations based on your settings.
• Our Groceries
  Automatically tracks your grocery list with up to date changes to every family members phone. Every change is shared and is visible to every phone linked to app. You can also track key ingredients in your favorite recipes.
• Stocard
  Store all of your reward cards in one app, at the store just pull out app and scan barcode.
• Map My Run
  Track your workout details and determine your running routes, directly from app. 
• MyFitnessPal
  Fast and easy way to track calories, water, food and workout directly from app.
• Mind Body Connect
  Allows you to conncet to fitness classes, book online and even pay from the phone. You add your favorite studios to the app and you can quickly and easy book your classes and manage your fitness schedule.

SHOPPING

• ShopSavvy
  Helps your find the best online and local prices. You can quickly narrow search to check out sales and deals and you can scan or search for products to find the lowest prices.
• Target Cartwheel
  Different offers are made available on various weeks.  For example, 20% off Circo clothing.  You select which offers you want to be in your "cart."  When you checkout at the cash register, you have the cashier scan your cartwheel barcode on the phone app and the offer is applied to your order. 
• Walmart Savings Catcher
  Scan after purchase to determine whether you could have bought the products cheaper somewhere else.  The difference goes into an account. 
• IBOTTA
  Each week different products are featured.  If you purchase the product and take a picture of your receipt, you receive the allotted amount of money into your account. Eventually that money is transferred into a PayPal account.  You can link up with others on a "team" to earn money faster. 
• Checkout 51
  Same principal as above except the money goes into a gift card that is mailed to you. 
• Receipt hog
  Take pictures of your receipts and once you have earned a certain amount of coins, you receive a gift card to Amazon. 
• Shopkick
  Get "coins" when walk into variety of stores.  (i.e. Target, Macy's, Old Navy, Best Buy, etc)  You can also scan products with your phone, while in the store to earn more coins.  You can trade coins in for e gift cards to stores.

TRAVEL

• Waze
  Traffic app that helps navigate based on real-time traffic. It helps to save time with live routing based on community driven, real-time traffic alerts.
• 511 Georgia
  Official app of DOT and provides real-time access to traffic and travel information.
• Uber
  Request a ride with one button and set your destination for an easy pickup. You pay be credit card and tip is included.
• Delta
  Delta’s app allows you to check-in, check flight status, track luggage and have your boarding pass available all from your app.

Forty Things We Love About Petunia

Recently we celebrated the milestone 40th birthday for our dear BRF, Petunia. Bea came up with the idea of compiling a group list of the 40 things we love about Petunia. So here is that list and our continued celebration of Petunia, even better in her 40th year!

      1.       Supermom:  I love that she makes her children her number 1 priority!  Running two businesses doesn't keep her from being present and active in her boys’ lives!
2.       Super-runner: I love that she never misses a beat with the running group. Even having a baby hardly slows her down!
3.       Super-friend: I love that Petunia is a good listener. It's easy to spout advice at a friend, but it special to find someone who hears you!
4.       Honesty and Dependability
5.       Petunia's love of desserts!
6.       Her route flexibility!  :) (she is most easy going with routes!)
7.       Love of her running shoes, loves them so much they have holes in them! 
8.       That her second pregnancy was often fueled by chocolate chip cookie dough
9.       That she slows down when she is pregnant so I get a good solid 6-7 months of her running my pace:)
10.   I adore her positive outlook.
11.   I admire her determination. 
12.   I love her witty spunk.
13.   She's a dear BRF, if I need a run, I know I can text her. She'll run anytime, anywhere.
14.   I love her entrepreneurial spirit.  It was so cool seeing how proud she was when her company's facebook page hit 10K likes.  Of course, it's only grown since then!
15.   I love the way she talks about her mother and those stories.  It's an example of how she loves.  She really seems to love to the core and unconditionally regardless of any of their quirks.  (and heaven knows we all have quirks)
16.   Her strength.  She shows her strength and determination every day but I still get choked up at the idea of her son having seizures.  I know as a mother you go in survival mode but seizures are beyond scary.  That is real.
17.   I may have read way too much into it but I also saw something more relaxed about her this last time I saw her.  She seemed really happy so I hope she carries this into her 40's.  She has a lot to be proud of!
18.   Petunia is.. Grace under pressure
19.   Beautiful inside and out
20.   Extremely bright and witty
21.   Speedy runner while carrying on a conversation (that is if you can keep up with her)
22.   Extremely creative
23.   Incredible patience and love for her sons 
24.   Determined
25.   Calm
26.   you can tell she is pregger when you can finally run faster than her
27.   strong faith in God despite living through some extremely challenging life situations
28.   impressive entrepreneur and savvy business owner that runs a successful company
29.   wonderful mother, wife, sister, daughter
30.   makes excellent baked goods
31.   sells unique gifts that she hand delivers and wraps
32.   she has no idea how to keep a steady pace, all she knows is a fast pace and faster pace.
33.   Love that she does not like running behind anyone (unrestricted) which usually makes her Leader of the pack and one must engage her in conversation if we don’t want her to lead us at sub 9 minute miles or lower!
34.   she can survive on cheese and cheese only for dinner (well wine and cheese)
35.   quick to make fun of herself and doesn't take herself too seriously
36.   among her many talents, a very gifted writer.
37.   That she gets “hibernatey” this time of year.
38.   That she has a portable shopping mecca in her trunk at all times and allows us to go trunk shopping.  
39.   Love her HAIR!
40.   That we are comrades in procrastination when it comes to photo management & our annual calendars.
We could go on but these are just some of the things we love about you, Petunia. XOXO

Today's LR Enlightenments

A short follow up to my last long run post. Today's long run was so much better. Perhaps not fully rested (that is like some unicorn I will never see) but no night before high heel standing eternity experience. When one has a bad run, take comfort that you have gotten that out of the way as the next one is destined to be a good one...as I have heard said..and they also say a bad run is better than no run.

The background facts to frame my enlightenments gained from today's long run. Meet up at OBP, 29 chilly degrees, to what turned out to be 11 fabulous BRFs (oh, how I love them!) between the two routes: 6:30am- Nancy Grace 4.5 miler and 7:15am  Inman or bust 5.5 miler. My goals to run both waves & if the games were in my favor, to maybe squeak out a few more miles to get to 12. Not the point of the post but 12 in da' books.

Not as many enlightenments but here:

• Should we still call our Nancy Grace route the Nancy Grace now that she has moved to a different house? I pondered this out loud at coffee and got a resounding YES. 
• The real estate agent on the large billboard located at Osborne & Peachtree looks like Peter Brady. 
• In Myers Briggs testing, my E/I score falls dead center between E(extrovert) and I(Introvert) and I feel like my being plays this out on long runs. Run chat the first half and then gotta put on the earbuds and play my music really loud so I cannot hear my knees or whatever other achy  body part is talking to me.
• Inman....GLORY be thine name in the hallowed halls of the BRF running routes. Especially when taking it on at the early light of day. Such beautiful & lovely ** vistas. Hazel & Alma were a bit of a distance ahead of the pack such that I could see them through the trees on a lower stretch of Inman. Two stunning runners through the trees. I thought where is my camera?! I could have captured that moment and submitted it to Runners World magazine to be featured as a Rave Run. 
• I failed to share the most important and valuable information that I had to contribute to my BRFs during the run. Realized this après run & did impart it to the few still coffeeing so I write it here to share. Friday at SB, our favorite mega reformer studio, our instructor E, told us that earlier this week when the class members were facing the window doing the inner thigh work, who walked past the class to go to the cryotherapy service? ZAC EFRON....okay we also learned that the Victoria Secret Angels use the mega reformer work out. My wings should be sprouting after my next class.

** I realize I use the word lovely an awful lot, I blame my kids for watching too much Stampy Longnose, he uses this word all the time and apparently it's sinking into my brain.

Okay that's all for my 1st post attempted from an iPad.

Gotta Run,

Sadie

LONG RUN ENLIGHTENMENT

As I sit here with my legs up on the wall, recovery after a long run (which I learned to do thanks to Flora),

I contemplated what enlightenment I gained from this morning’s long run. I think when you run for greater than an hour, there are often learnings, understandings and knowledge to be gained during the process.  Sometime is it an aha that comes from miles of solitude or sometimes it comes from chatting with a BRF (Best Running Friend, in case you forgot). This morning’s long run started later than our usual BRF Saturday routine due to sketchy weather conditions. 40 degrees, feels like much colder with 10-20 mph winds and then a lovely wet drizzle as the icing on the climate cake. Eleven in all, a lovely gaggle of BRFs, showed up at the OBP to run varying distances from 4.4 to 12 miles. Me, I was planning on a 12 miler taking in some parts and pieces of favorite routes and sights... quest for the Big Fish. There were lots of insights and I thought I would share them here.

My first insight comes from what is NOT proper preparation for a long run. Wearing and standing in these shoes  for greater than 4 hours at a black tie event the night before.

Not a good idea. I was giving myself props for avoiding alcoholic beverages at this event. But these shoes are evil when it comes to running the next day. Then going to an event and not getting to bed early compounds the problem. Meanwhile the very brilliant Zelda says to me at coffee after the run, “Why did you not sleep in compression tights?” Me, of all people, forgetting about the power of sleeping in compression.

I did not just limit my sleep time on the front end, I master minded a great plan to pick up my husband an hour before the run at the airport which instigated an earlier rise than normal. Still glad that I did this and did not have my red eye travelling hubby ride Marta. But, again, not the best long run prep.

So those were the “What Not To Do” Enlightenments, let me transition to the sunshine that was found on today’s long run.

·         New running friends rock and add a sparkle to our group. And guess what, Nell? one of them is an Auburn graduate!

·         Mazel tov to a friend who is closing in on a brand new lovely home (not too far away, thank goodness)

·         A beloved pet and companion is recovering well after surgery this week.

·         You thought your child’s week of summer day camp was expensive, we learned of one that is $700 a week. By the way, I calculated this is probably two nights (club level)at a Ritz in Ameila Island. Weighing a week of summer camp versus two nights in Ameila Island. Maybe that cost is not soo much when your child is as wonderful, beautiful and talented as this BRF's.

·         Stop my gripin’ and moanin’ as one BRF stayed out until 2:30am and still popped up cheery and energetic to tackle this mornings run and doubled back to chat me up on my grueling last mile.

·         One BRF stored my stuff in her car as my water station then drove me home while another offered to pick me up at the Marta station if I had to enact the “Leave the car for the husband” plan.

·         The Lenox Park mile or so was just amazing. Winner of Best View As Seen During Today’s Long Run Award. Beautiful row of pine trees helped me coast along in a rare of moment of serenity.

·         Zelda and I discovered that Caribou Coffee on Peachtree has a little water stationJ. Divinely placed little things….

·         And finally those who altered the route to deter to Capital City rather than a potentially long windy cold stretch down Peachtree Road are GENIUSES.

In summary, my BRFs and a little scenery made a personally challenging long run so much better. I did not reach my 12 mile goal or see the BIG FISH but thanks to them, I made it to 10.67 miles. I will take that along with all of today’s enlightenments and look forward to another long run.

Grateful,

Sadie

  

Exercise & Health Resolutions, Girls?

In procrastination of not doing what I am supposed to be doing, I happened to be conducting a social media stroll through facebook, instagram & twitter and came across a posting from Lauren Fleshman, elite runner/pickybar creator (we can get into why I follow all these elite athletes in a future post or maybe in therapy). In her twitter posting, she connects you to her  Instagram posting (yup, social media overload) to see the New Years Inspirational comments of fellow runners to this fill-in-the-blank statement. This is the year I _____________________

So shall we weigh in with our New Year running, workout, exercise, health plans, goals, inspirations and resolutions?  Maybe if we say it out loud, it will be the first step in making it happen and maybe like the sole sisters that we are, we can boost and support each other along the way. Or perhaps even more fun, complain and vent about how hard it is to get where we want to go.

I'll go head and jump into the 2015 Resolution Pool....

This is the year I will eat healthier, lose a few pounds, stay injury free (so I can keep running) and get my kids to eat healthier and exercise more. And maybe end up looking like a older chunkier Lauren Fleshman. 

Come on in, the water is fine. Join me and post how you will fill in the blank for 2015. 

Love my Southern Sole Sisters. Thanks for making 2014 such a great year.

Sadie

Running Again

I have sat down to write this blog entry a few times, but can't seem to get it out. Let me start off by saying this post is not about running, although tomorrow I am planning to run for the first time in a few weeks. My first blog post was planned to be the announcement that I am pregnant and to start sharing my journey and stories of running while pregnant. Sadly, that's not going to be the case for me. 

Two weeks ago I went in for my 12-week OB appointment. For me, this was a standard appointment and not significant. In fact, I didn't even bring my husband. We had already seen the baby twice and saw a strong heartbeat in both cases. This was just an appointment to confirm I could post that Facebook announcement I had already written in my head about expanding our family. I had even taught our oldest almost 2 year old to say Big Sister. I was completely unprepared when the doctor shared the sad news and told me that the baby was not viable. When I look back now, I remember just trying to hold it together as tears pooled and started pouring down my cheeks. I was completely in shock as I stepped through the process to quickly schedule the surgery for early the next morning. 

As the day progressed, I grew even more sad mourning the loss of this baby. That night it became clear that my body was going to handle the process on it's own. Unfortunately, it became a problem as I became light headed and felt that I was going to pass out several times. We quickly headed to the hospital where I passed out as we checked into the hospital and continuously had issues with my blood pressure dropping significantly. After tests, consultations and evaluations, it was determined that I needed to have an emergency surgery that evening.

The surgery took allot out of me. The first two days I could not stand up without feeling that I had to pass out. I slowly started walking again and even climbing stairs winded me. I had been told to hold off exercising for two weeks and frankly, I couldn't have run even if I tried. I have finally gotten my strength back. It's not nearly 100%, but I am feeling much better and eager to get back to my workout routines.

I know it's common to miscarry with pregnancy, there is a 20% chance with each pregnancy. As I have shared my story, more and more people have shared that they had a miscarriage and can share in the heartbreak of hearing the news that this was not meant to be and comfort on the hope for the future. I am still grieving the loss, but trying to stay positive and hope that we have another opportunity to expand our family. 

In the meantime, I am going back to running. I am looking forward to the run tomorrow. I know it will be tough as I haven't worked out in weeks and compounded with the surgery, I am winded easily and slow, but that's okay. At this point, it's just about getting back to something that I love doing, running.