Kellye Mills

Failing to Plan

2010-11-01T20:58:00.002-04:00

I had big workout plans this weekend. Well, big plans for me these days. Saturday I made an appt. with a trainer to help me construct a functional strength plan to rebuild my body from what it's been put through this past year. That I actually accomplished, and it went really well. I had also planned on riding my trainer on Saturday as well, followed by what would be my longest run to date on Sunday. But... an SI issue that I've had in the past has reappeared causing me to rethink my plans. No trainer rides for about the next month or so, and the running I'm playing by ear. However, the strength training went so well on Saturday that I could barely walk on Sunday, so that run was cancelled as well.

So I woke up this morning ready to get back on track! Cohen ended up sleeping late, something that I will NEVER complain about I swear for as long as I live :), and after we finished our morning routine, we headed to the gym. After 15 min on an upright bike, just when I was starting to feel really good, my pager started beeping. I went in to check on him, and he was having a melt down. He shouldn't have been tired or hungry. He just didn't want to be there. He's a definite momma's boy, and I did what I knew was best, which was take him home. So once again... the plan had changed.

You see, for some reason, going to the gym just isn't working into Cohen's routine. Well maybe it's that in addition to the other errands we run in the afternoon. Regardless, whenever I plan things out these days, something happens and things fall through, and it's getting frustrated.

My life is full right now. Actually, maybe even a little bit TOO full, and for me to even acknowledge that is something. :) For as long as I can remember I have always enjoyed taking on challenges and even thrived on it a bit. And I've always equated a good bit of my success to the ability to manage my time very well and plan ahead. However, I feel as if all of that planning is actually getting in the way these days.

People do all sorts of things in an effort to plan ahead and be prepared. Grocery shop and cook meals on Sunday for the week ahead. Set out clothes for the next morning. Plan out their workouts for the week or their schedule. And there certainly is some validity to methods like these. But sometimes, the best thing you can do is just go with the flow. And that is actually really funny to me because though I sometimes like to think of myself as a go with the flow type of person, Adam will tell you that I'm anything but! :) I'm more of a Plan A, B,C, D and E type of person.

But all of this planning is mentally wearing me down. As I set there rocking my sweet baby to sleep tonight thinking about the day and how I once again didn't get a workout in today, I was trying to come up with a new plan. And, I thought ok, "I'll workout on these nights. Adam can workout on these nights. I'll run here, bike there, and squeeze in swims when I can." And then it occurred to me. That's what I'm tired of. "Squeezing" things in. So I made a mental decision that immediately provided me with a ton of relief. I let a bunch of stuff go. No more planning for awhile. I'm seriously going to take it day-by-day, hour-by-hour if I have to. I'm convinced that I'll accomplish what is really important to me...naturally. Because it's what I WANT to do. And you know, if it's something that just doesn't happen for awhile, well then maybe that's my answer about it's place in my life right now.

I'm sick of worrying about when I'm going to get in the workouts, trying to plan nutritous meals, when I will find time to walk the dogs, etc. I'm going to try to just trust myself for once that I can manage it just by doing it, and if I nail it 80-90% of the time, well that should be good enough for now. Just by letting go of all the worrying and spinning and planning and re-planning, I figure that should free up plenty enough time. :)

I'm not where I want to be physically right now. Not even close. But forcing it isn't working, so it's time to give Patience a try for a change. It's something I'm definitely not good at, but we'll see how it goes.

So tomorrow I can tell you that my kids do not have school due to it being election day. It's supposed to rain and suddenly turn 50 degrees, which is really cold for us! :) I know I'll spend time with my children and get done whatever I can around the house. I'll hopefully get in at least a 30 min run, and make the best decision I can about dinner. If I can accomplish that, I'll consider tomorrow a success and anything in addition to that will just be icing on the cake! Wishing you all a happy one and a day full of everything that is most important to you. :)

Juggling Chaos

2010-10-18T21:04:00.003-04:00

That is my life these days. Juggling what is inevitable chaos. I thought of using the word controlling the chaos, but I'm not even sure that I'm that lucky these days. :) Basically, I'm trying to manage the many, many balls I have flying up in the air at the moment.

Ball 1: Baby

Yes, this is a big one! He is one of three of the sweetest, most precious babies ever, but he is definitely an incredible amount of work. I would not describe him as an easy baby. Sweet, adorable, precious... yes, but not easy. He doesn't nap for much longer than 30 minutes at a time, and does not like to be set down for much more than 15 minutes at a time. That makes for a lot of hip time with mommy. He isn't one to entertain himself either. Toy bars, play mats, and mobiles, are just not near as interesting as someone speaking directly to him. And as much as I love being his most favorite person in the world, it does come with a cost that means he prefers me to anyone else and therefore daddy and other's can only accommodate him for short periods of time. He still likes to eat every 2 hours typically despite the fact that he gets cereal now twice a day, and he absolutely refuses to take a bottle of any kind, so my time away from him is very limited. He does however sleep very well at night, getting up to eat generally only once, so that is worth a lot of trouble on the flip-side. :)

Ball 2: Cooper and Gracie

Though they are in school for most of the day, what comes afterwards is a lot of work. We spend every afternoon each week at either ballet, gymnastics, soccer, or some other activity except for Wed. and Friday afternoon. That means that from the moment they walk in the door until bedtime, it is go, go, go. We're talking snacks, loading everyone and all necessary supplies in the car (this is WAY more difficult than it sounds), fitting in activities, homework, dinner, playtime, baths, stories, and packing everything up for school the next day. And keeping up with everything that is going on at school is work in and of itself. I'm not sure if it's just our school or if this is just the way that school is these days, but it is difficult keeping up with items I'm supposed to send in, events I've volunteered for, and even special colors they're supposed to wear to school. I know that a lot of that I could just not worry about, but they worry about it. And my being there for special events and remembering to dress them in red for Red Ribbon Day is important to them, so I make it important for me.

Ball 3: The Dogs

Lately, I've been feeling like a really bad doggy-mom. I don't walk them nearly as often as I should. I have been late a few times recently on their heart worm pills. Lucy has become our middle-child. We say she has middle-child syndrome. She likes Cohen, but she's definitely jealous of him. When we have visitors, they must pay attention to her first before visiting with the baby. Trust me, she makes sure of it. :) Rocky, well, he just wants to be fed. I love them both dearly, but they've been driving me crazy. We live on a street full of children and they bark at every little thing that moves by. This is I'm sure a contributing factor as to why Cohen probably only naps 30 min at a time.

Ball 4: The house

Honestly, I don't know how other mother's work outside of the home. I spend so much time cleaning, it is ridiculous. Yet, I swear my house is always a mess. The laundry, the cleaning, the grocery shopping, paying bills, running the errands, it may be cliche to say, but it is seriously a full-time job. Doing all of it with a 3 1/2 month old clinging to you non-stop makes it all the more difficult.

Ball 5: Workouts

I'm enjoying being back to working out, but it's hard working up the energy sometimes with everything else I have going on. Running isn't a problem with my handy-dandy jogger and the possibility of going to the gym, which makes swimming plausible a couple times a week as well, but biking is more difficult. Cohen's no where near hanging out long enough for me to ride my trainer for any decent amount of time, and until he can go a whole lot longer than 2 hours or so between feedings, an outdoor ride is no where in the near future. But, I have to keep reminding myself that I'm NOT training right now. Honestly, all I want to do right now is lose weight. If you told me that clogging would take off this baby weight, I'd devote all of my time to that, because despite the working out that I have been doing, my weight is barely moving. I seriously don't get it. How can I go from bed rest and McDonald's twice a day to working out 5-6 days/week with a day or two doing 2 workouts during the day and eating pretty healthy, and lose only like 1/2 lb every 10 days or so?? And breastfeeding isn't helping either. All I know is I'm so stinking frustrated about this I'm close to losing my mind. I'm fat and have no clothes that fit me. I'm working my butt off and even taking the time to try to prepare healthy meals, and am seeing no real results from it yet. The weight is going to have to give soon or I'll be participating in the grapefruit diet or something! That can not be pretty. :)

Ball 6: The hubby

Unfortunately, when life gets complicated and crazy, Adam tends to be the last priority on the list. But it's of course important to be sure our relationship doesn't get too neglected. Fortunately, Grandma Peggy is around whenever we need her. Even if it is for a quick dinner out. :) And that means certain things that some other's may find easy to eliminate stay on this to-do-list in our lives. As strange, and maybe even bad as it may be, prime time t.v. time is "our" time. So even if that means staying up later than I should sometimes, cuddle time on the couch is a must!

So this is my day to day. It's stressful and sometimes a little overwhelming, but I wouldn't change a thing. Everything on this list is my world, and I just want to spend each day perfecting it. And one day when all of these things are finally under control it will be time again to do Ironman!! :) HA!

A New Beginning

2010-10-08T21:49:00.005-04:00

If you have followed me in life over the past several years, you know that blogging definitely was not high on my priority list for awhile. :) I created a blog after competing in Ironman Florida in 2007 because it seemed like a great way to "meet" and communicate with others who shared my passion of triathlon, and the response I received was amazing! I've loved communicating with and sharing experiences with others from all over the country, and I feel that I've made some real friends through my blog.

From late 2007-2008 I enjoyed blogging about my experiences as a mother, wife, triathlete and ultimately a coach! It was fun and a community in which I felt I was a part of a group. However, beginning the 2009 season I found myself burnt-out and tired, which was not a good position to be in as I had planned on making that my biggest triathlon season yet competing in Ironman Wisconsin and Ironman Florida. In addition to my already somewhat depleted spirit and body, I experienced one of my most difficult moments in life ever in February of 2009. My father passed away suddenly from a heart attack.

Initially I was of course stricken with grief. Losing a parent is an incredibly difficult and complicated process. I believe that it affected me in ways that I wasn't even fully aware of at the time and may still not be. Life continues to move forward, even without our loved ones, and I attempted to continue with my life at that time as planned. However, Ironman training is exceptionally taxing on one's life. It places a great amount of stress on your mind, body, family, etc. and that is when you have no real additional stress to add to the equation. It requires a great amount of support from your family, job, friends. You pretty much need to have all your ducks in a row before embarking on an Ironman training plan. :) And heading into a 2 Ironman season while dealing with a widowed mother, changing family dynamics, and a heavy heart is definitely not an ideal equation. Therefore I spent the season ill, injured, and mentally not in the game. I pushed myself to the starting line of Ironman Wisconsin, but at too much of a cost and found myself unable to finish the race. My first DNF, and it saddens me to this day. I was prepared to have a decent day physically, but mentally was not there. I realize that now. From there I pretty much checked out completely and when I found myself ill yet again in October, I made the decision to end my season early and withdraw from the Ironman Florida race. This proved to be one of my best decisions to date.

Upon making the decision to take a real break from training for a bit, I began to reevaluate other aspects of my life. Adam and I had always pondered the question of a third child. At times I very much wanted another, and at other times (typically when the two I already had were driving me crazy :) I thought there was no way. However, I began really questioning the issue at that time because with an already 5 and 6 year old, I felt like time was approaching to make a final decision on this issue. In that month of October 2009, Adam and I had decided to really think things over. Well, life has a way at times of figuring things out for itself, and it was in that month that I became pregnant with our third child! Something that would not have happened had I decided to proceed with the IM Florida plans, and so I am beyond grateful for being led in the right direction.

I was excited to be expecting again of course! My first two pregnancies had their own share of difficulties. Cooper was brought about to some degree through fertility measures and therefore I was exceptionally cautious as far as exercise was concerned with his pregnancy. I became pregnant with Gracie only 8 weeks after delivering Cooper and decided to be cautious with her as well with the suddenness between the two. So I wasn't one of those "fit, cute" pregnant mamas with them if you know what I mean. :) I had visions of being just that this time around, and once again I realized that sometimes life has plans of its own.

My third pregnancy ended up being the most difficult of them all. I began the pregnancy up 10 lbs from my IM Wisconsin weight. Coming off of the race with a DNF I was hungry and somewhat depressed and so chocolate and french fries were part of my daily staples. :) As soon as I became pregnant I experienced some horrible morning sickness. And it unfortunately lasted for 22 LONG weeks! I tried to exercise when I could. I ran a few times and walked some. I remember swimming once, but wasn't really a fan. I guess because it was my 3rd child my stomach popped from the moment the plus sign showed up and made exercising even that more difficult. Once the morning sickness finally wore off, I was enormous and started having some difficulties. For whatever reason every time I would walk, even easily, I would experience bleeding. So the Dr's said no more exercising. By 28-29 weeks I started having blood pressure issues and was on some form of bed rest from 30 weeks on. I swelled like a beached whale and packed on pounds at a rate I didn't think possible. By 37 weeks I had developed a mild form of pre-eclampsia, I was on full bed rest, and had gained a whopping 80lbs since towing that starting line at IM WI just 10 months earlier!! Good thing I deliver all of my children early and my new sweet baby was born at 37 weeks.

Cohen James Mills was born on July 4th weighing 7lbs, 4oz. He is the final puzzle piece that completes our Mills family. :)

So that in a longer version that I intended of course sums up my life during my blogging absence. I consider myself for the most part to be a very happy person, and when I was struggling with really difficult times in life and there weren't happy things to write about I just didn't feel like writing at all.

But now I feel like all of that is behind me! I'm still of course saddened by my father's absence daily, but time has proven to help me move beyond those initial stages of grief and to make him a presence in my life in other ways. Cohen has brought new energy to my life as well, which brings me to an entirely new phase. One that I'm beyond excited about!

It's been 3 months since Cohen's birth, and I have an incredible journey ahead of me. :) I ran 3 miles today at an avg pace of 11:30 min/mile and was thrilled! This believe it or not is a huge improvement from even 5 days ago, so I accepted it as the success that it was. It sure is a far cry from where I left off, but I know that I will get back to where I was + meet new PRs. And more importantly I have so many wonderful experiences to look forward to with Cohen and Cooper and Gracie as we begin the journey of raising another baby and doing so with older children as well.

And so 2 years ago it was my goal to be the best mother, wife, coach, and triathlete that I could possibly be. Now, that is the same goal + 1. More difficult...probably. Different...yes. But worth every minute of it I'm sure! :)

I found myself wanting to begin this blog again. We'll see how it goes. Life is busy and I am honestly not sure how often I will be able to post, but we tend to find time for things that we enjoy and find meaningful, and so we shall see. If it's a success, great, and if not, well... there's always facebook! :)

Chuck Norris Contest!

2010-02-13T10:37:00.002-05:00

Adam recently submitted a Chuck Norris joke to a triathlon website: everymantri.com

One of his was chosen in the top 10 and you can go online and vote for your favorite!

If he wins... we'll get a cool box of Clif Bar stuff, so we'd love your support in voting!

Go to the website: http://www.everymantri.com/

Scroll down the blog until you see the Chuck Norris competition.

Click on the link to the Top 10. Adam's is:

"Chuck Norris is allowed to buy "Finishers" merchandise before the race."

I think it's hilarious because if you've done an Ironman or 70.3 race where you can buy Finisher's merchandise, the athletes go CRAZY over that stuff! So anyways.

We'd love your support, and hopefully, you'll think it's the funniest too!

Thanks guys!

Update!

2010-02-01T20:07:00.003-05:00

The Little Peanut that's contributing to knocking me completely off of my feet! :)

In my trying to not be such a blogger-slacker... I realized I needed to give an update!

Not too much has been going on lately. I'm in the "boring" phase of pregnancy as I've heard some put it. The second trimester where not too much is going on. "Fortunately" for me, my hormones are keeping me plenty busy! :) My latest developments.... Now that I'm no longer nausea non-stop but only occasionally, I find myself barely able to brush my teeth though. For some reason, that triggers something in me, and I find myself throwing up or dry-heaving twice a day. The other day, it was so bad... I broke blood vessels in my face! I've done that once before while pregnant with Cooper. Maybe it's because you have more blood volume while pregnant? I don't know, but I walked around for 2 days with little red dots all over my face and an almost black eye! Lovely! :)

I've also developed an UTI which sent me to the Dr. this morning for more meds. Fun, Fun!!

That brings me to another topic I was thinking about the other day... Disgust Tolerance! Between having children, raising children, and being a triathlete, I think mine has gotten pretty high. :) I mean we all know pregnancy and child birth, though "beautiful" can be rather disgusting. And if you are a mom out there, you don't need me to tell you all the wonderfully disgusting and disturbing things children allow us to experience. But what's funny is I was thinking about how truly gross being a triathlete can be too!

In the training and racing experiences, I actually remember the day I blew my first snot-rocket while on the bike! It was a proud moment. Ha ha!! And gosh, Ironman racing lets you experience everything from pucking your guts out to only start running again, to learning to pee on yourself so you don't have to get off the bike, to all sorts of lovely, "I will never wear these pants or shoes again!" moments! :)

On a more pleasant note... :)

This weekend Adam and I took a "stay-cation." We got one of my favorite sitters, Cara, and then booked a hotel room in Alpharetta, which is around 30 min. from here. It was to just get away for the night without the temptation to do stuff at home. We spent the afternoon just relaxing in our room enjoying some quiet time. Then dinner, a movie, and an early bedtime later, and by lunch time the next day, we were feeling a little more refreshed and ready to take on the shortest, yet dullest months of the year.

Tomorrow is Groundhog's Day! Adam's favorite celebration, so lets hope he calls for an early Spring for us all, and happy celebrations all around!

Pregnancy Pros and Woes :)

2010-01-21T08:07:00.003-05:00

Gracie on her birthday!

Cooper on his birthday!

When I first found out that I was pregnant again, I had these visions of me being this super fit, cute little pregnant person. You know, one of those women that you hear about that runs up until the day they deliver, and you'd never know they were pregnant except for this little belly, and they feel great the entire time, and glow.... blah, blah, blah... :) Let's just say that was not me in my last two pregnancies, and I've realized nor will that ever be me as a pregnant person. :)

Gracie's wasn't too bad. I only gained 19lbs with her, but that was 19lbs on top of what I'd gained to just get pregnant with Cooper, and because the running/ nutrition issues had been what had ultimately sent me to fertility treatments with Cooper, I was too scared to attempt it at all during their pregnancies. Half way through with Cooper, I finally started walking. It was good for me. I walked all the way through his and right into Gracie's! And I will say fortunately, I lost all of my baby weight + the extra get pregnant weight really quick after Gracie. So let's just hope that happens this time around!

They say every pregnancy is different though and so far, this has been my experience over the past 14 weeks!

Woe: I am STILL battling some morning sickness. It's gotten much better. Meaning I'm no longer experiencing it every second of every day for week's on end, but it still rears it's ugly head periodically, and I'm sooo ready for this phase to end.

Woe: Weight! Like Cooper's pregnancy, I've gained a lot of weight fast! I'm scared people. :) Well, the crazy part of me is. ha ha. Seriously though, I've already gained 15lbs!! I will say the good news is that that first 15 happened within the first like 11-12 weeks, and since then, I haven't really gained any since. But this is obviously not going to be a 19lb pregnancy. I gained 45lbs with Cooper and he was 4 weeks early! I've been in maternity clothes for weeks now, and my rear is growing as we speak. Cute little pregnant lady... I think not. :)

Pro: Ok, on a positive note though, I'm really enjoying working out lately. I walked and did as much as I could during those really sick weeks, and though I've run a few times here and there, most of the time, it is not a comfortable thing. But, after being stuck in a swim, bike, run routine for so long, I'm really enjoying venturing out and doing other things for a change. Yesterday, I did the elliptical machine and loved it! It's been years. I actually even tried it about a year and a half ago, but my back was so jacked up from all the biking, I couldn't do it because it hurt too much. I felt like I got a really good workout in yesterday though and it was nice mixing it up a bit and doing some new things!

Woe/ Pro??: I'm losing my filter. You know, the part of you that reminds you what is appropriate to say or feel! My emotions are more exaggerated than usual. I cry during almost every American Idol these days! I got really ticked off at a neighbor the other day because I waved to her and she never waves back, and normally, it wouldn't bother me, but it really got to me then. :) Just little things. So here's the official Blog Warning: I may say things I should not. The bad news is, I shouldn't say them. The good news is, you'll forgive me if I do because I'm an emotional train-wreck of a pregnant lady, right??? :)

Pro: At least for me, when I’m pregnant, it helps me gain perspective. Because it is no longer about ME. The focus shifts to the baby, and what is best for the baby, and I can chill out about some of my crazy little quirks and obsessions that seem to follow us crazy Ironman athletes!

So as for right now, deep down, I'm not worried about the weight gain or the emotions or anything else, because I know it will all bounce back. And no, I won't be the same person I was before the baby, I know I'll be a little different. But, that's ok, because it's all worth it! :)

2010 Triathlon Stimulus Package!!

2010-01-13T21:23:00.003-05:00

It seems like everyone is offering some sort of special stimulus package these days, and so I thought I'd come up with one of my own! :) Especially since triathlon is known for being one of the most expensive sports out there, we definitely deserve a break, right??

So... I'm offering a couple specials:

* If you sign at least a 6 month contract with me before the end of January, I'll add an extra month for FREE!!

* If you refer a client to me and they sign at least a 6 month agreement, you'll receive a $50 referral bonus!!

Please email me if you have any questions. I would love to help you out! :)

Once Upon a Time, In a Winter Southern Land...

2010-01-09T18:42:00.005-05:00

It began to snow for the first time in a LONG time...

The children would gather to see this amazing sight!

In hopes that it would cover the ground all in white.

School was cancelled for night

And then for the day

And the sledding began

downhill all the way!

Some were reluctant

And scared of the cold ground

While others were smiling and forward bound!

"So Are you 4, 5 months pregnant?"

2010-01-03T19:07:00.004-05:00

From almost the day I found out I was pregnant, I swear, I started looking that way! My clothes do not fit, I couldn't really keep it a secret for very long because people immediately suspected something. A combination of it being my third, so my stomach muscles relax more quickly and pregnancy bloating issues, I "popped" rather largely, immediately!

This has also been the worst first trimester of all 3! I've wanted to throw my brains up almost non-stop since like week 5. I'm exhausted all of the time. And despite the nausea, I'm starving all the time. Go figure! :)

The good news is that I'll be 12 weeks within days and I'm FINALLY starting to overcome some of those things. The most I've been able to exercise is 2 days in a row before it taking too much out of me and me needing 3 or more days off. :) And by "exercise" I mean, walk like an hour. :) I have however walked yesterday and today and am PLANNING on actually going to the pool tomorrow. Yes, that's right... swim. Like laps, in a pool. I haven't done that since October. Early October. And I've never swam pregnant, but I've heard it's supposed to be really good. So, we'll see how it goes. Maybe it won't be too bad since I'm semi-cheating and going to a slightly heated pool. I figured I might need the extra warmth since I doubt I'll be breaking any records in there tomorrow. Ha Ha!! :) Who knows, maybe I'll actually lose my mind and post a picture of me pregnant in my swim suit! Ok... if that ever does happen, have me committed immediately because I would never in my right mind do that! :)

Wish me luck tomorrow and that the pool is empty so no one has to endure seeing my pregnant body in a swimsuit!! :)

Sayonara 2009!!

2009-12-30T15:14:00.002-05:00

Welcome to my updated blog!!

Yes, my blog has been neglected for sometime. Honestly, I feel like my entire world was off this past year. Which is why tomorrow night my family and I will celebrate the end of 2009 more so than the coming of 2010!! :)

I think for almost everyone I know, this past year has been full of difficulties, disappointments, and heartaches. But, as Adam and I were discussing not too long ago, the universe relies on balance, and in order to experience the wonderful times and moments, we all must endure our fair share of yucky ones too.

Though 2009 was not my year as an athlete and was full of life difficulties, it wasn't ALL bad. :) I completed my first full year of coaching and found it to be extremely rewarding and full-filling! I love being apart of helping others achieve goals and dreams, and find myself very attached to my athletes.

Being a mother to my children is amazing! Though difficult at times, my children are growing and turning into such wonderful little people, and I've had such fun experiencing special moments with them this year.

And now as 2009 comes to a close, I find myself preparing to be a mother again! Adam and I have spent years going back and forth between "maybe", and "there's absolutely no way!" And sometimes, I think things are just meant to happen at certain times and make life that more rich because of it. So, we're very excited as we prepare to grow as a family next year and anticipate the arrival of Baby Mills #3 in July of 2010!

I have big hopes and expectations for the coming year. I hope to use the extra time I've been given not training so much to focus on continuing to develop my coaching business! (Look for a special coaching offer coming soon!!) Adam and I have some big home improvement plans developing as we make room for a larger family. And personally, I hope to learn from my experiences this past year and approach 2010 with a greater understanding of myself and more trust in who that is.

And as a coach, I'd like to hopefully really set a positive example for helping others train to achieve their goals without sacrificing their families, normal and realistic eating habits, sleep, careers, and other fun activities in life. Instead of torturing yourself, I think you can be very successful while making it to all of the baseball games, enjoying french fries and cake more than once a year, and maximizing your sleep, recovery and time spent training rather than endless, tiring hours! So hopefully, my blog moving into next year will emphasize those positive things and won't be one that seems filled with "pressure" from all the wonderfully difficult things other people are doing!

Oh, and hopefully, I can keep up with it more often as well! :)

Here's to moving forward and realizing life is a long journey and it's ok for all of us to slow down and take it all in!! :)

Maxwell- DNS

2009-10-09T07:51:00.005-04:00

Well... here we are. Two months later and my blogging skills have yet to rebound for the year. :) Much like most aspects of my life this year.

2009... not my year. And that's ok. I came into this year with amazing hopes and dreams. I remember thinking as the year approached, that it just felt like it was going to be a special year. And in many ways it has. Just not in the ways I had imagined.

It hasn't all been bad. I have begun the journey of starting my own business, and that is an incredible feeling! Hard work... absolutely, mixed in with a lot of really tough decisions and several ups and downs, but overall, it's been a success, and I can only hope that it will continue to grow and flourish in the years to come!

And my family, well I did lose an extremely important person this year. I honestly feel that though I am beyond the initial grieving stages, his death has affected me in many more ways than I can really pin-point. I think those first traumatic months of stress has imprinted itself in me far deeper than it appears, and will take much longer to heal than I originally expected.

As far as the rest of my family, I couldn't ask for a better one. My husband is amazing. My children are the most wonderful things ever, and I have so many things and people to be grateful for!

But it has definitely been a learning experience. As a coach and athlete I understand that when you walk away from a truly successful race, it's a great feeling! But it's the races where everything goes wrong, and you struggle the whole way through, that you walk away learning so much more. And I'm looking at this year as one of those experiences. The entire year has been such a struggle for me, that now is the time to take a step back and evaluate what went wrong, why, and how should I handle it from here moving forward. We certainly can't control every aspect of our lives. But we can grow with every experience and learn to be stronger individuals from them.

Another truly difficult time in my life was about 8 years ago when I decided it was time to be a mom, and Adam and I were having complications in making that happen. Patience is definitely not one of my stronger points. :) When I make a decision about something, I'm ready to move forward and do all of the steps involved in making things happen. But again, I found myself in a situation that I could not control. I was doing everything I could, but month after month was filled with disappointment. The fertility process became all consuming. Every aspect of my life revolved around babies and pregnancy. It was as if overnight, I transformed from a teacher, wife, and runner to a person with nothing because I couldn't have a baby. Now in my defense I will say that it's hard to blame a woman for being crazy and emotional during this time. Through the fertility process you are pumped with so many hormones, that you are most likely clinically insane! But it became so overwhelming.

After many months and resorting to a quite invasive procedure that ended up failing, I found myself completely depleted. My confidence, energy, and strength were all completely down, and it was time for me to rest. We decided to take a month off. 1 full month of NOTHING baby. No baby shows, no baby talk, no discussion on names... nothing that had anything to do with babies. :) Suddenly, by finding a way to remove that pressure at the right time, the stress around me was allowed to temporarily melt away. Life became joyful again. And I'm sure you can gather what happened.... I got pregnant!

It's amazing what stress can do to the body. And though we can even go to extreme measures to do what we can to take care of our bodies, to relax, rest, and recover... eliminating stress is not something you can fake. If it exists, sometimes you have to just allow yourself time to allow it to dissipate.

And that is exactly what I've decided. With just 4 short weeks to go until my big race of the 2009 season, IM Florida, I've decided not to race. I feel like the past 9 months have felt like I was racing an Ironman in and of itself. I had some amazing training moments! My trip to Tuscon was incredible! I rode 120 miles, the farthest I've ever ridden at once, on my birthday! I had weeks and weeks of some great training blocks. But I had many set-backs as well. I've fallen off of the horse this year over and over, and as far as I'm concerned, I've, "tried, and tried, again!"

But there are times that it's important to realize when the battle is lost. Or what you would have to give up to keep fighting just simply isn't worth fighting anymore. I pushed and pushed to get myself to Madison. And for whatever reason, it just wasn't meant to be. That is what I truly believe for this year. I am just not meant to race Ironman this year. I've tried. Believe me! :) I put up quite a big fight against fate, but through it, I'm learning to differentiate what is truly important to me in life.

I LOVE triathlon! I love racing. I love coaching even more! This isn't an end for me. But to spend the next 3 weeks away from my family, continuing to fight to juggle the training with my responsibilities as a mother, wife, and coach, continuing to delay things such as camping, and doing things with and for my family until after the race, just isn't worth it for me to show up at another Ironman not fully prepared to my potential.

I got sick over a week ago with a sinus infection. It was a pretty bad one this time. My body has been sick almost as much as it has been well this year, and that is it speaking to me telling me that it isn't ready for this right now. So between the stresses of losing my dad, starting a new business, working as a teacher as well earlier in the year, being a mother of 2 young children, and a wife, and trying to train for 2 Ironmans this year.... it's been too much to ask of myself right now.

And that is ok. I will rest. Deeply. And I know myself well enough to know that that fire inside of me still exists and will begin to burn excitedly once again once I allow my body and my mind to heal. So... learning from a lesson from my earlier struggles with fertility, I'm entering NO training mode. :) No heart rate monitors, no workouts, no hill repeats, no zones, no gels, no calorie counting, nothing of the sorts!! And that is until my body is recovered. I encourage my athletes to take 2 full weeks off at the end of each training season to allow this type of deep recovery, and most people can barely stand the thought of not training for 2 whole weeks! I have a feeling for me this break will be longer than 2 weeks though! :) For now, it's yoga, reading, sleeping in, camping, sitting at my daughter's soccer game not wondering if I'm going to make it home in time to get in that long run. It's peace.... and I know, just like when I have done this once before my body naturally game me what I wanted so badly, which was my Cooper, that this too will lead to an incredible 2010!

So if you are looking for me in the IM Florida line-up, I'll be just like Maxwell up above- DNS. And look at him, he seems completely ok with his decision!! :)

In the meantime, maybe I'll have more time to blog about all of the wonderful things in my life right now, like Disney, Halloween, Gracie's soccer, etc.! :)

Until then...

I'm In Madison!!

2009-09-10T21:34:00.004-04:00

I'm resting and getting ready to race tomorrow! We are all having so much fun! My AWESOME husband surprised me and showed up this afternoon. I am in the middle of a VERY important Scrabble game. :) So, I'll write more on WI and the race on Monday I hope! Hopefully, everything will go Great for all of us!

"Coming Down a Bit"

2009-08-27T20:23:00.004-04:00

That is the stage in which I am in... "Coming Down a Bit." It is what was written as one of my goals for training peaks! The tapering part of training is always a weird time for me. It's generally a conglomeration of mixed emotions.

Relief: Ahh... the end is in sight! No matter what your training has been like, you are almost done, and that is a good feeling!

Tiredness: Hopefully, you've been training hard and you've reached the point where you've pushed as hard as you should before heading into your race. You're physically, mentally, and emotionally tapped out!

Off!: This is the feeling I hate the most! :) During this time, I just don't feel quite right, and that is totally normal. My body has been going, going, going, and now...not so much anymore. I'm sure this effects people differently, but for me... I feel fidgety, tired, kind of bored, and basically a little lost.

Cranky!!: As my body slowly rebuilds itself and works it's way back to "normalizing :)" I loose the ability for all patience! It's like my body itself requires all of my patience in the rebuilding process and leave none for my mental status!! So watch out world!! I haven't even hit the REAL taper, and have 2 more weeks to go! Don't mess with me. :)

Worry: Oh... this is a tough one. How will I do? Have I done enough? What if...this? What if... that? This is generally easier when training has gone really well. But, when there's been set-back after set-back, my worry can really get to me. I know it's normal, and I'm determined to spend the next 2 1/2 weeks working on that confidence level! Here's one of my confidence boosters...! You know how they say that if it rains on your wedding day that is actually good luck? Well maybe if training's been rough, the race will miraculously go well!! We'll see how that works out! :)

Another confidence builder...

Look at those adorably, exhausted faces!! They worked soooo hard on their Fun Run! 35 laps, whatever they = out to, I have no idea. Gracie only did 19 because then she got "too sweaty," but Cooper really pushed it out to finish right in time! Here's a video of it. You can't really tell what's happening until the very end, but he got his 35th lap right at the end of the 10 sec. countdown! I was a very proud mom. :)

And honestly, there are a million other emotions/ strange thoughts that flash through my head throughout the day! But, so far common sense is pulling through. I keep telling myself what I would say to me if I were one of my athletes! Why is it so hard to take your own advise sometimes? :)

I'll hopefully keep you posted on how it goes along! ;)

One Month Later... :)

2009-08-17T10:13:00.003-04:00

Ok... I keep saying that I'm going to get back into the groove of blogging, and then before I know it, a months gone by! :)

It's been a busy month...

We're back in school!! And my baby is in Kindergarten. I can't believe it. It truly was bitter-sweet. I was soooo ready for school to start! The kids were bored all summer despite whatever I tried to do. I swear, school is so busy and organized these days, I don't think these little kids know how to just go outside and play for more than 20 minutes or entertain themselves. It wasn't just my kids. Every kid in the neighborhood seemed like they didn't know what to do with themselves this summer! :) But, when I finally took them back... I was sad...:( She was fine! "Bye mom!" And I was like, ok... see you later. Now, I was the one left not knowing exactly what to do with myself! :)

The block at my house eating Spaghetti!

Gracie finishing her back to school shopping!

But school is going well! Cooper is a big man in First Grade and Gracie is enjoying her teacher and new friends in K.

My babies' first day of school!

I had another birthday... 31! Wow... the years just keep adding up!

Training wise... it's coming a long. I have my LAST long run of 3 hours tomorrow!! The last time I attempted 3 hours, it didn't go so well. 2 hours in, I got to feeling really bad in the August Georgia weather. It was like 95 and sweltering! I got dizzy and nauseous and started feeling those first signs of heat stroke and ended up calling it a day at 2:20. Came home feeling disappointed of course and decided I'd turn it into a double and do the remaining 40 min that night. Well, I had a tri meeting that night that I was leading and got home later than I had expected of course. But I was bound and determined to finish that run and headed out the door at 9pm for my 40 min pace finish! 20 min in I was feeling good, legs were there, my pace was right where it needed to be and it started POURING! I typically have no problems with running in the rain... AS long as I have on a hat. :) If I have a hat on to keep the rain out of my face, I'm good. Well of course I didn't that night because I wasn't expecting the rain, but even THEN... I was trucking along happy that the run was going so well. With 5 min to go, I ended up going being challenged by a rock and well... the rock won. Tripped right over it and twisted my ankle and walked disheartedly home in the pouring rain. :)

My awesome post-ankle sprain footwear! Fortunately, I didn't have to wear it long. :)

Fortunately, it wasn't that bad. A week's worth of some TLC and it was headed back to normal. Didn't put TOO much of a cramp in my training either, so I guess I was lucky when you think back on it, but I was truly ticked at the time! Aren't you supposed to be rewarded for getting back out there and finishing what you started???

I have some thoughts about that I'll share in my next post, which will hopefully not be more than a week away! :)

Until next time, wish me luck that this 3 hour run tomorrow gets done all at one time!! :)

Life Recap!

2009-07-15T20:12:00.006-04:00

Wow! I'm blogging! I don't believe it myself. :)

In all seriousness, I think part of my blogging problem is that I wait forever to blog and then sit down and work on ONE for like over an hour. So then I don't blog for another month almost because I never have one full hour to commit, and before you know it, a thousand different blogging topics have come and gone, and I feel the need for a long post.

But today I am breaking that habit! From this point forward, I'm attempting the shorter posts, more often! We'll see how it goes. :)

What's new???

Well, the 4th was great! My family and I no longer celebrate The Fourth of July as we now celebrate the "James of July!" James is our baby brother and he's this big, grumpy, intimidating guy! He bought a bunch of fireworks for our party, and we were calling it that to put the pressure on him for a big show. A big show he put on indeed! One of the teenagers accidentally ran over one of the fireworks, so when James lit it, it blew up causing all of the other fireworks to blow up at the same time! It turned into 2 small fires, one of which was very close to a car and almost blew up the car. Drunk individuals + fireworks= trouble! But, it was so much fun!

**Oops!! :)

**Ahh!! Gracie and her Daddy!

**Cooper and his cousin Tate

**Is it possible for Miss Lily Lu to get any cuter??

**Me and my babies!

**Gracie wanted to make "snow angels" :)

In other news... I actually RACED this past weekend! First race in about 8 months. I haven't done anything as much of of 5k, fun race in the pool, NADA. So part of me was nervous, part of me just in it for fun. It ended up being a good day! I didn't pr or anything. Honestly, all of my splits were pretty much exactly where I thought they'd be except for the swim. It was a little better actually. :) So, now that I've gotten one race behind me, I've been reintroduced to the race bug! I'm ready to do it again, and do "better." Isn't that how most of us get sucked in?? :)

**The kids at the race! WAY cuter than me! :)

AND... I've actually had 3 1/2 solid weeks of training missing only 1-strength workout! For some of you, this may not be much of an accomplishment, and for the 2003-2008 Kellye, missing workouts was a RARITY! But, this year has been a little different and I'm on my best streak YET! So, I am FINALLY starting to feel like my old self again. Maybe a little too late for Wisconsin. Still planning on racing Wisconsin, but I'm a realist and realize it won't be as pretty as I would have originally liked. But... hey, it's Ironman nonetheless, and hopefully, if I can knock off a few more 3 week segments.... Florida might be a decent race afterall!

**Look! This is my adorable mom holding the keys to her new, cool, hip condo in downtown! Can anyone say, "Hello Babysitter Grandma Peggy!" :)

**And look... this was our afternoon today. The kids got new umbrellas and a "Miracle" happened according to Gracie! It actually kind of rained. :)

Here's to hanging on and working through! Yeah!! :)

Trip to Dallas!

2009-06-21T19:08:00.011-04:00

We had so much fun in Dallas, that I didn't get a chance to blog about it until now. :)

This was a particularly fun trip because we actually FLEW this time! After who knows how many 14+ hour drives from Atlanta to Dallas, TX, we wised up and caught an airplane there. 1:45 travel time beats 14+ hours every single day of the week! :)

Well because of this, this happened to be Cooper and Gracie's FIRST airplane ride! And boy, did they have fun!!

Then in Texas we did ALL SORTS of fun stuff!!

We played in Aunt Kellie's awesome pool!

We got all sorts of new clothes that our Grandma Ellen made for us. She even made clothes for Felicity (Gracie's American Girl Doll!)

We went out to eat at cool restaurants. Those that even had cool rides...

GIANT Bears!

And cool Doors and Accessories!

We went to Grandma Ellen's and Grandpa Ed's cabin where we got to....

Ride in the back of a truck! (One of Gracie's favorite parts :)

Go Fishing! Cooper caught TEN fish!

*Look at those big, strong muscles!

*Gracie lasted all of about 3 min. out there :)

Make Minnie a new Dress because she was brutalized by Aunt Jenni's dog :)

AND shot a BB gun!

Then we even went and ate at Medieval Times! The kids LOVED it of course!

It was lots of fun and now we're back to enjoying our summer full of sun, pools, fun, oh... and Ironman training if I can squeeze it in! ha! :)

Happy Summer!

FREE Shoe Give Away!

2009-06-16T18:58:00.002-04:00

Hey Guys!!

I got an invitation to go online and register to win a FREE pair of shoes from onlineshoes.com
and you guys can go online and register to win too! I actually order my Saucony's from them A LOT, and have always been happy, so it should be a great deal!

All you have to do is go to one of my blogger friends websites: Steve's! You know, the really funny guy from way up North where it's really cold! :) http://iwannagetphysical.blogspot.com/

Post a comment, and you're in! Good luck everyone!

Oh, and I'm in the land where everything is BIGGER! Texas! So I'll update more later. :)

Happy Birthday Lucy Lu!

2009-06-12T18:05:00.005-04:00

Today is Lucy Lu's designated Birthday!

It is designated because technically we don't really know when her birthday is. But, since she was found on December 12th and claimed to be 6 months old at the time, we decided that her birthday shall hence be June 12th!

She's definitely been A LOT of dog to handle! :) Much bigger than we expected her to be, yet she thinks that she is a lap dog!

BIG puppies can get in a lot of trouble. Think... "Beethoven", "Marley and Me." Yep... I am definitely her saving grace, because if it were up to Adam, she may have been on family #3 by now. But I LOVE her! And honestly, I think he loves her too even though he would never admit it. :)

So despite the chewed up shoes...

The holes she is digging in the backyard...

This is her hole she is digging in an attempt to get to her next door neighbor friend Delila!

The stair she ate. YES, she is eating the carpet on our stairs and the carpet man is coming tomorrow to repair it!

The numerous times Adam has fixed the molding from where she's chewn it up...

And all of the other little things she's done over the past 6 months... :)

I love her with all of my heart!

So Happy Birthday big girl! :)

Just a Normal, Perfectly Normal, kind of day!

2009-06-08T18:57:00.003-04:00

For the most part, life is generally so busy that I hate dealing with the laundry, dinner and all of those other must-do tasks that constantly need attention yet you never seem to have enough time for.

But... ever so often I find myself actually enjoying some of those things. Because some times it is nice to put all of those other crazy parts of life aside and do those simple tasks. They require very little thought. You can just zone out, turn on some mind-numbing t.v. show and fold away. :)

That was my kind of day, and I honestly found myself just soaking it up. :)

My pneumonia finally seemed to go away, and life has settled down quite a bit.

School has ended. No teaching for the moment, no homework, no early mornings. It's been nice. :)

Adam and I even got away for a long weekend to Hilton Head. Ahh! Our first time there, and what a beautiful place! I brought my bike, because this place is supposed to be like biker's paradise, and yes... people were biking everywhere. But at that leisurely I'm on vacation pace. :) I was doing some workouts you know where my hr was supposed to be X, etc. and therefore stuck to the road. But then I actually got pulled over by the police on my bike! Yep, no biking on the streets in Hilton Head. I was like... ok... thank goodness I only had 5 more minutes to go in my workout anyways. So I hopped on the bike path and toodled my way back to my hotel like all the rest of the "normal" people. :)

Lauren and I went to a No Doubt concert, which was a ton of fun!

So today, instead of being a teacher/coach/mom/wife/housewife/dog owner/lord knows what else (ha!), I played mom/housewife today. My day consisted of...

Laundry, Laundry, and more Laundry!

Actually baking dessert! Mississippi Mud Pie! Hmmm!! With all the sugary, buttery, marshmallowy goodness I could squeeze in!

Gracie seeing how many of those delicious marshmallows she could shove into that HUGE mouth! :)
I took my kids to the pool, and then sat in a chair on my back porch cherishing summer and all it has to offer afterwards!

It was the PERFECT normal day! And even those can be exhausting sometimes! :)

Happy Summer!

The Poster Child for NOT Recovering! :)

2009-05-18T20:08:00.003-04:00

Ok, now imagine that same commercial, except "This is not enough rest, too much stress, and trying to do too much at one time. This is YOU not rested, stressed, and beat down. Any questions?" :)

Because that would be me! ha ha

Ok, not really funny, but true nonetheless. You know how you read about, your training partners talk about, and your coach harps on you about that big word... RECOVERY. You know, the most important part of endurance sport. The phase in which you actually get stronger. The one in which ignored, you'll end up "Fried?" Well listen up my friends, because what they say is TRUE!

If you read my blog even as regularly as I've been keeping it up lately, well then you know that I've been a mess this year. I actually went through and added it all up....

In February, I was sick 5 days in which I didn't do ANY training. I bring up the training part because there were days I was sick, like getting there and worked out anyways, "to get it in." So I was really sick even more than that 5 days. Then, with the passing of my Dad, I missed 6 more days in Feb. of training.

March... 5 days no training due to illness. And I was sick the entire time I was out in Tucson, so that didn't help things. :)

April... 5 days no training due to being sick. In the bed as soon as I could get there sick!

May... Thought I had kicked it. Thought there was no way I could be sick ANY more. Thought, ok, allergy season is behind me, right?? Well, when you take a body that works too much, doesn't eat well ALL of the time, trys to keep up with everything and has been beaten down just a bit too much already... the smallest things send you right back to base 1. So, what started as an allergy attack, turned into full-blown asthma. I tried to be aggressive. Went to the Dr. and "showed them" by demanding my steroid shot to make this thing once and for all go away.

But then something really weird happened. I've had asthma for years, and even at it's worse, that steroid shot seems to make things all better. But this time, it didn't... this time it got WORSE! So, I kept working, finally took a day off to rest because I found I couldn't really breathe. An important necessity in life! :) Had to go back to work, because well... sometimes you just have to. And finally after not getting a return phone call back from the Dr.'s office on Friday, (probably bad karma for being "difficult" earlier in the week! :) I was at dinner with the family when I knew something just wasn't right. I could NOT stop coughing and was having a hard time breathing and decided to stop off over to the Urgent care center for a quick chest x-ray.

Which confirmed Pneumonia... Yep.... that dang infection that I knew I could tell was there by Friday. So... I automatically knew... no race on Saturday, which of course had already been blown off at this point. No 1/2 Ironman in Macon on May 30th. As a matter of fact, I've YET to race this year. No 10k, no 5k, NOTHING!! :)

Good thing I signed up for IM Wisconsin and then even IM Florida and not CDA! :)

I know it will get better. I know I've definitely learned a lot in the past 5 months. I have 4, yes FOUR more days of teaching to go before... I'M FREE!! To coach, and workout as needed. To enjoy my summer vacation yes, with my children, but also the liberties of camp if need be ;). My dear Coach Jen... oh, she's been so patient with me. I know that all my drama has been a HUGE pain in the rear. She has eased my paranoia and said that IF my puzzle will finally come together June 1st, the rest of my season should be fine.

My first few races may suck. I think it takes awhile for your lungs to fully recover back to full capacity from pneumonia. You know, all that VO2 max stuff us anal triathletes worry about! :) ha ha!! But, deep down I know it will all work out just as it is supposed to...

I just might could use a few extra prayers tossed my way if you have any extra left. :)

Thanks guys for all of your support and putting up with all of my doom and gloom this year. I PROMISE that my next post will be FULL of positive info. So let's hope it comes really soon! :)

"Difficult??"

2009-05-11T20:41:00.003-04:00

Have you ever seen that Episode of Seinfeld where Elaine gets quoted as "Difficult" in her Dr's file?

Elaine at the doctor's
Attendant : The doctor will be with you in a moment .
Elaine looking at her chart
Elaine : Difficult ?
Doctor : Elaine . You shouldn't be reading that . So tell me about this rash
of yours .
Elaine : Well it's , it's ..... You know I noticed that somebody wrote in my
chart that I was difficult in January of 92 and I have to tell you that I
remember that appointment exactly . You see this nurse asked me to put a gown
on but it was a mole on my shoulder and I specifically wore a tank top so I
wouldn't have to put a gown on . You know there made of paper .
Doctor : Well that was a long time ago . How about if I just erase it. Now
about that rash ......
Elaine : But it was in pen . You fake erase .
Doctor : All right Miss Benes . This doesn't look to serious . You'll be fine
.
Elaine : What are you writing ? Doctor .

That would probably be me! ha ha!

No kidding! Believe it or not, I actually had a "file" at Blockbuster Video one time. It's a long story, but the just of it is that the lady manager and I about 8 years ago got into a dispute over a late fee. I actually PROVED my case that I had gotten the video in on time by reminding her that I greeted her on the way into work that morning. How else would I have known that she had worked that particular morning unless I had actually dropped the movie off and seen her go into work?? So "yadda, yadda, yadda" her and I got into an argument. And apparently she wrote something in their system about me because from that point forward, anytime we checked out movies, all the employees would read something on the screen! :) I was not pleased to say the least. I KNEW I was right! ha ha. And I will note that she was ultimately fired not due to me but because at the time Blockbuster was going through a huge lawsuit over late fees and apparently maybe she had something to do with that. In my eyes, I won. :)

Well, today I thought I just may end up with another one of those files! This time, in the Dr's office like Elaine on Seinfeld.

See, right after my Dad passed and about a week before I went to Tuscon right around the first of March, I got sick with my usual allergy/asthma/ sinus related illness. I get it roughly twice a year, and then have asthma problems periodically through spring, summer, and fall. Typically, I have an inhaler I use to get me through these rough time periods. I'll go into the Dr.'s office, he'll write me an Rx for some sort of sinus infection medication, I'll feel like I have the flu for about 5 days and then life will resume. More often than not, my shoulders will get screwed up in the process. I cough so hard that I'll totally blow out my shoulders to where they're all cricked up! It's really rather unpleasant.

But generally things suck for 1 week, maybe 2 and then life eventually gets settled again.

Due to a combination of things... my 1-2 weeks worth of suffering has turned into a 2 month battle with a week or two here and there where things are getting back on track only to get hit again right afterwards.

For one, my recovery has really sucked over the past several months. It is what it is. I'm no longer in that "boo-hoo I am feeling sorry for myself" modes. I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and doing the best I can. That's all any of us can do. :)

#2- It's been a really rough allergy season around here. Lot's of rain, which you would think would be good, but actually more stuff growing.

#3- The Dr. I went to this time was all about long-term, preventative medicine. Ok, good if you actually are capable of following through. The Rx he wrote me would have cost me $200 to get filled at the grocery store pharmacy. $20 if I do it through the mail order system. So, of course I decided to go through the mail. By the time I actually got it IN the mail and the 2 week turn-around, the flare-up would have gotten a little better through rest, and some breathing treatments, but then flared up again.

After yet ANOTHER flare up again this weekend, to the point last night where I considered going to the ER because I couldn't breathe, I went into the Dr.'s office today with one thing in mind... Steroid shot!

After a 2 hour visit last time, I knew this guy wasn't going to just hand over the good stuff. I explained to him that I definitely agreed with him that I needed to focus on the long-term, preventative stuff. BUT, I've been sick now way too many times for way too long and I wanted something NOW! :) I could tell he was going to give me a little bit of a fight. Look, I appreciate all of you "bigger-picture/ we give too much meds" folks out there. BUT... one thing I actually do pretty well is know my body. And I know what works for ME. And I was done... over it... My shoulder just got to feeling better and if it goes into another spasm, I'm checking myself into the loony-bin for a few weeks. :)

So here's my new system.... Full of quick-fix stuff and the long-term preventative stuff. Oh, and I got my shot as well! :)

Let's hope This keeps me away from That! :) Oh, and the green thing, is this special self massager thing for your shoulders so I can hopefully take care of the knots before they get TOO bad! :)

Hopefully by this time tomorrow, I'll be well on my way back to my usual self!! :)

Field Day!

2009-05-05T20:25:00.002-04:00

Today was a successful day!

First of all, I'm proud to say that I actually got up EARLY and went to swim! I know... I couldn't believe it myself! :) Swimming has been a little off lately due to some shoulder issues that I've been having for the past month or so AND a lack of energy to make it to the pool. But today... I vowed to go. I packed up everything last night that I would need for today. Not easy considering I packed to leave the house at 5am and not return until 8pm, but I made myself do it. AND even got to bed at a decent hour, so I was off to a good start.

After a good swim this morning and a soy latte to make it all worthwhile, I was off to school!

I spent my morning constructing a hallway display on the barn owl. We're studying endangered species at the moment and each first grade class has a different animal so we can all learn about many different ones. Our class is the barn owl. It's been awhile since I've done this, so things started off a little rusty, but before I knew it I had gotten back into the swing of things and found myself adding more and more stuff out there to make it look "good!" Ok, so it might not be great compared to some of the others, but I was proud of it.

The idea started with a big drawing of an owl and an informational poster. Then I had the students color their own individual owls and after talking about it with one of my parent volunteers, we decided a tree would be a nice touch and then we could hang their owls on the tree. THEN... while lying in bed the other night, it hit me to make it more like a nightime scene since the owl is nocturnal. Why is it that work ideas come to you while trying to fall asleep or while you are in the shower?? :) So I ended up adding a black backdrop with a moon and stars, a big owl that one of the parapros drew that is awesome! I put the information about the owl on clouds and had a big tree with all of their cute owls all over it. That is how I spent my morning!

Then it was off to Field Day.... Survivor style! That was the theme for this year. So my afternoon was spent guiding 17 1st graders through 17 different challenges. It was very cute, very creative, and very exhausting! :) I'd post photos, but I don't have permission, so I won't, but I'll see if I can get a picture of my display!

What's funny about it is that it honestly isn't that great! ha ha!! I once got stuck creating an entire hallway jungle for a 1st grade team while I was student teaching. It was a monumental project and one that I wasn't quite pleased about. So maybe that is why when I learned I had another hallway project to create it kind of scared me and since it turned out OK, I'm like happy about it! :) Hey, we should celebrate all the little successes, right??!! :)

The Grass is Always Greener! :)

2009-05-01T20:40:00.005-04:00

As much as I hate to admit it, I have a tendency to be this kind of person sometimes. :)

Well, I'm not sure if it's that or maybe it's the whole, "You're eye's are bigger than your stomach kind of thing!" ha ha!! Meaning, I have a tendency to think I can do things that in reality may not actually be possible. :)

See, I stopped teaching about 6 years ago to stay at home with my babies. Ever since, we've lived as a one-income family. We've always found ways to make ends meet, and I've always tried to contribute in some form or fashion. I've tutored, worked in a coffee shop, taught spin classes, done personal training, special event coordinating, and now coaching. Triathlon is not really the best sport to take-up as a hobby if you aren't full of extra money! :)

Well now that my babies aren't exactly babies anymore, and with all the worries of the economy right now, I decided at the beginning of the year to start doing some teaching again. For the most part I was subbing a couple of days a week. It worked out very well! I'm in the process of building my coaching business and as that develops, I thought I could sub as well. More money is good right now! Especially when there are Ironmans to do, trips to plan, oh yeah... and bills to pay too! :)

I would think to myself, "Working until 3?? NOT a problem!" I'd think about the big chunk of cash the teachers are bringing home and start running through my head all of the shoes... running, cycling, and stuart weitzman's that I could buy with the extra money! :)

So I have since gotten the opportunity to start teaching full-time. Well, kind-of. I got offered a Long-term sub position for a maternity leave. I've worked now 4 weeks straight, and well let's just say... it's a little harder than I thought. :)

Teaching.... I like the kids. The class is a good class. :) The job itself isn't too demanding. However, it is exhausting to take care of 18 1st graders each day.

Coaching.....It's coming together. I'm still spending quite a bit of time doing things like clinics, and such trying to market myself as a coach. Works out to a lot of unpaid time. But overall, it's going really well, and I am just hoping and praying that all of my hard work will continue to pay-off with more clients, as I absolutely LOVE it and the clients I do have are doing AWESOME and it is just so much fun! Hard work, but fun!!

Mom.... Ok, I don't care what anyone says or all of the debates about is it a "job" or not. Doesn't pay, but it is the hardest, most time consuming job out there! And goodness, I have to say I have NO idea how women that do work outside of the home 9-5 pull it off??? Do they have hidden hours in their briefcases or something??? Do they sleep 2 hours a night??? It's mind-baffling honestly. Right now, we're right at the end of ballet and baseball. April was a super rainy month for us, so all the baseball we missed for a couple of weeks at the beginning of April is being crammed into our time now. :)

Housewife... Let's just say this part has really taken a backseat. :) My house hasn't been really "cleaned" since I started working full-time. I've now resorted to digging clothes to wear out of the "clean" pile that has been sitting on my floor for the past 3 weeks! :) Bills, errands, groceries... somehow we're eating. I'm just not entirely sure how. Oh... and I'm trying to lose weight too and watch what I'm eating, so no "fast-food" either. I'm supposed to actually PREPARE healthy meals. Do you know how time consuming that is??? Very hard to do when you don't get home until like 8:30pm. :)

Triathlete...So this has been definitely a struggle for me lately. Can't really get up and workout early because I have to be at school so early. So I'm supposed to get in these intense workouts AFTER teaching all day and somewhere between the baseball and ballet, homework, housework, etc. I actually met Adam at the baseball park the other day so that I could run while he was with the kids during the warm-up and then I would be back by game time. Well, traffic sucked, he was late, I was standing around all the other parents in my full running gear and they were all looking at me like, "why do you have that giant watch on and your ipod with you??" :) I was 10 min late for the game and stood there all sweaty. Not really a big deal, but when life is rush, rush, rush all of the time... it gets OLD.

I workout with people who go home from 5+ hour bricks and NAP! Nope, I hurry into the shower to change in time for whatever we've got going on for the rest of the afternoon! :) After 3 weeks of non-stop... my brain and body finally said... DONE! COOKED!! :)

I email my favorite Coach Jen, and of course I get my usual... your over-committed. I know... Each thing individually isn't that bad, but when you add them all together, I think it = more than 24! :)

So, I'm committed to work, ballet, and baseball for 3 more weeks. I enjoy all of it, so it's not like it'll be miserable. But it definitely will be if I don't trim back just a tad and unfortunately, the only thing on the list that even can be trimmed is training. So... I had to do it. I called "Uncle" and May will now be a little bit more lax for me training wise. Ultimately, I know it will be fine. It will keep me from "peaking too early" for Wisconsin. Break the year up a bit. It will be fine... These are the things my reasonable side keeps telling my freak-out, type-a, triathlete side! :)

In the meantime... All I can think about is one thing... The last day of school is May 29th. By then school, activities, teaching will all come to an end as we move into SUMMER VACATION. Adam and I have already made plans for the two of us to head to the beach for as much R & R that we can soak in for 4 days before heading home and hitting Ironman training HARD! :) So this is what has been on my mind all day.... Ahhhhh!!!!! :)

To busy to Blog! :)

2009-04-26T21:05:00.006-04:00

Party Central!

That is pretty much what we’ve been up to lately! PARTY and Baseball games!

My little man turned 6 on April 13th! I can’t believe it. He’s like… a kid. I don’t have babies or toddlers anymore. And I’m so proud of him too! He’s such an adorable, sweet and wonderful kid of course!

So we celebrated BAKUGAN style! After finishing a long brick, I hurry home to immediately shower and greet 6 of Cooper and Gracie’s friends to head to the bowling alley!

Isn't he cute!! :)

Gracie bowling "Gracie" style!

That was Cooper’s request! A Bakugan party at the bowling alley. So we had a total of 8 kids. We played 2 bowling games, ate pizza and ate a Bakugan cake that I had made. I used the mold that you can use to decorate baseballs or basketballs, etc. Figured a Bakugan could work as well. It is honestly nothing exciting. They always look so much better in my head! Ha!

The kids had a lot of fun though and then we came home to open presents and send everyone home to hurry to bed before the Easter Bunny came hopping by!

He was a very good Bunny to all of us!

Of course we finished the day with an Egg hunt.

Back to school from a relatively relaxing Spring Break on Monday, and I forget the cupcakes for his ACTUAL birthday!

So, I said no worries. I’ll bring them in on Tuesday. Worked out anyways as he wanted the “grocery store style” cupcakes! You know, the ones with the air brushing and little decorative rings on it and such. And since Publix was closed on Easter, I wouldn’t have been able to get them anyways. So I went to pick some up Monday evening for Tuesday and they STILL don’t have any! Birthday cupcakes are apparently a second priority to all of the Easter baking they do and they hadn’t gotten caught back up yet. So I placed an order, and even got the opportunity to customize them and agreed to pick them up first thing this morning at 7am right before I headed to work. (BTW… I’ve been teaching at Cooper’s school lately, so I was kind of on a tight schedule!) Well, after having paid for them and my BODC of course, I’m holding the 24 cupcakes when the lid to the Diet Coke collapses causing the drink to spill all over the place and 12 of the cupcakes to go crashing to the floor! Standing there almost in tears, the very nice manager of Publix assures me not to worry as they can fix them in like 10 min. Well, I didn’t have even 10 min. So, he went WAY over and beyond and actually offered to bring them to school for me. It’s only like 3 min away, but still. I was like, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! And cupcake catastrophe was diverted!

Good thing as it turned out very nicely!!

Funny Video!

2009-04-07T16:48:00.002-04:00

This made me smile today! Maybe it will you too!!

http://s123.photobucket.com/albums/o311/ArcticCobra/?action=view&current=pole_dance.flv

I couldn't figure out how to actually put it on my page from photobucket. If anyone knows, please feel free to share! :)

The Craziness that is Life!

2009-04-05T20:45:00.002-04:00

Spring is always a hectic time for most of us! The weather begins to warm-up. We're all anxious to get back outside after being couped up for so long and plans start popping up everywhere!

For us at the Mills' house, Spring means birthday's, baseball, recitals, school parties, more outdoor training, golf, trying to keep my dogs entertained, spring cleaning, and the inevitable... Allergy related sickness!

I give Coach Jen a hard time for growing up in crazy cold Chicago and then choosing to live there as an adult. However, I grew up in Atlanta and have always had HORRIBLE allergies! I've had 4 different sinus/allergy related surgeries and now as an adult that has developed into asthma. I don't go anywhere this time of year without my inhaler, yet I CHOOSE to live here! :) Yet I always question why when I get hit with this sinus infection/asthma illness that literally knocks me out for 4-7 days at a time as if I had the flu! Ahh!

So so far this year, 2009 has really sucked! I've been sick now 3 times. I went on the pill at the beginning of the year that literally made me crazy and that set me back for about 6 weeks! (Sorry, maybe a little too much information! :) I've lost my dad. I've really been trying to grow my coaching business. I've went back to work teaching to make extra money, and I've been going back to school to renew my certificate. When you write it all out on paper like that, I'm like... hmmm no wonder my own training has been pretty much in the tube ever since Clearwater! I think I'm in the worst shape since I was overweight in college!

But I am signed up for 2 ironmans!! Thank goodness they're later season Ironman's or otherwise, I might be calling the Ironman corporation to see what the refund policy is! :) ha ha!

But, as I was sitting around on Saturday starting to feel sorry for myself to be in such a slump, I thought about ok, what could I do to help myself, what I needed to just get over so that I could move on, and it reminded me of the serenity prayer...

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. "

I can not change the fact that I'm sick. The fact that I'm not where I wanted to be physically right now. The fact that I had to loose my Dad. Those are things that I simply must accept.

However, I can control somethings about my life. Like my attitude in dealing with all of these things. I can control the way I eat. The better I eat, the better I will feel and hopefully that will help prevent any further illnesses. Things such as this.

So, I'm writing off the first quarter of 2009 and moving on. It's not too late... It's just life. And we'll all make it through somehow. :) Life will settle down, and I'll find my "zone" once again. One step at a time.... So April 6-12th... here I come!!

Gracie's Birthday "Month"

2009-03-23T21:18:00.012-04:00

We have celebrated Gracie's birthday just about all month long! This past weekend, it finally came to a close for her big #5!

See, her birthday is March 12th, and I so very unfortunately was out of town that day in Tucson. So... here was the game plan....

The weekend of March 6th we went to get her birthday present. Yes... we took the plunge. The American Girl Plunge.

*Gracie and her new BFF, Felicity!

*Cooper enjoying his favorite part of The American Girl store.... Strawberry milkshakes in the Bistro!

*Gracie and Felicity riding the Carousel at the mall together!

*Matching P.J.'s and robes for them both. Thank you Grandma Ellen and Aunt Kellie for pitching in on the American Girl expenses!! :)

While we were at the mall, my little, baby girl did what I did for my 5th birthday... She got her ear's peirced!!

*Excited and Happy!

*Cooper's pre-anxiety controbution!
*She's ready!

*Both at the same time is THE way to go!

*I had told her that it would hurt a little. Her reply to me afterwards, "That didn't hurt a little. It hurt A LOT!" Tears were done within 5 minutes though. She was a brave girl!

Then on Tuesday, the 10th before I left for Arizona, we had a little family birthday party. She requested me to make a "Felicity" cake to match her new baby. I was short on time, so it wasn't my best work, but it passed the test. :)

I missed her SOOOO much on her actual birthday. I couldn't believe I wasn't actually there, so I had my Mom pick her up a special balloon from her mommy. :)

Now it was time for the actual birthday party!

We had Gracie and 3 of her little friends come over and I took them all for mini-makeovers! With their favorite babies of course.

First we got our hair all dolled up!

*The girls getting ready to have their hair done!

*Now we look like princesses!

*Felicity got her hair "done" as well!

*TA-DA!

Then it was time to get manicures and pedicures!

*Gracie chose Neon Green. What a suiting color for her! ha ha!!

*We managed to only break 2 things in the nail salon.... Not bad!! :)

*Now we're ready to party!

We couldn't get all dolled up for nothing. Now, back to the party, a Minnie and Mickey party, for cake and ice cream!

*It's amazing how easy it can be to make a cake using those cake molds and icing tips! :)

*HAPPY BIRTHDAY BIG GIRL!!

Let's just hope she realizes her birthday is now OFFICIALLY over. Now... it's time for Cooper's birthday. This one should be a one or two deal thing! :)

Tucson Photos!!

2009-03-18T21:19:00.007-04:00

*Kate, Marit, Jen, Me, and Spencer at the Meet and Greet before all the hard work! :)

*The view up Mt. Lemmon!

*Up, Up, Up, and more UP.... For 26 miles!

*We made it!! Whoo Hoo!!

*Some well deserved pool time Post Lemmon!

*Marit and I chowing down after the long ride on some AWESOME fish tacos and one of the most amazing chocolate cakes EVER!! :)

*Swim time on Friday. My amazing lane mates!

*Spencer cheering us on for the 200's!

*Getting ready for some free-standing 25 sprint races!

*Starbucks... the PERFECT post-swim visit!

*Sabino Canyon... the perfect place for a long run!

*Post long-run ice bath in the COLD pool! People kept warning us NOT to get in!! ha ha :)

*Saturday's long ride finally at an end. :)

*Back to the pool for some turkey wraps and R and R!

*Sunday's recovery run in our NEW, awesome Recovery socks! Thank you Marco!!

**So long Tucson... I miss you and my great new friends

Tucson Training Camp!

2009-03-14T20:04:00.002-04:00

Wow... I am sitting here not even knowing where to begin!

Camp has been amazing in so many different ways, and I have learned so much!

Lesson #1
I departed early Wednesday morning off to the airport with A LOT of stuff! The bike box that my friend Alberto was so amazingly generous to let me borrow is... how should I say.... Large! But so awesome, as I can shove a lot of things in there to go with the bike! :) And it helps make it a little more worth the $190 Delta charged me for the pleasure of travelling with it. So that's my first lesson of the trip. Shipping my bike from now on! :) ha ha

Lesson #2
After arriving in beautiful Tucson, my lovely Coach Jen came to pick me and her husband Jerome up from the airport. Thank goodness Jerome did not have a bike to bring with him as we would not have fit in the car all together! But, we came over to the hotel that we had reservations at, Lowes Ventana Resort. Wow! Beautiful place! I actually feel guilty for staying here because the golf course is so amazing, and I know how much Adam would have loved it! Fortunately, Jennifer and Spencer were awesome enough to get us a fabulous deal here, and that was wonderful. I checked in with my roommate Marit and we were off to the pool! With a meet and greet dinner later, it was so nice to meet a lot of great new people all interested in doing the same crazy stuff as myself! So lesson 2 is great people = great stuff!

Lesson #3
Mt. Lemmon
I had heard about it from several different people. I had heard about the not such difficult climbing, but the hard part being that it's literally 26 miles UP. Non-stop, grinding all the way. I had heard that Lance and some other big name bikers come to Tucson just to train on this mountain, and it definitely was intimidating. But I was determined to make it to the top no matter how long it took me, and that's what I did.

It was certainly tough. Not a lot of relief. Just continuous pressure on the legs and back for a little more than 2:30 hours. I didn't push it too hard. For one, I didn't want to crack half way up there. And two, I knew I'd have to pace myself. My back was KILLING me on the way up and it got really tough towards the end when we were just close to the top with snow on the ground where the temperature was about 30 degrees colder than it was below where we had started from and I was so cold my legs were literally shaking. But we kept moving forward and ultimately made it there to discover Fudge and coffee at the top. Ahh!! I'm not the most confident of descenders, so the 26 miles down, yeah... I was the last one down. I'm ok with that. I'm still here and that's what counts! :) But I have to say, it was physically and mentally really tough to push myself through what was like a 5:45 seriously hard bike ride when I haven't been on my bike longer than say 2:30 in over 6 months! :) But I survived, and lesson #3 is most of the time you always do. That which does not kill you makes you stronger, and let's hope in this case it does! :)

Lesson #4
5:45 on the bike grinding up a Mt. The last thing I wanted to do was t-run afterwards. OMG... are you serious. I wanted to back out so bad. BUT... I was like, no... you are here to push yourself Kellye. So, nothing too crazy, but I MADE myself do at least 20 min. Nothing hard. Just get out there and get it done! So that's what I did.

Lesson #5
To the pool first thing Friday morning. 3 lanes, and I'm in the middle. Ok, sounds good to me. And let me say, the other 4 ladies I was swimming with, were not your mediocre swimmers. I'm proud to say, I kept up, led during my turns, and made it happen. Ok, maybe I'm NOT such a bad swimmer after all and according to Spencer, my stroke, "is actually very pretty." (Insert cool british accent here when saying that :) So maybe if I actually swam like I was supposed to I'd get a lot better, um... that's an interesting thought! :)

Lesson #6
After a core session with Spencer's incredibly skinny wife and a little down time, off for a long run through the Canyons. There were 2 groups heading out and I had asked Jen which she thought I should join. The shorter, go at your own pace group.... Or the 2 hour faster group that you just go and hang on the best you can. Of course she said the 2 hour one. So... off we start! Ughhh... wait a minute.... I am feeling heavy breathing right away and look down at my Garmin to discover that we've jetted off at a nice 7:10 warm up pace. Ughh... NOT for me! At least not right now. That would be like a PR 1/2 marathon for me. Heck... that would be a PR 10k for me, much less a 2 hour run. So.... I backed off, pulled back and said, nope... it's ok. I'm doing my own thing. So... Ok, compromise. 2 hour run, yes. Definitely need to put in the time, but it's ok that I'm not ready to run like that, so I set my pace, headed to the canyon and literally took in every single glorious moment of it. It was I think one of the most beautiful runs of my life, and I have no regrets in not suffering my way through it. I pushed just to get in the hilly 2 hours, so didn't feel like I backed off, but I did what I needed to do that day to get done what my goals were and got to really experience the run in the process... THAT was good stuff!

Lesson #7
Saturday morning back up for another long brick. OUCH! I'd already trained more in the past 2 days than I've done in the past 2 weeks and now I'm going again! Ahh... ok, get perspective, and make it count! Yeah, there was a part of me that wanted to slack off on the ride, but I knew in reality that I really could push through it. So, I "put my head down" and did what I could. I told myself, that biking is my "thing." I should be up there with the front people. So I went out with them and went hard. Honestly, Spencer saved me a couple of times. My legs were DONE with the hills and every time we hit any sort of decent incline, I would start to lose the wheel in front of me, so twice Spencer and his bad self pushed me up again. And ultimately, I ended up feeling good. We rode 70 miles through a canyon area and it was amazing. I had the opportunity to go on with the front group for another 10 miles, but I did turn that one thing down. 150 miles in 3 days, I knew my legs were done. I could have gone through it, but felt like I'd been dragging up the back and didn't want to be "that" person again. :) So, me and some other ladies rode it home and it was good. Now remember, this was supposed to be a brick. So, not done yet... off for a run. I told myself AGAIN, ok... come on 20 min and honestly when I started, my quads felt like knives were stabbing them. I wasn't sure I'd keep going at first, but I decided to give it a few minutes and see if it would clear up and of course it did. So... to top it off, I made myself do 30 today. Up that dang hill again back to the hotel. I figured I'd end it on a decent note! :)

So after 3 rough days of grinding and pushing it out, I have so much to take from this camp. I'm no where near physically or mentally where I had envisioned I would be for this trip, but... that's ok too. It's good to get away and train with others from around the country and get a reality check. Ok, here are my strengths, my weaknesses, and this is what I can work on for the next 6 months until it's go time for me! Thank goodness, I'm not in top race shape just yet and not racing anytime soon when it's really going to count. I've got some time to put in my miles and slowly but surely work my way up to where I need to be. And one of the biggest things I'm excited about during this trip that I'm taking away from it, is that even during the push, I took the time to stop and take in the moment, even if that meant going slower, and for me.... I'm ok with that!

Promise to post pictures soon!
K

JUST what I need!!

2009-03-06T14:58:00.003-05:00

Forecast for Tucson, AZ!

WedMar 11
Sunny
78°46°
0%

ThuMar 12
Partly Cloudy
80°49°
0%

FriMar 13
Sunny
81°50°
0%

SatMar 14
Sunny
81°49°
0%

SunMar 15
Sunny
82°48°
0%

Just 4 more days to go!! Whoo Hoo!!

My Daddy

2009-02-25T12:54:00.009-05:00

Robert Earl Johnson:

June 15, 1944- February 17, 2009

Well, as most of you already know, my dad passed away unexpectedly almost two weeks ago. He had had some chronic health issues for years, but it was definitely unexpected. I actually had this written about a week ago, but was waiting to try to find some pictures I wanted to post. I still haven't found them, so I figured I'd just post it now, and post the pictures as soon as I find them.

I've written tributes on this blog to each of my children, my husband and even my dogs. So now I want to take the opportunity to write a tribute to one of the most important people in my life ever.

My Dad was truly one of the best people ever. He worked harder than any person I've ever met all for his family. He was the least selfish, most loving man I've ever known.

He grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida from the time he was around 6 months old up until he had had his 3rd child. He was the third of four children and grew up with very little money. If I remember correctly, he started work at the very young age of around 8. He began delivering papers and never stopped working for the rest of his life. From there he took varying jobs one of which included working at the fishing dock there in Tampa Bay. He LOVED to fish. It was always one of his most favorite things to do. :) Ultimately, he took a job with Southern Bell Company, later known as Bellsouth and now a part of AT&T, and worked there for over 27 years. Through that job, he was able to put himself through college all while getting married and starting a family with my mother. Through his hard work and determination, he graduated from Jacksonville State University and continued his education with a masters degree from Georgia State University.

I always thought that was such an accomplishment. Due to his hard work, he enabled me to go to college without the worry of having to pay my own way. I can't have even imagined trying to accomplish that now even with the ease of student loans and whatnot. So imagine how difficult it must have been to do it back then, while working full-time and taking care of a family. That was one of the things I admired most about him.

After my two older brothers and sister was born, my parents moved from Tampa, FL to Lawrenceville, GA. Myself and my younger brother were not part of the plan, but they somehow managed to raise 5 children. :)

My dad did work his way up the corporate ladder over the years to the point that he was an Executive at Bellsouth. But, another great thing about him was that honestly, he could have been one of the VPs or CEOs had he wanted to. He could have put in more time at work and really established himself within the business, but he was too certain to make a commitment to each of his children. Of all things in life, he loved us and my mother the most. He missed only 3 of my brother Bob's sporting events, and that included his wrestling matches, football games, and baseball games. My other brothers, Todd and James, also participated in sports and he didn't miss any of those, either.

My sister and I spent our time in gymnastics, ballet, and cheerleading, things he honestly cared nothing about, but he went to all of our programs as well, because he wanted to be there for us. And what was great is that he continued that support and dedication as a grandparent with all of his 11 grandchildren as well.

I remember last May he attended Gracie's ballet recital. She was in the like 10th group out of 14 before the intermission. He and Cooper sat next to each other and though one was 63 and one was 5, you would have never been able to tell the difference by their actions! :) Both of them set there continuously asking, "Where's Gracie? When is she coming on?" Then once she was finally on stage, both of them watched intently, enjoying every moment of seeing her up on stage all dolled up and so proud of her. And then the moment she exited stage left, "Ok, let's go!" My mother and I were both whispering to them, "NO!" You can't get up in the middle of the concert and just leave! ha ha! :) Finally, intermission came and we were able to go get Gracie. As soon as my Dad saw her, he exclaimed quite frankly how she was definitely the best girl in her class. This was done of course right in front of all the other girls! :) He didn't care. He really thought she was great and felt she should know it!

He was an extremely humble man. He never really had the need for stuff. He always drove beat up trucks or cars without the headliner in them. He had this gray truck that he called “The Gray Ghost” that he would drive me to school in and it embarrassed me so much! :) But he would just laugh. He wore suits for so many years at work that you couldn’t get him in one for anything other than each of our weddings. Otherwise the best you got was a polo and some khakis or most of the time a flannel jacket and a t-shirt and dickies! :)

He was a big man that would come across as scary if you didn’t know him. But in reality, he was just a big teddy bear! :) He had this problem where he just couldn’t say no. Sometimes that was a good thing, and sometimes maybe not such a good thing, but all he wanted was for us to be happy! When I was a senior in high school, Adam was attending his first year in college and we were doing the long-distance thing. Well, back then that meant long-distance phone calls as well. Once, after seeing the horrendous phone bill I’m sure, he asked me if it was necessary for me to call him EVERY night. I said yes of course, and that was the end of the conversation. :)

He also had this tendency to get upset when we were upset. One day in high school I returned home from spending the afternoon with my mother picking out a prom dress for me to wear to the upcoming prom with my boyfriend Billy. Well, right after I got home that afternoon, Billy came over to promptly break up with me on my front porch! We were sitting there as I was crying and Billy was trying to smooth things over when my Dad came home from work. He asked what was wrong, and I explained to him in front of Billy about how we were breaking up. My dad's immediate response to each of our faces was, "Good. He's no good for you anyways!" Of course I was mortified even further and ticked off that he wasn't "understanding" of my hurt feelings. But I realize now of course that he did understand. He understood that that would happen many more times before any of it really meant anything.

He used to ask me and my mom and brothers and sisters if he had an "S" on his shirt, because we thought of him as Superman. He would say, "Good thing these are broad shoulders guys." and laugh! And the reality of it was that in our eyes, he really was Superman. He was our daddy and could handle and fix anything for us.

Daddy, you will always be my superman. I'm not exactly sure what I'll do without those broad shoulders there for me anymore, but I know that you'll still always be there for me whenever I need you. I love you so much, and can't wait until the day in which I get to see you again.

Your Kellye Marie

Tri Your Best Clinic TONIGHT!!

2009-02-17T09:25:00.002-05:00

I will be hosting a Training Plan/Strength Training Clinic tonight at the new triathlon store in the Atlanta area, TRI YOUR BEST!!

Wonderful opportunity to meet new training partners in your area, learn about properly planning for your 2009 racing season, learn to incorporate strength training into your swim, bike, run training AND get to check out an AWESOME new store that you should visit!

TRI YOUR BEST

6:30-7:30pm

Hope to see you there!

The Price of Beauty!

2009-02-09T17:39:00.004-05:00

About a week ago, I took Gracie to a dress-up Tea Party! It was sponsored by our neighborhood club, and as soon as I saw the advertisement for it in our monthly newsletter, I knew this was HER kind of thing!

So her and one of her good friends went together and for the price of only $10 this is what we got!!

Royal Manicure- Sprinkles included!

Sparkle Face Art work!

Make-up!

"Highlights"- Pink, Sparkles, Orange, Green... Your choice!

Extra Accessories available!

American Idol 2025!!

And then, a served tea for the dressed up occasion!

Now that is a bargain! Where's mine for $10??? :)

Special Delivery!

2009-02-06T20:38:00.004-05:00

I'm so excited! My special delivery has arrived!

I have been so fortunate enough to have some sponsorship through Nuun for the 2009 season. I received my first shipment recently, and it's full of great stuff!

Nuun is seriously one of my favorite training tools. Complete hydration that taste REALLY good and has almost no calories! Great for training when you don't need super amounts of calories, like in this base phase, or if you just focus more on short distance racing.

Hydration is so important when training and considering I live in hot as ever Atlanta where the humidity hangs out around 90% each day during the summer, it becomes even more important. This stuff Works!

http://www.nuun.com/

And I'm still trying to decide on a favorite flavor! Tri-berry is oh so good! I've been very much into Lemon lime lately. Plus, they have Kona Cola, Orange Ginger and Citrus Fruit! Great stuff! Thanks Team Nuun! Looking forward to a long and well hydrated 2009 together!

Groundhog's Day!

2009-02-03T22:24:00.004-05:00

Even Rocky can get festive for Groundhog's Day!

Yesterday was Groundhog’s Day, and for people that have been reading my blog for a while, you know that that is actually a holiday in our household!

Adam and I have been together forever it seems now! :) He, being the cute and funny person that he thinks he is, decided to start calling Groundhog’s day his favorite holiday back at the beginning of college sometime. Then me, being the Elementary School Teacher type person, decided to celebrate it!

Though I’d never excluded Adam from Valentine’s Day, it really does have a tendency to focus on the girl in relationships. So… he gets Groundhog’s Day, and I get Valentine’s Day! Works out rather nicely!

I always try to somewhat incorporate the Groundhog’s predictions around his gifts. This year, that darn Groundhog saw his shadow and is predicting more winter. But, I decided the upside of that is that it gives us 6 more weeks to get ready for spring and summer clothing!

We’re both making an effort to get back into the swing of things food and exercise wise. So for this year’s theme… I decided he had 6 more weeks of Workout time to get ready for his Hot Summer Bod!! :)

For Dinner…. I picked up one of his favorite Subs from Firehouse Subs. A much healthier choice than his usual Long John Silver’s pick! What can I say? He’s easy to please! :)

For Dessert…. Nothing cake, cookie, or double chocolate huge dessert this year! Nope, I bought some fresh strawberries and some dark chocolate dipping sauce. It wasn’t completely guilt-free, but the chocolate was dark which is good for you, it wasn’t that bad on the calorie budget, and we threw away the rest so there are no leftovers to haunt us!

Some Red Wine!

And for his gift…. Some new gym shorts so he’ll be looking all “Hot” at the gym while he works out! J And some free weights for us to use at home so even when he can’t make it to the gym in our crazy, busy life, he can still do some strength stuff at home. He does live with a USAT coach and Personal Trainer!

Hope all of you had a wonderful Groundhog’s Day!!

TRIATHLON CLUB/CLINIC!

2009-01-23T10:34:00.004-05:00

For all of my local readers....

PLEASE... come join me for a Triathlon Clinic that I will be conducting!!

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Gold's Gym of Woodstock off of Hwy 92

Time: 6:00-7:00pm

For Directions: http://www.goldsgym.com/gyms/index.php?gymID=535

RSVP: kellye.mills@gmail.com

This will be a free clinic to all! It is an introductory meeting for a Triathlon Club that I will be hosting through the Gold's Gym of Woodstock. It will also be an informational session for all triathlete levels!

You do NOT have to be a member of the gym to join, and this first meeting is FREE!

So please come out. It will be FUN! And to all my close friends around... you know who you are... this is Mandatory!! :)

Resolutions!

2009-01-19T20:21:00.004-05:00

January is already half way over, and I can't believe it!

I always make resolutions. I'm a list kind of person, and it helps me to see things in black and white that need to be accomplished. :)

In addition to continuing to work on all of my stuff from 2008, I tried to either add a few or emphasize some more this year! So, in the spirit of my wanting to do more volunteering, yet never seeming to be able to find the time to do so, I ran with this opportunity!

I have always had a desire to volunteer for the Special Olympics! To have the opportunity to work with individuals that are competing completely just for fun, with 100% pureness of spirit about them... how could anyone ask for a better day! So, fortunately, Adam's office was given the opportunity to volunteer, and I grabbed the spot!

My "job" for the morning... to cheer on some fantastic bowling! Yep... I was the team captain of 2 teams bowling it out for the Gold, Silver, and Bronze. My job was to make sure everyone bowled at the right time, and to scream, yell, high-five, and hug it out on every single bowl! BEST job ever!!

*Ok, so I try not to pick favorites... BUT... This is E.J. and I was in love from the start! He was the one that after every single bowl, he would turn around and hug me to the point that he picked me up and bounced me around! :) He double high-fived me once, and it literally almost knocked me to the ground! FUN!!

*They were seriously WAY better bowlers than I have EVER been!

*This was part of my crew! All of them were so awesome! Congratulations guys!

"The Runner"

2009-01-11T20:21:00.002-05:00

Adam and I decided to get back into church this year. For many reasons, we've been away from church for awhile now, and for several reasons, we decided to see if we could find a place that we liked. I won't go into the details behind the whole religion thing. I know it's a touchy subject, and I appreciate that we all have our own thoughts and opinions behind the topic. But, I did come across something today that I thought could apply to all of us, and has a special "athletic" tone to it! :)

So... the minister at this particular church that we've gone to the past couple of weeks titled his sermon this morning, "The Runner." Of course, that caught my eye! :) He included a poem that he had written that basically summed up his lecture this morning in the bulletin, and I thought I'd share it to you all. It kind of goes with the new year theme, so hopefully you will enjoy it like I did!

The Runner

As a runner in a steeplechase,
Once collided with a wall,
So runners for God's Kingdom's crown,
May, too, before some barrier fall.

Yet neither injury nor a broken stride,
Need cause the runner's race to end,
The runner must rise and shake it off,
Then regain his stride again.

So to with us who run for Christ,
In God's Kingdom's race of life,
When setbacks come to break our stride,
We are to rise above the strife.

'Tis not the spirit of fear and doubt,
That God has infused into our soul,
But the very Spirit of Christ himself,
That keeps us running towards his goal.

C.R. Hill, Jr.

Welcome 2009!

2009-01-06T20:07:00.006-05:00

Though 2008 was a pretty good year, I can't help but be glad to see it go. The Christmas season was busy, but definitely fun. Santa was good to all of us, and for whatever reason, I just have a good feeling about 2009! So bring it on!!

Cooper on Santa's lap at a family Christmas party! They saw Santa so many times (malls, home parties, even Pet Smart that they began to question! :)

Gracie telling Santa she wanted Snow White Earrings. He brought them, and they're already broken. :(

Tons of stuff going on around here!...

*Our new family addition is getting BIG! She's growing up so quickly already. :) When she first came to the house, she was really easy going and sleepy. Well as it turns out, she had an upper respiratory infection and a skin infection. That information was learned on vet visit #2. After almost a week of medication and only signs of getting worse + my Rocky pug had apparently caught the cold as well, we went back for visit #3. A gazillion dollars later, I came home with pills for both dogs, a spray for Lucy that she hides from and some ear drops for the pug :)

The puppies Christmas morning. You can just SEE their excitement! And Santa did visit them as well, but I guess maybe it was just a little too early! :)

Shortly after that, both of my kiddos got sick. Another case of strep, Gracie also had the horrible rash to go with it. So.... that meant medication for 2 kids + 2 dogs twice a day! Let's hope I kept everything straight! :)

*December was a little strange for me. I decided to go on "the pill" after Clearwater. Sorry gentleman readers.... this part is a little girly! :) Honestly, didn't do it for the kid factor. It actually had more to do with the fact that I've hit 30, and apparently, things change for women roughly every 5 years and get worse for the most part. So, I was told that this particular pill was like a wonder drug. You know, the kind that keeps your face clear, doesn't cause any weight gain, makes you feel normal or even maybe good all month long. So of course, I was like, "give me, give me!" Well... for whatever reason, those pills and I did not make a good pair. :) I went from being "unpleasant" to say the least for maybe 3 days/month, to being REALLY unpleasant for 3 weeks! I was definitely not myself. I lost all motivation to do really anything, much less workout. I gave it a month and during the week of the fake stuff, things felt pretty good again. I decided to give it one more go-around to see if things settled, but shortly there after, I could see myself headed down that BIG cliff, and stopped taking "the poison" as my nurse put it! :) It honestly isn't really funny, but I was talking to my sister about the whole thing, and she is someone who can very much relate. We got to cracking up at ourselves at the emotional swings. One moment you HATE everyone, the next you're crying for no reason. The next you're ready to knock someone's face off! It's not good, but in the aftermath, in looking back, it can be funny! Just glad I'm done with all of that! :)

*Here's a good part to mention I have a new favorite tea! Celestial Seasonings had this whole holiday line, and it went on sale right after Christmas. I picked up the Sugar Cookie flavor, and OMG... smells just like a freshly baked sugar cookie! Ok... no, doesn't taste like one of course, but still, the smell is NICE!

*Back to school today!! Yippee!! After two weeks non-stop together, we were all pretty much tired of each other! Everyone was ready. And Gracie was particularly excited because I actually moved her to a different school program beginning today. At first, I was concerned about the decision, but Gracie is such a friendly little person, she can make friends with just about anyone! I did it for several reasons, none of which had to do with the school that she was previously at. I really loved that preschool. We'd been there since Mother's Morning Out, but some new opportunities arise, and I decided to take them. Gracie was previously in private preschool, which can be pretty pricey. I moved it to a Georgia Pre-K program, which is "free" except for the cost of food. But still, a lot cheaper, and the food is included. I honestly can't even believe a spot was available. It was kind of like fate I felt. And by moving her, the timing of her new school matches up so that I would have the opportunity to do some teaching. I found out about some openings in the Spring, that I have a good chance of getting. Would be more like a permanent-sub instead of full-time teacher, but cheaper, longer school AND I could earn money during it... sounded pretty good!

It's kind of funny too, because a year ago I was contemplating all of this. I LOVE coaching, and definitely want to continue developing my business with it. I will still continue to coach, but honestly, it's more of a part-time thing right now which allows me plenty of time to teach if I wish. The money would be nice, especially since I am in love with a really expensive sport! Summers off, and being on the same schedule as the kids, it just kind of works out. We'll see if it actually pans out, but in the meantime, I am in position to take it if it does! :)

*It has rained pretty much non-stop in Atlanta recently. We need the rain, and I like the rain, but Ok... I admit that I'm ready for a break! :) Although, when it let up for a few hours tonight and all the neighborhood kids got the chance to play outside in like 65 degree weather, that was a lot better than 40!

*I'm in test mode right now with training. Time-trial bike test on Sunday, 20 minutes of suffering of running today, and my 10 x 100's of all out tomorrow in the pool. Whoo! My body is in shock!! :)

*And on another body-related update :)... My cute little ear piercing that I got a year ago, up and decided to not look so great ever since late September. I've tried poking at it, leaving it alone (something I'm not good at!), I've visited two different "piercing people", you know, the kind that have them all over thinking they would know about this sort of thing, and have taken different advise from both, and for whatever reason (probably because I won't leave it alone :) it won't get better. So after months of pressure from Adam, I'm finally going to see a certified Dr. about it on Thursday. Someone that might not know about piercings, but will at least be able to tell me if my ear will be disfigured until the end! :( Let's hope not. The lesson here kids... stick with the single studs at the bottom of your ear. Other ear holes, tongues, your face, and many other not so "piercable" places... I would suggest you let them be! :)

Ok... so I've written the equivalency of about 3 posts to make up for the fact that I've been a slacker. Trust me... you will be glad I didn't blog during "pill season!" It would have probably just been a B$$%! fest about absolutely nothing! :)

Hope everyone's New Year is off to a great start!

We Wish You...

2008-12-25T15:52:00.000-05:00

A Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays to you all!

Introducing...!

2008-12-20T15:01:00.003-05:00

Well, I've set down to write 2 blogs since my last post and haven't posted either because I haven't had time to finish them. It's been really busy around here lately! Christmas parties, Christmas plays, finishing the shopping and trying to get some presents wrapped... pretty much go-go-go non-stop! But all in good fun, so no worries!

Training wise, I'm not yet at 100% just yet. I'm still feeling tired and kind of sluggish when I workout and that's probably because my consistency has been around 80-90% at best! But again, it's December. It's that time of year where for 2/12 months, I put everything else first! My kids, my house, family, friends, the holiday, and of course myself. So for the other 10 months of the year when I am doing everything I can to fit everything in, these 2 months, I don't scramble! If I miss one of my swims for the week, well... I just keep saying, it's December, and it will be ok. :)

But... what does a person like me do when things are already crazy?? I tend to find ways to add to it! :)

One week ago, last Saturday, I was out shopping and decided to run into PetSmart and pick up Rocky's presents. Yes... Santa visits him too! Well the adoption people that set up outside were packing up. As they were getting ready to leave, I saw the sweetest puppy! She was so pretty, and I couldn't believe that someone would give her up! She was found just the day before tied up at a vet's office. She's perfectly healthy and what we believe is a mix between a boxer and an American bulldog. Although she's white with black polk-a-dot smudges all over her. We don't think she has any Dalmatian in her!

*I think she is beautiful!

I have ALWAYS wanted a white dog. The plan was to get a white French or English Bulldog to be Rocky's friend. Well the fact that those animals are around $2500, that's delayed that happening! But as soon as I saw this sweet little puppy, she just had a bulldogish look about her and I fell in LOVE!

The lady explained to me that someone else had already filled out an application on her. But she would go to the best home, so I immediately came home and pleaded my case to my not-so-convinced husband. We agreed I'd at least fill out the application and see what happens. Well.... I'm so excited to say that we were chosen, and we were able to pick her up today!

They called her Charmin because she is super soft, but I've had the name Lucy Lu picked out for sometime now, and so that will be her name!

She's roughly 5 months old, and yet she's already kind of big! I think she's going to be a pretty decent size dog, but she will hopefully be great! She's really skinny right now, or at least us Pug owners who are used to our chubby Pug think so! So we plan on fattening her up a bit, and giving her all the love she deserves!

The 3 pretty ladies in the house now! And yes... she has a pink harness and collar!

We've tried once before to take in my brother's black lab mix, and Rocky didn't take to the situation. Bear was as sweet as he could be, but came into our house at a rather large 70lbs and yet still a puppy at 1 1/2 years old. He wanted to play, Rocky didn't... Rocky was miserable, so we let Bear go live with my sister who had a REALLY big yard! Worked out for everyone in the end.

*She's a puppy and likes to Chew! Will have to keep lots of chew things in the house for awhile!

But I'm convinced Rocky can learn to be friends! My hopes are that because she's younger and starting out in our house a little smaller than bear, and maybe even because she's a girl, that it will work out!

*"Um... excuse me, but this is my spot!"
*"Really... Must you be here?" :)

I love her so much already, so I'm going to give it everything I have!

Wish me luck... We've got a busy, crazy Christmas ahead of us. Thank you Santa for my early Christmas present!!

Oprah-ology

2008-12-12T22:50:00.003-05:00

Let me begin this post by saying that I'm honestly not an Oprah follower. I can not tell you the last time I saw her show, and I've not once purchased one of her magazines... until today. Not to say that I am anti-Oprah. I think she does a lot of good for this world. I do think that people get WAY too involved in her though. As if she is preaching some sort of gospel, and so I guess I just kind of tuned out of it all.

Backing up...I'll give you a little background info about me. I've always been considered a smart person, but people are smart in different ways. Adam is this logical sort of person. He's one of those people that can figure out all of those crazy word problems by reasoning his way through them. Me... I'm book smart. I read it, study it, and absorb information as it's given to me. I'm not entirely a follower. I can do my share of thinking outside of the box. But, if there is a situation where there is a formula, or a step-by-step process to solving things... THAT is my kind of problem! Tell me HOW to do something, and man, I'll do it 100%. If it's something I'm really interested in and passionate about, then yes... I can employ my own reasoning and get creative with it, but for the most part, I'm a list kind of gal!

So that is how I for the most part approach life. Give me a problem or situation, I'll figure out what the steps are to fixing it/completing my desired task, and I'll get it done. Typical type-A, semi OCD type of person! :) Aren't most of us triathletes??

But nobody is perfect, and everyone has their issues. Everyone has their problems that keep popping up throughout our lives. Because though I believe life isn't always fair, I think it's that way for everyone. We're all going to have our good moments and bad, and though our problems may be different, I think it all evens out in the end.

For me... One of my major problems...Food. Oh, and even writing it is frustrating. I had even gotten to the point that I told myself I would no longer write about food/nutrition on my blog because I was so sick and tired of dealing with it, I figured the people who are kind enough to read my blog must be as well! :)

It has honestly been a struggle for me for half of my life. I turned 30 this year, and I know from at least the age of 15 that I've had food choices, good or bad, on my mind almost daily. Oh how I wish I was one of those people that naturally loved my fruits and veggies. Someone who could eat a little cake every once in awhile and have my fill. But for whatever reason, I'm just not. Just as some people don't choose to become alcoholics or addictive gamblers, I never chose to use food as my drug of choice. It's just the thing I turn to for comfort. But I can't NOT eat. And gosh, "bad" food is absolutely everywhere. It is so easy to fall right back into all of those temptations.

You'd think as a triathlete, that would be reason enough for me. I guess it's my saving grace honestly because I workout enough to hide the fact that I have my moments in life where one donut just doesn't cut it. But, those moments don't make me happy. They pacify me for the time being, but overall add up to what ultimately makes me feel worse about it.

So being that I'm a person that likes my formulas, it wasn't that hard for me to make the decision to lose 5lbs before Clearwater and get it done. It certainly wasn't easy. Losing weight never is. But in the grand scheme of things, I figured out my plan, followed it at about 90% and achieved my goal!

But then things changed. I tapered for Clearwater and then moved from working out all of the time and being focused on my goal to nothing and trying to chill. Change isn't really an issue for me, but not having a plan is. My "plan" was to try and relax with the whole food thing. To take some time off from denying myself and splurge. Well, when the doors opened, the floods came in! Not everyday has been bad since. But, it has been a REAL struggle for the past month to get back on the wagon.

I smoked in college, and I feel like I'm trying to quit all over again! Oh... what's just one. And then, no... no more, ever! Those are my back and forth moments! And honestly, it is exhausting me and stressing me out to no end lately.

Ok... so I know what you are thinking... Make your plan and start following it today. And I've done it now maybe 3-4 times in the past month. For whatever reason, maybe because I'm getting older, or it's Christmas, or I don't know, it hasn't stuck yet.

So finally this week it really caught up with me. I've been really busy trying to keep up with school functions for the kids, christmas shopping, visiting Santa, working, you name it. And it's just made it that much harder for me to get back into that routine that I trust and know so well. Throw on top of that all of the emotional drain from stressing about me and my nutrition, and it's just all been a little too much! :)

So as I was running yesterday, I thought about the fact that maybe I was being too hard on myself, which is something that is typical of me. :) Maybe I needed to accept the fact that what I was experiencing emotionally was all part of the process, and by accepting that, things would sort of all fall into place.

Well today I woke up so tired. I didn't want to work out. I didn't really feel like doing anything. I knew and could feel that I just needed some sort of spark. Something that would bring the light back into me to make me realize what was truly important to me. I was playing around on the computer and came across an article about Oprah and her new magazine cover.

On it, Oprah is proclaiming that she is back up to 200lbs. And we all know and have witnessed Oprah yo-yo back and forth with her weight for many, many years. The article I read actually almost mocked her. How can someone with the resources to have personal chefs, personal trainers, Dr's, etc not be able to maintain weight loss. I mean she is obviously not your typical, lazy american. The woman has built herself into a mega-empire for goodness sake! She must have some sort of drive in her! But for whatever reason, she just can't nail the food thing.

I felt the need to read her article. To get her perspective on what her thoughts were in going through what appeared to be a similar process that I myself was going through. I thought even if I didn't agree with her, maybe I'd at least protest it enough to the point that it would give me the ignition I was looking for!

So while out tonight with the family, I picked up my first copy of O magazine and read just the article written about her weight gain tonight after I got into bed. Immediately, I felt somewhat overwhelmed. Though a lot in the article didn't relate to me, i.e. she suffers from a thyroid problem, her discussion of the constant battle with food and her not-so-healthy relationship with it was as if I could have written some of it myself.

I had a friend email me about food actually just this week, and I was feeling so crappy about it that I haven't even emailed her back yet because I wasn't quite sure what to say. In her email, she appealed to me as to having similar eating issues and wanted to know how I'd overcome them. Well the answer to that is that I haven't obviously. And like Oprah, I'm not sure I ever will. But rather than trying to see it as a battle that needs to be won and then I can move on with my life, I guess I'm realizing that it is just apart of who I am. We don't exercise to loose weight and then quit. When you start exercising, you have to keep it up to stay healthy and fit. Well at least for me, eating right is that way too. It's a daily decision to make the right choices.

Some people can have an off-season. Where they step away from that decision making process and give it a rest for awhile. But for me, there will be no more off-season. It just needs to be a lifestyle decision for me. That is the only thing that has ever worked, and I need to just accept that. Now, I'm not saying that I've given up junk forever. I mean, that would be silly. But, giving myself the opportunity to enjoy a treat is one thing. Giving myself the opportunity to eat "whatever I want" for several weeks is a whole other ball game, and one I've realized, I can't win!

In saying all of this, I want to be clear on a few things. First of all, I don't believe I have any sort of an eating disorder. I think what I suffer with a lot of other women, perfectly normal women, go through as well. I'm not anorexic. I'm not bulimic, and I have what I believe is a relatively good understanding of food. I know WHAT to do. I know HOW to eat well. Because I honestly believe that it is all very common sense. I don't buy into anything that is all crazy sounding! You've got some people that are anti-dairy. Some that are anti-grain. I don't know everything there is to know with the science of all of that, but I do know that there are very healthy, fit individuals that live life extremely well by using the basic common sense knowledge of eating a lot of fruits and vegetables and limiting as much processed foods from their diets as possible. No secret formula. No secrets in when or even necessarily how much of that food should be taken in, just clean eating!

So it's time again for me to start practicing what I preach! Just like Oprah... I must not only talk- the- talk, but walk-the-walk! I've had my spark, and I can just feel that I know deep down, what not just I NEED to do, but WANT to do. I'm sure I'll have my moments where one of those donuts REALLY sounds good. But having a deeper understanding of your true hopes and dreams, ,makes those temptations a lot easier to deal with. And though I've never really lost site of them, I let them get buried just a little too deep in this down process, and I'm now back to my old self again! :)

So if you've made it this far in reading this, I hope it may have somehow helped you. Adam was skeptical about my writing this for fear that people may see it as a negative. How will people respect me as an athlete and coach especially if they see that I struggle with nutrition. Well... I hope that it is actually a positive thing. Because it proves that everyone has their "stuff." I'm sure all athletes and coaches of all levels struggle with certain things, but that doesn't take away from what they are capable of doing when they really work through all of that stuff and get done what they need to get done. I'd rather people know that I'm a real human being, and yeah, I might be this little person, but it comes from a lot of hard work, and not something that I just magically have and they don't, and therefore, with hard work and dedication and a TRUE desire too, they could have it as well.

Good luck to you with your struggles! May we all be true to our true-selves! :)

Elvis on the Shelf!

2008-12-11T07:40:00.003-05:00

It is definitely that time of year! Baking Christmas goodies, parties, shopping, seeing Santa... we're BUSY!

Well yesterday I was listening to the radio as I took Gracie to school and heard about "Elf on the Shelf." I honestly had never heard of it before. We have your typical Christmas holiday, but this was a new one for me!

Apparently what it is is a Magical Elf is sent to your house from Santa himself. He comes with a cute book that explains all about his purpose at your house, that being that he is there to watch over you each day leading up to Christmas and report back to Santa each night as you sleep on whether or not you were good or bad that day!

Considering that Gracie was placed in time-out twice yesterday at school for various acts of indiscretion, I thought this might work out perfectly at our household!

So last night as we were getting ready for bed, our Elf on the Shelf, Elvis appeared! We read all about him and promised him that we would be very good for Santa! Right as we were saying good night to Elvis, who was sitting on the Shelf in our hallway, Gracie began some of her usual tactics and was not listening to her Mom and Dad. We immediately reminded her that Elvis was listening and would be heading back to the North Pole as soon as she fell asleep to report to Santa on her behavior. Well... things changed rather quickly! She even nonchalantly told me that I could have one of her favorite baby dolls, Princess Beautiful, if I wanted. This pleasant exchanged just so happened to take place right in front of our Elf Elvis!

So apparently Elvis did depart to the North Pole last night as we discovered him in a new location in our home this morning! He is now sitting on our mantel. Ready and waiting to see all the goings on in the household! He even brought a little present back with him since they were so "good" yesterday. Elvis with Gracie's doll to keep him company!

You know... it's probably a very good thing that he isn't exactly real too! Because if he DID report to a man that decided on our Christmas outcome based on how nice we were, I'm not sure some of us would always get what they wanted! :)

So we look forward to our new Christmas friend. Discovering him in new places each morning all the way up until Christmas Eve! And the kids are so cute about him! They talk to him and "sell" themselves to him! Cooper told him he'd been on Blue at school 2 days last week for having "Excellent" behavior! Gracie is loaning him some of her dollies to hang out with him and keep him company! Hopefully, this will be just what we need to keep our behavior under control during this exciting time, and gives us something to look forward to each day as the Christmas build begins!

This is a big year at our house for Christmas. The Christmas legend has finally sunk in around here and we all understand that in just 14 days a magical man is coming to visit and bring us a bunch of toys that we asked for! Come to think of it... too bad Santa isn't really magical! I'm convinced I've been good this year! :)

Happy Holidays Everyone!

My Little Man!

2008-11-30T19:03:00.013-05:00

I'm a mother of fairness! So I couldn't do a post just about Gracie without doing one about the special guy in my life!

Once upon a time, there was a mother who so desperately wanted a baby to call her own. She tried, and she tried, and she tried, but nothing seemed to work. After several years of failed attempts and fertility treatments, she decided it was time for a break. Well during that break, a miracle happened, and she was blessed to find out a baby would be on it's way!

Well that baby wasn't due to come until May 10, 2003. But he was a determined little baby, and he decided to come 4 whole weeks early. Surprise, Surprise for everyone! He had a bit of a hard time during his arrival and had to stay for an extra week in the hospital. But that determined little baby boy, Cooper Glen, got strong very quickly and was able to come home much sooner than they had expected!

He was a tiny little baby boy. Born at just 5lb, 2oz, nothing quite fit him just yet.

He was welcomed by the couple's first baby graciously when the love for pacifiers became a common bond!

Well that baby quickly grew!

He Grew!

And he Grew!!

And he grew!!

And then he grew some more!

Until one day... just 11 months later, he became a very proud Big Brother! And a wonderful big brother he is!

He loves to go on very fast rides, but protect that little sister along the way!

He's turned into quite the jokester! Constantly finding ways to amuse others, but mostly himself!

He has this amazingly contagious laugh!

He's quite the ladies man! Always a gentleman! :)

He Love, Love, Loves the water!

And likes baseball too!

He's the silly one in the bunch!

But a great student too!

And he's one of his mommy's biggest cheerleaders!

He's the best miracle a mother could have ever asked for! I love you Cooper Bear!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T08:45:00.002-05:00

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday! Enjoy your family, food, and life!

Who's REALLY in charge in my house!

2008-11-24T19:40:00.011-05:00

Adam and I do our very best to be good parents, and it is honestly very hard! Two kids both with very different personalities. Two parents both with different personalities and backgrounds and ideas on proper parenting. Obviously it helps that we're pretty similar on most things, but I don't think anyone is ever really prepared for how difficult being a parent can be. And then of course, you have the cliche answer that it is all worth it... And it definitely is! :)

Meet Sarah Grace Mills (aka Trouble Maker, aka Gracie, aka Sarah Gracie Mills as she would tell you!)

Born March 12, 2004 so tiny that her ankle bracelet in the hospital wouldn't stay on and the entire hospital went into lock-down, elevators and all, each time!

Such a good baby that Adam's dad worried if she was ok because she never cried!

Then... Gracie came into her personality and life has never been quite the same!

She has always looked up to her big brother!

However, when Cooper was asked at school who was in charge at his house, his answer was his SISTER!

She's very stylish!

She loves sunglasses like her Mommy!

And she likes to wear pretend glasses like her mommy's new ones!

She wants to be a ballerina princess when she grows up!

She will cheer Mommy on at races, but it is NOT her favorite thing to do! She would much rather have her mommy with her right then! Why does she keep running away??? :)

Gracie in her panties at IM Florida! She even got on NBC that way! :)

She loves taking photos of herself!

She LOVES Rocky! He is her favorite "toy/person!" It is a good thing that she can't pick him up!

She loves her room, her clothes, and her things. And loves taking pictures of them!

She has recently begun "punishing" me and Adam for "hurting her feelings." Anytime those feelings get hurt because she doesn't quite get her way, she marches upstairs and confiscates the mommy and/or daddy figurine representing our status in our bedroom. If our small replicate is not properly displayed on the bookcase... well, we know we're in for it! :)

She can play pitiful with the best of them!

And is very sweet as well!

She is definitely a force to be reckoned with! A spirit in which I never intend to break. If she keeps this up, no one will ever cross her and if they do, there will certainly be hell to pay! :) However, she is the best little lady ever, and if you can tolerate her stubbornness, she's the best little girl you could ever have!

I'm Thankful For...

2008-11-22T14:37:00.006-05:00

Being the proud parent of what I thought was the most talented Indian boy and Pilgrim girl ever!

Cooper is the first Indian boy next to the Preacher!

The Turkey Pokey!!

Gracie is the little pilgrim girl in the center!

Ok, so obviously, videography is not my forte! Adam is going to think I am a complete idiot when he realizes that I video taped the first part of this crooked! I figured you could take pictures that way, I didn't realize it wouldn't video tape correctly that way. Looked ok on the little screen while I was doing it. Oh well... At least I for some reason decided to turn it around! :)

And because we had a big week of productions... this was the end result in the playroom last night!

They are using their sleeping bags that their Grandma Ellen made for them. Aren't they cool?! Gracie's is a princess sleeping bag that has little cutout holes for the arms so it is as if you are really wearing the dress on top, and Cooper's is obviously an alligator. I think they are so neat! If my children turn out to be super creative, I will know they got it from their daddy's side of the family! :) Adam's mother and father are the most creative people I know. She even agreed to make me fleece arm warmers for the winter in any color or pattern I want! Don't think I'm not going to take you to the fabric store and get you loaded up on different styles over Christmas while you are here Ellen!!

The Voices of a Sugar Addiction

2008-11-20T21:52:00.006-05:00

Most people have something... Something that for whatever reason they have a hard time controlling. Maybe some of it is hereditary. Maybe it's part of your personality. Or just how you grew up. Who knows?? But whatever it may be... I know a lot of people who's situation plays out something like this... And for me, I'm addicted to Sugar/Junk Food!

Random Monday:

Confident Self: "I feel great today! Life is good, and I'm in control!"

Sugar Addiction: "Nice and quiet..."

X Amount of time goes by with life in check!

Insert small temptations of a cookie, cupcake, chocolate, french fries, etc...

Confident Self: "Ah... I'm not really feeling the need today. I will stay strong!"

Sugar Addiction: "We've been really good. Are you sure?"

Confident Self: "Yep. And I feel great for staying on top!"

More time goes by:

Insert more small temptations

Confident Self: "I have been good. I deserve this!"

Sugar Addiction: "FEED ME!"

*With Fudge!!

More time goes by:

Insert a bad day. Hormones, Fight with your husband, Kids driving you crazy, etc...

Insert small temptation

Confident Self: "I'm not feeling well today."

Addiction: "And you know what... we deserve a treat. I mean, come on... You've had a crappy day, so let's make it a little better!"

*Yum... McDonalds!!

Insert Guilt: Because generally the treat never makes up for your crappy day!

Addiction: Well... you've blown it! Might as well make it worth your while. Let's just go hog-wild while we have the chance!

More guilt...

More crap...

*Hot Wings are a must during those weak moments! :)

Before you know it... you're sucked back in!!

Finally you reach that point where you've had enough!

Confident Self: "What are you doing?? Get it together!

Sugar Addiction: "No... MORE, MORE!! :)"

A day or two goes by and you're doing good!

Oops... another crappy day. Gotta get it together

A good morning, crap... screwed up at lunch, so dinner is down the tube too!

Finally... something MUST change to end it! COLD TURKEY!!

Back on track... Life is good!

And the cycle continues....

I think other addictions possibly play out in similar manners. And though cigarettes and alcohol type of addictions have some obvious major life threatening side effects, food can be as dangerous. Obesity is a major problem as well is eating disorders. Both carry life threatening issues and cause people very much physical and emotional pain. And for whatever reason, I know that as a woman and as an athlete, I do struggle with food.

Unfortunately, I wasn't born with this innate craving for fruit and veggies. I love my sweets and junk and if it gets too much into my system, I lose all control over it! How many of you have eaten the entire box of cookies just to get the box out of the house?? Ok... I'll eat it now, and start fresh tomorrow! It's always tomorrow! :)

Though I don't have an eating disorder now and haven't for years, I think there's always that part of me hiding back there willing to come out at those inconvenient times. I speak openly about it because I feel that a lot of people out there struggle with eating control. See that's the one thing about self-medicating with junk food vs. alcohol and drugs. You can walk away from cigarettes and alcohol and never have the need to partake again. Food is a little different. Yeah, you can swear off all sugar and junk food for the rest of your life, but it can be kind of weird. I've been there and done that before and it doesn't go over well in the rest of our world.

So for me the key is trying to work through the problem. Find out what works to put you back on track and go with the plan. For me... it's 10 days cold turkey!! Yep. See, after repeating this cycle lord knows how many times, I've realized for me I can not go from on a Sugar-High back to moderation. Nope... the pendulum must swing from Sugar absorption over to a Zero-tolerance policy! Once the sugar has left the system, the cravings lessen, and I can go back to my here and there moments. But if I give myself even the smallest little opening before 10 days of my sugar high... I'll get sucked right back in! Hence... the fudge... yep. If you checked my blood now, I'd probably show levels that could not be normal for a healthy individual! :)

*See... We finished the fudge! The other batch goes to Gracie's school tomorrow thank goodness!

So I've realized this, and I'm back to my go-to plan of the 10 days! And trust me, I've fought this battle for awhile, so I'm sure I must revisit this plan again in the future. Most likely many times. But the key is that as long as I stick to my REAL love and goals... I can keep sugar from taking me down!

I hope that for the others of you that struggle with the junk food roller coaster, you may find some sense in this and find your own go-to plan! The off season is here, swept in with the holiday season, and the junk food is out there just calling our names!! BEWARE! Remember... a little is fine, but know your limits! :)

It's Official... I'm OLD!!

2008-11-19T12:04:00.002-05:00

Yep... yesterday I went and had my eyes checked and am now wearing glasses to help me read and be on the computer! Adam thinks I needed them BECAUSE I am constantly staring at a glaring computer screen all day. :) Might be a little truth in that!

A couple of tips in purchasing glasses:

1. Do NOT bring a 5 year old and 4 year old along. Chances are they will meander through the mecca of glasses trying them on and leaving them all over in random places. They might possibly even pick up random pencils off of the floor and try to color on the expensive looking Tommy Bahama ivory display. I will say that Cooper was as he put it, on blue during the glasses occasion. However, Gracie... well... officially was on yellow but red was threatened quite a bit!

2. Allow yourself LOTS of time. Glasses are really hard to pick out! You've got square, round, oval, squarish-round, roundish-square. Throw on top of that that I have a head the size of my 5 year old, so nothing fit!

3. Be prepared to spend money! Yep, even with insurance... those suckers are expensive, and I'll tell you why. Because now glasses have gone Designer. Fendi, Gucci, Prada, Coach, Juicy, you name it, they had it! Apparently Fendi is the creme de la creme and cost a whopping $500 for the frames! Didn't even look at those because as my eyes glanced past them, I noticed a few pairs that looked rather perfect. I am drawn to the expensive stuff. It's like my mind literally gravitates towards it! But come on!! However, I mean this is my new look we're talking about. This is not something to bargain shop for. And with my little face, it wasn't my fault the Coach glasses were the perfect fit! :)

4. Don't be afraid to ask for help. When the girl first offered to assist me, my first thought was... no thanks. Not a fan of the personal shopper experience. However, quickly realized that there's a lot more to what you see. Pairs come in different colors and different sizes and so what appears to be around 1000 choices is really more like 10,000! Unless you want to spend a week picking them out, ask for help!

After this somewhat painful experience, I had another, wow... I'm really getting old moment! Adam and I were talking about random stuff last night when I told him that my mother had called me earlier that day to get me to look up on the Internet if there was a Piccadilly in the Douglasville mall! :) We thought it was funny. But then, we started to reminisce about our Piccadilly/Morrison's experiences. We literally set there drooling over the idea of their yeast rolls, fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and the baked macaroni and cheese with the sort of crust on top! Don't know if you northerners have these southern style cooking restaurants up there, but Piccadilly is about as Southern as it gets! It's cafeteria style, buttered up, grease filled goodness! The jello squares in the little round bowls actually count as a salad! Yes... salad. Would you like a salad with your meal mam?? Oh, no thank you... I have my green jello!

The thing about Piccadilly is that 90% of it's patrons are probably receiving their S.S. benefits! The others are the grandchildren that get drug along. That was me! And after having my conversation with Adam last night about all of that southern goodness... I wonder if I can sneak in one final Piccadilly meal before returning to the "healthy side"???

Back On the Wagon... "Well kind of!"

2008-11-17T20:08:00.003-05:00

*Me on my birthday. Ummm... Icing!!

As of 8:45am on Saturday morning, I've been trying to once again wean myself off of my greatest addiction... Sugar.

See... after Clearwater, my final race of the 2008 season, I began my Off Season. Starting with a much needed break!

A break from workouts. Yes... I'm finishing day number 9 of doing virtually nothing! And by virtually nothing I mean I've taken Rocky for a 20 min walk and did some stretching. That's it!

A break from worrying about food. I gave myself "permission" to eat whatever I wanted during my break. Well... turns out, that is kind of problematic! Because apparently what I want is to eat donuts for breakfast, brownie sundae's for lunch and cake for dinner with cookies and candy tossed in there for snacks!

The first two days, wasn't a big deal right? I'd just done a half ironman. A few extra treats that I'd recently denied myself were well within reason.

But then it was as if the sugar entered into my bloodstream and my body immediately recognized it's old friend! I was suddenly grabbing candy out of the Halloween candy jar without even realizing I was doing it. When it finally dawned on me, after feeling like total crap for a couple of days, that I'd spent the past several days eating my weight in sugary goodness, it left me with a dilemma...

Do I pull it together now before this sugar crisis gets any worse???

But wait...I only gave myself 2 weeks of no food worries. That means I only have 2 weeks to eat with no guilt!

So... ate some more!

Finally, the haze, the bloat, the CRASH came! And I knew Friday night... this had to be the end of my sugar high! Well... after I ate a few more chocolate frosted donuts for breakfast on Saturday morning!

So that is what I did.... 4... yes 4 glorious chocolate frosted donuts later, and at 8:45am I declared defeat!

I did find myself reaching for another piece of candy throughout the day, and then realizing... ah, ah, ah...NO more for me thanks! :)

Saturday and Sunday went by surprisingly well though. I honestly didn't even really feel the need for junk until tonight. After a LONG night last night of no sleep. Seriously no sleep... and a long day of working, I got hungry, tired, and irritated. So I broke down and ordered pizza from Dominos. Then... I even ate a little chocolate ice cream! The good news though... it WAS sugar free! :)

But no worries. I really did find it refreshing that I found myself actually craving good-for-me food! I feel that I made the right decision in cutting my sugar-spree short by one week. Besides... I think I gained all 5-6lbs I lost in preparation for the race back in that week! So it'll give me an extra week to work on making it go away again! :)

However, do be thinking about me. No exercise and no sugar for another 6 days! If you find yourself reading one of my blogs and it's almost incomprehensible... bare with me. I'll be back to myself on Monday when I get to sweat it out a bit. Happy off season to you all!

Whoa... Computers are HARD! :)

2008-11-15T12:28:00.005-05:00

Ok... so Welcome to my new website/blogpage!

For sometime I've been wanting to create something a little more involved. Something that would encompass my regular blog, photos, general stuff about me, and information in regards to my coaching services!

So... I put a new look on my blog page and created 4 additional pages as links to my "extra" stuff! Check out the new header my super computer husband made for my new links permanent location!! And here's a preview as well!

http://kellyem1.blogspot.com/ (Biography)
http://kellyem2.blogspot.com/ (Races)
http://kellyem3.blogspot.com/ (Gallery)
http://kellyem4.blogspot.com/ (Coaching)

Yes... I obviously did most of this myself. No... it's not too fancy/schmancy, and I may have a website put together soon one of these days. I'm actually looking into it. But in the meantime... I hope you enjoy moving around my new links!!

And don't forget to let me know what you think. Constructive criticism is always welcome (especially when it comes to me and computers! :)

Thanks for reading guys!

Under Construction!

2008-11-14T16:41:00.001-05:00

If you check my blog over the next several days, it may look different each time! I'm playing around with it to see what I can possibly do all by myself! We'll see how this goes! :)

Dear Santa...

2008-11-13T10:32:00.006-05:00

Adam and his mom have been on me for a Christmas list. As I get older, I swear this gets harder! Everything I want is either ungodly expensive, extremely specific, or not much fun! :) I'm a big believer in ask for what you WANT and not what you NEED! ha.. ha!!

So yesterday, I finally set down and came up with a list... Here's what I came up with!

*Oakley white women's sunglasses: I saw them at the Sunglass Hut in Lenox Mall. Also LOVE, LOVE, LOVE.... these: I actually may rather have these! (Can you tell I have a thing for sunglasses :)

*I want some fleeced lined arm warmers. I like these in like red or blue maybe!*Any clothing item just about from Nike or Anthropologie. Just don't do wool. It's kind of itchy. :)

*I really want some of the classic Uggs too. They've been out for years, and I think I'm finally ready to jump on the bandwagon!

*Splish swim suits. I think I want to order this one....

*I also like the TYR camo suit with the hot pink straps!

*Pink aquasphere jr swim goggles.

*"Magical Running" and "Running Sports Essentials" by Bobby McGee.

*The spinervals IM WI dvd

**And finally (For Now :)... I saw a lot of different jewelery yesterday that I liked from Anthropologie. You just about couldn't go wrong there! It's tradition that Adam gets me a piece of jewelery every year. How'd I manage to score that deal??? :)

Of course once I got going... It got a lot easier! I figure if Santa is kind enough to bring me even one of the items from the list... I've been a good girl!

Ironman 70.3 World Championships!

2008-11-10T09:39:00.005-05:00

Well... 2008 has finally come to a close and what a great year it has been!

We had a wonderful time in Florida! The kids had sooo much fun! The entire experience was great!

The race... well... didn't go quite perfectly, but they rarely do. It was definitely an amazing experience and of course I feel like it is something that will hopefully get me one notch closer to being the athlete I hope to be one day.

The weather there was pretty great! They had called for showers early in the week, but as time progressed, all of that faded away. The water was a chilly 70 degrees. Doesn't sound that bad, and honestly wasn't bad once you got in with your wet suit and got going. Even my kids managed to hang out in it for almost an hour without any complaints and only their little suits on!

We arrived Wednesday night and spent Thursday registering and playing a little at the beach and pool. I met Katie and Kerrie for a quick Gatorade swim on Friday morning which was Great, and then headed out to finish my pre-race brick. I tried to relax as much as possible on Friday, which can be hard when you have kids in tow at the beach! So we ended up going to see the new Madagascar 2 movie!

Saturday morning finally came after a long night of little to no sleep as usual. Race morning went really quickly! I got to meet Courtney, who is the new marketing director for PT Solutions! We have our first meeting scheduled together for this coming Friday and I had no clue that she was going to be down there. Our bikes were maybe 4 apart! She was down there with several friends of hers, including one local guy, Brett Daniels, whom I've heard a lot about. So it was nice to have some company pre-race!

The pros headed out at 6:45 and they started corralling us from there. Time went by pretty quickly and before I knew it the Female 30-34 group, all 62 of us, were standing at the water's edge ready to go!

*Our Pre-race Hug! I had to have a long conversation with Gracie about why Mommy couldn't stop and hang out with her during the race! :)

This race was a completely different experience for me. It wasn't just a local race, it wasn't just any 70.3 race, it was the World Championship! Everyone of these girls were fast and had earned the right to be there! So when the gun went off, there wasn't much of a breakaway kind of group. We were all clumped together in one entangled mess! I didn't freak out, as I knew to expect this and have been in this scenario before. I did get punched in the face twice both times knocking my goggles off. By the second time I had tried to put them back on my right eye was completely messed up! The goggles weren't positioned correctly keeping my eye from opening all of the way, which may have actually been a good thing since they were full of water! :) So success number 1 of the day was NOT freaking out about it. I didn't want to lose too much off the pack, so I just stayed calm and went with it. On the way out, it wasn't too bad. I was sighting on the left and the water wasn't too choppy. Really the only chop came from the boats and support staff out there. I did get one final kick to the chin before things started to spread out a bit.

By the time we got to the turn around and headed back to shore it got a little harder. We were swimming directly into the bright yellow sun, and I was looking for yellow bouys with my one left eye! I had NO clue where I was going. There was one point in time, when I was being completely overtaken by the wave of 30-34 men behind me that I started to get a little concerned that I had somehow swam my way all the way back to the other side. :) I just stayed calm and kept moving forward and literally kept working my way towards the sounds of the announcer on the beach. Finally came out of the water in roughly 34 min. Which I felt pretty good about. I would have liked to be more like 32-33, but I knew heading in it might be more of a just sub 35 kind of day. Since I am not the fastest swimmer, and I got beat-up in the water pretty bad, I took my 34 and went about my way!

I was in and out of transition as quickly as possible. When I found out after the race that I had only managed a 3:16 for T1, I was a little pissed at first. Based off of last year's time I was hoping for 2-2:30. But in looking at the other girls times, it looks like 3 was pretty average for this year. So I felt better about it realizing that I was kind of right in there with everyone else.

The Bike... Well there is a story in and of itself! :) I felt pretty good for most of it. And my number 1 success for this bike is that I can honestly say I rode the entire thing completely clean! That my friends is something A LOT of other people can NOT say! Jen had told me this was a big drafting race, so I knew to expect it going in. I can not tell you how many HUGE pelotons of people came flying past me over the course of 56 miles. And there are people that will say, oh... but you can't help BUT draft out there. Sorry folks... I was there, and I don't buy it! When 20+ people come flying by you at 28mph and you are hauling it all by yourself at 22-23, you don't automatically get sucked in unless you CHOOSE to. I didn't. And for the most part, you can tell who else didn't either. Just like Elizabeth Fedofsky put it, she rode clean. You can tell just by looking at our times. I'm not saying that every single age-group girl who managed a sub 2:25 didn't ride clean. If you did pull off that great amount of time all by yourself for the entire time, then I think that's wonderful! But... you know who you are if you didn't and in your head will always have an asterisk by your time!

*My kiddos waiting for me to come in from the bike!

Again, I was hoping for around a 2:30 on the bike. As I was finishing up, I thought it was still within reach. Or at least I could have come in around a 2:33. Well with about 4 miles to go a plastic grocery bag flew right in front of me and I ran over it. It immediately got sucked up into my crank and derailer! It jammed everything up and I had no choice but to pull over just to get things slightly moving again! I stood there for a minute or so pulling out as much of that plastic bag as possible. It was and still IS a complete mess! I got as much of it out as I could and hopped back on trying to get those last 4 miles in as quickly as possible. I couldn't shift gears, but I could pedal at least, so once again, told myself NOT to panic and just kept moving!

The run was good and bad. It was bad in the fact that I felt awful! The first half I was really sick to my stomach and kept almost throwing up if that makes sense. I was trying to pace it correctly, but I made my classic mistake of letting my mind get the best of me and backed off. It was NOT easy. It was 2 loops out and back both times crossing over a relatively decent size bridge that we climbed for a total of 4 times. It was REALLY hot by this point and not a lot of shade and breeze to give much help. I was holding on for the first 1/2 of the run ok, but then started to give up a little. The out portion of the second loop was my "down" time. My feeling sorry for myself, I just want to quit time. I knew my sub 5hours was out by then and was pissed about it. But then fortunately, something finally clicked in there that just because I wasn't having the perfect race that I'd hoped for. Just because everything hadn't gone as planned, and I wasn't feeling like myself at this moment didn't mean that I should just throw it all away at the end.

I ran a 5:09 at South Carolina several weeks ago and came into Clearwater thinking this would be a much faster time. On that last leg of the run, I got back into my groove and started pushing again in an effort to try to at least break that 5:09. I came close.... 5:10:52.

I am a little disappointed only because I know I could have done a lot better than that. That time doesn't really demonstrate where I am at right now, but... that's the thing about getting all wrapped up in the timing of races. It's not something that you can always control!

So overall, I'm happy with a lot of the little accomplishments that I made during the race. I managed to pull out a 5:10 on a not-so-perfect day, and that's not too bad.

I had an incredible year! Coach Jen has been amazing, and I can just think back to 10 months ago and see how far I've come physically and emotionally in this sport!

*Post race Put-put game! That place must have had 1000 stairs and THAT was the real test of what I was made of to finish that game! :)

*Notice that Gracie is swinging AWAY from the hole! HA..HA!!

Thank you all for your continued support this season! I've had so much fun this year building relationships with all of you and following you along through each of our athletic journeys! Thank you for a wonderful 2008, and I already can't wait for 2009!!

We're In Clearwater!!

2008-11-06T07:54:00.000-05:00

I'll post some pictures after we actually leave the hotel! :)

My Poor Blog!

2008-11-02T21:09:00.006-05:00

I feel like I have completely neglected my blog for awhile now!

Yes... I have recently signed onto facebook, which is a quick fix. :) You're in, you get quick little updates on everyone with a glance, not to mention the emails you get from facebook that with a click sucks you right into it!

But... no, I have not abandoned my blog for facebook. Yes, fb is the "new" thing! Some have even said that blogging is "Out." But... you can make your blog page look pretty. And that is good for something. Not to mention it's the perfect place for me to ramble and it is considered O.K... :)

So just to kind of catch up on things...

First of all, we went to a corn maize and pumpkin patch for our annual fall festival trip. We've gone to several different pumpkin patches in the past, but this year decided to do this corn maize that we've heard a lot about. It was very neat! We were looking for "clues" to find our way out and Gracie kept pointing out ears of corn as clues! Good thing those weren't our only clues! :)

As far as Cooper's baseball is concerned... He DID hit the ball! He had quite a few hits actually! Unfortunately, the first time he hit it right to the first baseman and got out, but he hit the ball nonetheless! Then we ended up playing in our first playoff game. It was a close one... we won 22-21 at the bottom of the 6th inning when Cooper scored the tying run!! Unfortunately, we lost yesterday ending our season, but we learned a lot and have a little time off to re-evaluate how much we like baseball and if we want to go for another season in the Spring.

Finally...Halloween. So much fun! My little people were Alice in Wonderland and Bumblebee the Transformer. It's such a bitter-sweet moment watching your little ones trick-or-treat. Thinking about what they were like in years past where they could barely keep up with the group and now running around like old-pros at it, was neat to watch!

We get one of these pictures every year! This year it was at the beginning of trick-or-treating because she was ready to go and no one else was quite yet! :)And finally... a Lazy Sunday, well for my gang at least! This will be me next Sunday after the race, and for several Sundays after that! One more week... Definitely a bitter-sweet moment! I'm looking forward to it though. I need a couple of weeks off, especially now since I've signed on for Ironman Wisconsin AND Ironman Florida 2009!!

Congratulations to Wes, Steve, Ryan, and Bree! What a great day out there for all of you yesterday!

It's Thursday?

2008-10-23T09:35:00.003-04:00

Man... time is flying by so fast lately!

It's really windy and chilly here today, and my first thoughts were, "Wow. It's really getting cold already!" But then I realized that it is October 23rd. November is almost here, and it kind of shocked me! I mean 2008 will be over before we know it. I guess that's what happens as you get older.

Things are continuing to go well here on the homefront!

We had a lot of fun at Cooper's field trip. All of the kids in his class were so cute and having such a great time. I had all the little girls wanting to sit next to me on the bus! :) Adam said it was because they thought I was the cool 2nd grader. Thanks Adam! :)

One of the best things happened this week as well.... my little man Cooper finally hit the baseball!! I swear, even as I wrote that, it continues to feel like relief. :) This is his second season. He played T-ball in the Spring as a 5 year old. Then he was moved up to regular baseball this fall for 5-6 year olds. But most of the kids he's playing with are actually in their 5th or 6th season because they started at early 4! He got to where he could hit off of the coach towards the end of last season and this season his first hit was Monday at practice. We've been at it now for almost 2 months with nothing but strike-outs and disappointment. I am not disappointed in Cooper, NO... It's been him disappointed in himself and the sport. And I have to tell you, as his mother it has been SOOOO hard.

It greatly saddens me how competitive sports are for our little people these days. He's 5 and has to play baseball with the same rules as the Big Leaguers. He even had a game a few weeks ago that ended up being called because of the mercy rule. That meant he only had one chance to bat the entire game. WHAT?? Who cares? I mean, they don't care if it's 100-0. They just want to play and have fun! But no... there's the play-offs that we must get ready for after the regular season. I'm sorry... but in my opinion, it's absolutely ridiculous!

I admit that for most of this season, I thought oh... it's our league, our team, the sport of baseball. And then as I spoke with the other mothers on the team last night at practice and realized there was another 5-6yr old team in our league that practiced 4-5 days/week, and their sons that played football at the age of 7 and 8 practiced 3 nights a week for 2 hours a night, and listened to this one mother scramble to get her child registered on some USA Tennis registration... I was hit with a big reality. This is what it's come to I think for our kids. No matter what sport, what activity and apparently beginning at the age of pre-school, it's all about winning and being so much better than everyone else. And I'm just sad about it.

I mean the alternative is to not let them be involved at all. That's no good either. But what do you do when your 5 year old leaves his baseball game boo-hooing because in his words he is "such a loser." I have NEVER used that word in my household. The entire season we knew that Cooper was struggling and made it very clear that as long as he tried his hardest and had fun, THAT is what made him a winner! But they aren't stupid. They know who wins and who loses. Cooper was well aware that he was the only kid not to have hit the ball yet.

I love sports! Always have, and obviously have a competitive spirit myself as I love to compete. But when I look around to realize that our children are being put under severe pressure in kindergarten to win at the expense of their school work, and their self-esteem, I'm kind of at a loss.

I'm just glad for now that he has found some success with it. Something just sort of finally clicked. Since Monday, every time he heads up to bat, he's hit the ball, and he has a completely different outlook on baseball now. We have a game tonight and I so desperately just want to see him make it to first base. Because he so deserves it. And I don't ever want for him to think of himself as a "loser." It's one thing to lose. We all do quite a bit. It's another thing to be a LOSER. What a horrible thing.

So I kind of went off on a tangent here! But I'll put in an update as to how the game turns out. I don't care if we win or lose. I could care less about the playoffs, or our record. I just want my little slugger to get out there and have some fun! Wish us luck!

Field Trips, Fashion, Food, and Fall!

2008-10-20T15:17:00.007-04:00

That's been the just of it lately!

Gracie had a field trip last week. We went back to the same place that I had been with Cooper a year ago. I guess that is a plus to having back to back kids. Getting to know I get two years of the same! Well.... I guess if it's stuff I want to repeat! :)

So we went to the farm, or parm as Gracie calls it! A little pumpkin patch place about 30 min north of where we live. We got to look at pumpkins, chickens, goats, a little hay maize, a hay ride, and of course a bounce house. No children's place is complete without it! It really is a cute little place!

This is Gracie as a flower! We also had to take pictures of her as a horse, pig, sheep, turkey, chicken, goat, donkey, etc... I'm just going to stick with the flower for this post!

She got all excited about the project we were going to do because I told her we were going to make a doll! That is what we did last year at least. As you can see, we did NOT make a doll. Instead, it was a bird feeder. You can see.... it's just not near as much fun as a doll! :)

This is one of my new favorite pictures of her! What makes it even better than the fact that I think it's beautiful of course, is that she is holding a pumpkin that I had to buy for her. The "free" ones weren't good enough! It needed to be a little bigger and we compromised on this one for $1.50. We'll buy our big pumpkins from the grocery store for $5, rather than paying $5/lb!

Cooper has a field trip tomorrow. Same sort of place except with a colonial spin on it I think, and I actually get to ride the bus this time! Haven't done that in awhile! I'll post pictures of those soon!

As far as fashion goes... I'm referring to my daughter! Look at this picture...

Notice anything? She's a giant compared to the other kids in her class! And no... she isn't the oldest. She has a March birthday, and the child is almost as tall as Cooper. I guess it's a good thing she is so into her fashion these days. Because if she keeps this up! She'll be a supermodel one day!

This picture is from the other day when she came into my room with the camera and suggested I take her picture because she "looked so pretty!"

This is what she actually wore to school today! Blue dress with purple hearts, purple, pink and white sparkly tights, and yellow jelly sandals. I didn't put up too much of a fight! She's 4 and can get away with it! Besides, SHE thought she looked sensational, and I thought she should be able to enjoy that!

FOOD... is going pretty well. I think I'm down a total of 4lbs, despite my few chocolate binge fests! :) I'm hopefully one pound away from where I was hoping to be for Clearwater with just a little less than 3 weeks to get it done. I say "hopefully" because you know how it is. One day the scale reads X, the next Y. You never know... you just have to go off of the consistency of it! That's what we must tell ourselves at least! :) Other than the high school fad diet attempts, this is the 3rd time I've made a specific effort to lose weight. The first was in college when I dropped all of my weight initially and the second was after having Gracie. There was no time to lose weight after Cooper! :) And I must say... it seems harder now! Not physically I don't think, but mentally. Ahhh, habits stick REALLY hard, especially as you get older! :)

Ah... and FALL! As much as I'm loving the cooler temperatures and not breaking a sweat walking to the bus stop everyday to get Cooper, I was not quite prepared for my Saturday early morning temperatures of hopping on the bike and it being somewhere in the 40's! OUCH!! And I'm a wuss when it comes to the colder temperatures. I was all decked out in my long-sleeves, gloves, tights, and socks and my toes were STILL completely numb the entire ride. It took about 10 min into my run before they no longer felt like bricks!

Well... that's about it for now! I'm so excited for Ironman Florida coming up, Clearwater, and I'm already planning out next year! I've signed on to head to Tuscon with my awesome Coach Jen in March! I'm already thinking, Crap... I've got to "train" for training camp so I don't get left behind! :)

Until later...K :)

Taking Inventory!

2008-10-11T20:42:00.009-04:00

What does a girl do when she is having a "feeling sorry for herself" phase?

Take stock in her life! Or at least I do. :)

I have several reasons for feeling like I did at the beginning of the week. It's October. November makes for a late season. I just came off of a Half Ironman.... Yadda, yadda, yadda. All valid I believe. I'm not discounting my feelings, and I know a lot of others are struggling, or have struggled with this in the past. And believe me when I say, the comments that you guys left me and the emails/phone calls... were all so amazing. Thank you so much for all of your support! Now and all year!

Last year I had similar feelings. But I had my very first Ironman coming up. That was something I was in no way going to let slip away from me! So I toughed it out through those last 6 hour rides (by myself nonetheless!) and swam, biked, and ran myself to my equivalent of success for the year!

I have a couple of theories on some of my emotions leading into my Hawaii 70.3 race this year and now Clearwater. Fortunately for you... I won't bore you with all of my psycho-babble bs! :) But let's just say, my id, ego, self-conscious, me, myself, and I had a long chat with ourselves and pulled it together! The encouragement from my tri-blogger friends absolutely came into play, and my biggest thank you goes out to Coach Jen, who handled me exactly the way I needed. She and I click. At least from my perspective! :) I'm sure I'm her big nut case, but I absolutely LOVE her and am so blessed for the amazing year she has provided me with!

So long story short... I'm feeling back to my old self again! The swim workout I missed this Monday will be made up tomorrow, and I am back on the nutrition band wagon!

After taking some inner inventory, and some time to appreciate all of the wonderful and amazing people in my life... I decided to work on some physical inventory by literally cleaning out my closet!

*What a Mess! :) *Yeah, never did get around to this pile of magazines hidden underneath my skirts! Most are from 2006! Yikes!! I just tossed them all. :)

It's been on my to-do-list forever. When it comes to clothes, shoes, handbags, etc. I'm a bit of a pack-rat! I still own items that date back as early as middle school I think! I have certain items that I really like or keep for sentimental purposes! But A LOT of the rest needed to go! :)

*Why yes those are roller skates! These were in the "KEEP" pile! :)

*The initial progress! A bag full of shoes and 4 piles of clothes to donate. Not bad for just the closet. Next up... my chest of drawers!

And the other BIG news in the Mills' household... Santa came a little early to bring us a Wii! It was on the Christmas list, but we were told to get it now if we wanted Santa to bring it, so we figured it could come just a little early.

*Cooper getting his bowl on!

Needless to say... it's been a BIG hit! It comes with several sports games like Tennis, baseball, golf, bowling and boxing. We bought the Mario Kart to go with it because that is what Cooper actually wanted from the system. And it has already been so much fun!

*Why is at least one of my children always missing clothes? At least she had on her underwear! :)

We've all been playing together with our little Mii people! It's been so much great family stuff!

And then it got even better last night!! Adam connected it to the internet!! I had no idea it even did that. And when he first told me, I thought it was just for gaming purposes, but NO... I am sitting here and keeping up with the Ironman updates on my living room t.v.! How cool is that. No computer, keyboard, or anything required. Just my Wii remote and t.v.! It is one heck of a machine.

So 4 weeks to go and I'm fired up!! We all have our moments. I had mine, and then I put my big-girl pants on and realized how absolutely privileged I am to have the opportunity to be racing 4 weeks from now. So thanks again everyone! Hang in there all you Clearwater and Ironman Florida, and Ironman Arizona people! Our moments are coming! :)

Soul Searching

2008-10-08T16:59:00.002-04:00

In many ways I feel that I've hit a bump in the road... or bumps... or to some degree... I'm unravelling.

Bottom line. I'm tired. I began my triathlon journey just over 2 years ago and feel like I've been at it 100% ever since. Yeah, there were "off seasons", but I spent the off season of 2006 trying to train for the January Disney marathon that never would be because of a foot injury and then went right into Ironman training in January of 2007.

After Ironman Florida in November of last year, I had a lot of different emotions. Yes, I was glad to be done. But I'm the type of person that once goal A. is accomplished, I immediately start thinking about what's next. Plus, having broken my foot during the Ironman, I was out of running completely for 2 weeks. Great rest time, right? Well... I think I took off close to a full week before getting a little too into my biking for fear I wasn't running. :)

2008 has been an incredible season for me and for some reason my mind or body or both are ready to call it a year. BUT... as Coach Jen put it, I have the "biggest race of my triathlon career" approaching in less than 5 weeks, and I'm struggling to pull it together.

I've rearranged my schedule several times because I haven't made it to a swim on Mondays. And I usually HATE to mess with my schedule. Even Adam asked me what was up because I didn't swim this Monday! :) And normally he is the one asking me, "Do you really have to go?" ha ha! I vowed to lose 5lbs over the next several weeks. I lost 3 and ever since have been eating like a maniac! I'm tired, grumpy, snappy, and generally pissed at the world A LOT lately! :)

I need something to snap me out of it and get me back in the game!

I know it's just a phase. Next post will probably be me all fired up again. I guess feeling like this just bothers me because this is the polar opposite of how I normally am. I generally have infinite energy, and I can't stand feeling run down! :)

Anyone want to volunteer to come over and B#$%^ slap me???! :)

Ok... off to figure out why my husband is still at work and isn't almost home yet so that I can squeeze in my important run tonight. Life would be better with a treadmill! :)

My Name is Kellye Mills... and I have a Problem...

2008-10-02T12:25:00.001-04:00

One Word...

FACEBOOK!!

South Carolina Half Ironman!

2008-09-29T09:44:00.002-04:00

This weekend's race went really well! It was the perfect prep that I needed physically and mentally to prepare me for Worlds!

Saturday was kind of a hectic day as usual. I woke up early to get my pre-race brick in and because I needed to be sure to fill my car up with gas before heading out of town, I spent a decent amount of my brick time waiting in the gas line. So I didn't spend as much time doing my pre-race warmup as I was supposed to have done because I was trying to book it to Cooper's baseball game! But I made it just in time!

The game was filled with drama as Cooper was having some difficulties. A story I'll fill you in with later, but I left with a bit of a broken heart as my little man went home and I was off to South Carolina.

The drive wasn't so bad. A few small moments of panic of not being able to find gels and then I couldn't find the hotel. So I went and got registered and checked in only to find the place I'd had a reservation at and it was NOT ok. I swear I'm no snob! I knew going in that it wasn't going to be the best place because my lazy self waited until the last minute to find a hotel room. But this place was BAD! Old, musty, bad crowd. I just couldn't do it. Thank goodness there was a cancellation at the Days Inn, so I was able to get a room over there! I got settled, organized, and focused on the race!

Sunday morning wasn't nearly as cold as I thought it was going to be. I woke up earlier than I had set my alarm for because I never sleep well the night before a race. I felt pretty calm, cool, and collective about the whole thing, which was good. I went into this race for the purpose of testing my race strategies and learning from them, so I wasn't putting too much pressure on myself, which was good! As soon as I got into transition, Danni came over and introduced herself! She's a really sweet girl from blog land, and it was so nice meeting her. I also ran into one of my team mates, Steve who I didn't know was racing. And I got to say hello to Wes before the start as well!

The swim was really good! I swam a 35 in Hawaii in the ocean without a wetsuit, so I was hoping to do faster than that at this race considering it was a lake, wetsuit swim. I went off in wave 5 with all the women 39 and under, and though I went for it right at the gun in an effort to latch on to the back of the lead pack, I just couldn't get connected to them! So I ended up swimming pretty much the whole time by myself. It was weird almost. I kept thinking I was off course or something, but I swam straight from bouy to bouy, so I think there may have been just a lot of room out there or something. I ended up swimming a 33:33, which I was very happy with. I know better than to think I can swim super fast, and honestly in comparison to others, I wasn't one of the slower swimmers. So I feel like that is continuing to get a little better and better each time!

As I mentioned before, I've really focused on transitions this year, as last year my transitions were always slow. I had seen the transition times from year's past and felt like I should be able to do at least sub 2min on each. I came out of T1 with a 1:32. Again, really happy with that!

Going into the bike, I had a lot to think about. I'd not seen the course, but had heard a lot about it. I had heard that the first 20 miles were kind of hilly and then it was more rolling after that. I also knew that the roads were supposed to be kind of bad in certain locations. Kind of chewed up gravel with pot holes and such. I actually know a guy that wrecked 2 years ago and had to have surgery on his collar bone, so wasn't expecting this to be a super fast bike. Based off of previous times, I was hoping for a 2:40-2:45. I actually was feeling great for the first 20 miles! Yeah, I thought it was a little hilly, but legs were just kind of bouncing up the hills and all was well! After the 20 miles of hills though, came the crappy roads, and I felt like I couldn't really get my pace up that much with those types of roads. Plus, my back started killing me at this point, but I was just ignoring it. I could tell that I was on pace for the 2:40 split, so I kept pushing it a little. I came off of the bike thinking I'd hit the 2:40-2:41 range. I knew I had slowed down coming into transition some and I'd spent a little time getting my feet out of my shoes and my watch off of my bike. So when I saw my final bike split result of 2:43:04, I was a little disappointed. But, I felt I did pretty well, so I'm ok with that.

Coming into the run, I was feeling really good! I knew it was a little rolling, and I didn't want to set my sights too high, so Jen and I had figured 1:50-1:51ish. She told me to take the first mile really easy, and then get my speed up to like 8:30 splits for the first 1/2 of it. I was running what I felt like was really easy and realized I was running too fast of course, but I didn't feel like I was running too hard at all, so I just went off of effort. It was a out and back loop x 2. It got pretty warm out there on the run. But not horrible. It was mostly bad in this one particular 2 mile section that you were just out on the pavement directly in the sun. And we did that part 4 x, so that was a little daunting, but I managed. By mile 4, my splits were getting slower. The fatigue started to set in and my stomach was feeling really full. I kept sipping on fluids through the aid stations only because I knew I needed it, but not because I really wanted it. I refused to let myself walk. I only slowed to a walk for a few seconds to get my sips in through the aid stations. I was really proud of that, because on most races, I end up walking a little bit. But not this time!

I went into the race hoping to come out with a sub 5:15. By mile 10, I knew that a sub 5:10 was possible if I picked it up a bit and stayed with it. In every race I've ever done, the most of a kick I've ever been able to do is like 1/2 mile. So for me to take those last 3 and get moving again, was something I was really happy with myself for doing. I REALLY wanted that sub 5:10, and I wasn't going to give it away right at the end!!

I finished with a 5:09:04. My run ended up being 1:49:42, so justs under my 1:50 goal! I thought if I got in under 5:15 that would be good for top 10. Unfortunately, there were a lot of fast girls there yesterday, and I ended up finishing 11th overall. I missed the top 10 by one stinking second! Me and this woman were sprinting it out up this big hill at the end, and she took me by that one second right at the line! Shucks!! I'm always SOOOO close, but oh well! :) I did finish first in my age group though, and PR'd my 70.3 distance by 17:50. So overall, a very good day!

Congratulations to Danni and Kevin on their first Half Ironmans! And to Wes on a 9 min pr as well!

Nutrition Tidbit!

2008-09-26T10:04:00.002-04:00

I've been in the weight loss/weight control world for over 10 years now. I hosted a weight loss group for a several teachers that I used to work with and love reading about all the latest and greatest nutrition research. I'm a HUGE believer that all information needs to be considered differently by each individual person. There are no hidden secrets. There is no special formula. What's right for one person isn't necessarily ok for another, and there are NO bad foods! And if it sounds too good to be true... It probably is! :)

However, there are a few things that over the years have proven to work for the majority of people. And one common mistake I see a lot of people make is skipping breakfast!

You wake up motivated! Today is a new day and you want to start off right! You either aren't really hungry and eat nothing at all, or grab something small on your way out the door! You're doing great, right?? Well... maybe until lunch when you are starving and then decide to start feeding yourself. And by dinner, all bets are off!

We've all had our days. And even I am continuing to work on switching up my cycle even better. Because ideally, breakfast should be your LARGEST meal of the day, followed by a smaller lunch, and then an even smaller dinner. Not really how we as Americans normally do it.

I've always eaten breakfast. Love it! Breakfast food is one of my favorite kinds. But now I'm trying to eat even more of it in an effort to reset my clock!

And just in case you still have your doubts.... I recently read an article that said Sumo wrestlers use the "trick" of skipping breakfast and eating consistently throughout the evening in an effort to GAIN weight for their sport! That's a different take for the rest of us athletic people! :)

Enjoy your healthy breakfast, and make it a big one!

Catching Up!

2008-09-24T09:45:00.005-04:00

With my blog that is!

It seems like I either have nothing interesting going on, which means I have time to write but nothing to write about. OR… I am up to a bunch of cool things, which means I have no time to write about it! Oh well… whatcha going to do? :)

Where to begin… I had a lot of fun this weekend with the Fam!

The workouts were shorter as I was beginning to taper a bit for the half ironman I’m doing this weekend. So I got home early enough to get in some quality time! First thing was an “Adventure Walk!” Oh yes… we went on a crazy adventure walk down a trail at a local park. Adam had taken the kids a few weeks ago while I was in Wisconsin, and Cooper hadn’t stopped talking about it since. We were waiting for an opportunity where we could all go and decided Saturday would be best. MANY sticks to watch out for. Several “crazy” maneuvers through some pretty serious grass, and a STEEP downhill that had to be carefully navigated! However, the adventure was well worth it as we made it to the river and proceeded to throw rocks in it! Good times!

*Me and the kiddos on our adventure walk! It looks like they are almost MY size already! :)

*Pretty Adventurous, hey?

After eating at one of my favorite pizza places downtown, Rocky Mountain Pizza Co., we were off to the races! The track races that is! Yep… 3 times a year they hold “The Festival of Speed”, which is a full day of racing for amateurs and pros on the track. No… I have not taken that step yet. Looks like a TON of fun, but also looks like something that I would completely kill myself in trying to accomplish! I keep waiting for a time that it wouldn’t matter if I got injured, and I guess you could probably say fortunately, that time has yet to come. :) We hung out with my friends Amy and Lee while we were there. They ARE actually brave enough to have gotten out there and start racing it this year. I think they are such studs! They weren’t racing that night, but have done so a couple of times, and I can’t wait to see them in action soon!

*The scariest part was making sure MY kids didn't do something to wreck the riders! :)

*A picture of my and Amy that Gracie took! She LOVES to take pictures!

The kids did really well, and I wasn’t 100% sure since it was there first time. But they have several kid races there as well, and they really enjoyed cheering for the boys and girls! I promised them each an extra dollar in their allowance if they were good, and they were both happy to learn that they had both earned the money! Cooper also insisted that Amy was very good as well and I should have given her $1. However, nothing was said about Lee. He must not have been very “good”??? :)

After a short run and bike on Sunday, we ended up scoring Braves tickets to the last game of the season. Adam had originally gotten the tickets from work for our neighbor, but something came up and they couldn’t go. So of course we wanted to use them. The kids and I had not been yet this season, and the seats were great! Plus, Turner Field has this whole Cartoon Network section for the kids that they love. The weather was perfect and the kids had fun cheering. The Braves won! So it was a great day!!

*Cooper at the ballgame eating dipping dots from his souvenir hat!

*Gracie doing the Tomahawk-Chop!

And In Other News…

Since the weekend, we are back in school! Yeah! A nice break at home, but back to having a little more free time for me!

I spent the good part of yesterday morning driving around in search of gas. The hurricanes that hit Texas have affected the gas distribution to the Atlanta area. Almost all of Atlanta is experiencing a no-gas problem! Of course when people hear of this, panic ensues and the places that DO have gas have LONG lines of people waiting. So places that got gas deliveries yesterday morning were out of gas again by 10am. Fortunately, I was able to find somewhere that not only had gas, but had the kind my car requires. They’d gotten a delivery after the morning rush and so word hadn’t gotten out quite yet that they had gas. I heard this morning on the radio that the gas sanctions that Atlanta has that requires the gas to be more refined than other places due to smog have been temporarily lifted. This means that surrounding states will be able to ship us gas until the distribution gets back on schedule. Good thing as Atlanta is a commuter city and the entire city would shut down within days if no one had gas to put in their cars! CRAZY!! :)

On a sad note, I lost a sort of friend this weekend. My hair is long and I keep it in a bun or ponytail 90% of the time. Because of that, I have a ponytail holder on me at all times. Well, a while ago it occurred to me that this one particular ponytail holder I had had either in my hair or on my arm non-stop for months! Sounds gross, I know. But it was clean. It got washed during my shower daily! I could remember having it on my person seriously non-stop since before my trip to Hawaii. Well yesterday, it finally broke. After over 5 months together, our relationship was literally broken. I know it is crazy, but I had actually become kind of attached to that ponytail holder. I mean think of it… we’d done everything together that entire time. It will always be remembered. And if you are looking for ponytail holders that hold up, well I have proof that the extra strength Goody brand apparently can take a decent beating!

I think it’s time for new swimsuits. I realized this morning during masters that my suit was dragging in the water… literally. The top layer basically now prefers to sag. I’m guessing that is NOT a good thing when trying to be speedy! Does it seem like all of my favorite things are finally giving out on me? I guess that’s a sign of the end of the season!

I think my weight-loss attempt is making me grumpy. Or snappy at least. I’ve done I’d say 80% well. This weekend during all of my fun outings, yeah… didn’t do so well. I’m shrugging it off to being part of “the learning experience!” I’m good when I’m on schedule, but having to think ahead and bring/prepare food… tad more difficult. What’s weird is that this isn’t my first showdown with this whole clean up your diet thing. I’ve done it before and think I used to be much better at it! See, I don’t believe in “dieting.” I am a believer in the whole life-style thing, and I’m working on the whole moderation thing. I mean what does one eat at a baseball game?? I mean come on! Overall though, I’m down 2lbs with 3 more to go. The good thing is is that I can start to see it a bit, and that’s always a motivator! I absolutely LOVE learning about food and how it interacts with your body. It is seriously a constant learning process, and when I used to really pay attention to what I ate I did it from a “want to be a skinny girl” perspective. Now learning how to eat well AND eat enough to fuel an endurance athlete makes it even that much more interesting. So I think I’m going to start posting some little tidbits I learn that work for ME as I go through this whole journey thing!

Well… that’s about it for now! I promise to try to be less of a stranger. Happy Day everyone!

It's Almost Here...!

2008-09-17T13:13:00.006-04:00

*The first leaves beginning to change!

Seems like I'm always saying that! Right now... that goes for:

Halloween... Yes, here at the Mills Home we are already planning our Halloween costumes!

Clearwater...Or also the end of the 2007 season!

Turkey Day/Christmas....Again, the kids are looking ahead. We've mapped out that first comes Halloween, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas which = Santa, presents, family, and fun! We're on a count down!

And FALL!

Yes... after a very nice August for us here in Hot Atlanta, we were hit with a bit of a heatwave last week which left me unexpectedly suffering after returning from beautiful, cool Wisconsin. However, this week it seems like Fall and cooler weather are finally starting to settle in! I actually have worn long sleeves the past 2 morning workouts! :) And ohhh, those morning workouts... Do they hurt so much because I'm getting old or am I just a wimp? I used to get up every morning at 4:45am so that I could get my run in before going to teach. This was PRE-kids. Now... just knowing that I am going to get up early like that, and I'll start dreading it days before. Even though I will be in bed in plenty of time, it's like I just can't get used to it anymore.

But, I will say there is something to getting up early, getting things done, and then having the rest of the day to worry about other things, or if you are lucky... relax! :)

One of the main reasons that I've been getting up early this week is because believe it or not, we're on Fall Break. Yep... the whole week off from school this week. 6 weeks in/1 week off. I know... I think it's kind of crazy. I mean on paper it kind of makes sense, but I think I'd rather skip this particular break and just go back 1 week later. Then again, maybe the grass is always greener on the other side, right?

I must say though, it's been a nice week. Surprisingly, things have been low key thus far. I've gotten up early to workout and then we've just kind of hung out for the rest of the day. We've had baseball obligations, but that's it. And it's not like things to be so relaxed in our household. I guess that is a good thing though as I'm preparing for the South Carolina Half Ironman on September 28th. As of right now, I'm having mixed emotions about it. There's that part of me that is nervous because I'm getting ready to race and it happens no matter what race or what distance. There's the other part of me that's nervous because I really know very little about this race and what to expect. I've heard mixed things. I guess I'll go with it and see what happens. There's also the studious part of me that is ready to practice for Clearwater. To use this race as a homework assignment basically to put the final touches on my Clearwater plans.

I must admit too that I'm getting a little of the "end of the season" pains. The weather is cooling, things in life are settling down, and yet we're still out there chugging along to try to finish the season in a way that we've envisioned all along. Last year getting ready for Ironman Florida it was tough. But you just keep going, and it arrives before you know it, so I am sure I'll make it. But I do look forward to the end of the season because it gives me a stopping point to celebrate what I've accomplished and "start over" basically prepping and getting excited about a new year. And the fact that I already have IM Wisconsin locked in makes me excited just thinking about it!

My best wishes to all you folks out there prepping for your final races! And to those are have finished up... Congratulations! In the meantime... we'll be here getting "Prepared!" :)
*Cooper and Gracie wearing Mom and Dad's jackets in the house yesterday!

The "Crazy" Madison Trip!

2008-09-08T07:42:00.021-04:00

Let me begin this post by saying... I LOVE WISCONSIN!!

Amy and I got a little bit of a late start on Friday. She had to work half a day, and I had to get Gracie to and from school, so after finally getting situated, we pulled out of Amy's house Friday afternoon at 2:30 for a 13+ hour journey!

The 12-13 hour drive ended up being a 14 and 1/2 hour drive because we got stuck in Nashville during rush hour and of course, there was a wreck, so we eeked our way through there. As it got late, we decided we needed coffee. We came upon Champagne, Illinois, which is close to where Amy actually used to live! It's also the home of the University of Illinois, so we pulled off in search of "the best" coffee! It was dark, and late so it took us a little longer to find it... but it was totally worth it! Plus, apparently it's rush week there! It was like 1am and kids were EVERYWHERE! We were laughing of how tired we were, but these kids were just getting started! Man we're getting OLD! :)

*Me and Amy in front of the capitol in Madison which is also the Finish Line!

Back on the road and a LONG drive through what has to be the longest USA state of Illinois, we FINALLY arrived to Madison and our hotel. Our reward... the very nice Adam of the Sheraton Madison Hotel let us go ahead and check in for our Sat. reservation. SO... we got a "free" room for Friday night, which is fortunate considering we only actually slept on Friday for about 4 hours!

Why did we do it this way you ask? So we could get up early and go to the Gatorade swim of course! :) So with a 14+ hour drive and 4 hours of sleep under our belt, we drag our happy selves out of bed and head out to the lake to swim 1.2 miles! We actually felt great! The water was as flat as ever! The temperature was perfect! The course was great! One loop around and I could have kept on swimming what seemed effortlessly!

*Us after swimming at the Gatorade swim!

Saturday seriously flew by. After our swim and a MUCH needed shower, we come over to the Expo and ended up being good girls once again by not spending hundreds of dollars on glorious Ironman merchandise! We walked all around and took in Madison, which is the coolest, hippest town ever! We went in search for lunch and found ourselves in a sea of RED where the Wisconsin football game had just finished. It was seriously one gigantic party! So now we can say we were a part of two college parties this weekend! Well… sort of :)

*Atlanta needs us one of these! It's a cycling vending machine full of tubes, c02, nutrition and other bike needs!

Saturday was slipping away from us and we still had to get in a 3 hour ride. The Ironman course in Madison is approximately a 12 mile ride from Madison into a little town called Verona. Once in Verona, you do 2 quite hilly loops and then head back into Madison for T2. To avoid the traffic and really get a sense of the chunk of the course, we drove out to Verona and did one loop out there. It’s definitely a hilly course. 5 or so major climbs and one pretty nasty decent if you aren’t really careful. Our friend we made Mark, actually took a dive on that hill. So I made a mental note that I’d be taking that curvy downhill cautiously! Mark was great too! Only 3 miles into our ride and Amy unfortunately had a flat. Of course, us girls are standing there yanking at the tire trying to change it when he comes by and offers to help. We ended up doing pretty much the rest of the ride getting to know our new friend who was also in town to sign up for next year!

*Us with Mark during a pit stop for more co2. Yes... I'm in my aero-helmet because my other one was stuck in my car at home. That's a long story for another day! :)

The 3 hour ride was a little short as it was getting dark quickly out there. We did get in the one loop though, so that was the important part. By this time, we head back to the hotel room, take some quick showers and couldn’t even make it out of the hotel for dinner because we were so tired. We went downstairs to grab something from the hotel restaurant before completely crashing.

Of course Sunday we’re up early again to get to the race start. I’ve never watched an Ironman before, and it was SOOOO much fun! And what an advantage to watch this particular race before competing in it because transition is FUNKY! You swim out to the buoys and start in the water. Do 2 loops in the water and then run through the chute UP the helix! It’s a hotel/parking deck that has this 3 loop circular hill that most people drive to park. This is part of transition! You run up the loopty-loop to the top deck of the garage. You’ll go into the building to get your T1 bag and get changed, back out to the bike area, grab your bike and run down to the other side only to ride the opposite loopty-loop down! Its nuts! But works, so I’m glad I got to see that before showing up next year and being like WTF?? :)

*The Swim Start!

*This is the helix loop that you run up on one side and then there is another one just like it that you bike down! Needless to say, transitions are kind of slow at this race!

We watched almost the entire swim and a lot of people go through T1. It was so much fun standing there cheering everyone on! Afterwards, we grabbed some breakfast and went out for a run ourselves. The weather was PERFECT! I don’t think you could ask for better race weather! Unfortunately, Coach Jen warned me that it isn’t normally that way. Wisconsin in September is kind of tricky. It can be really hot, or really cold, so maybe we can go for 2 years in a row of perfect weather! Our run was great on this trail around the lake in truly fall weather. And when I was finishing up my run, Chris McDonald, who ended up winning the race was finishing up his bike ride. I was screaming for him as I was running by and he was smiling. Apparently, he has a nickname of Big Sexy. Well…. I will validate that statement by saying he is super cute! :)

*This was a really cool handmade poster by a spectator made from foam art I think!

*A picture of 1/2 the transition area. There is a duplicate on the entire other side!

We finally got the opportunity to try to take a short nap that afternoon. We really needed some sleep at this point, but I just don’t sleep well in hotel rooms, so… oh well. Good thing there was so much excitement going on that we just kind of fed off of it! We went back up to the race and checked out some of the run course, which by the way… I’ve never seen so much crowd support on another course before. Tons of people lining the entire route cheering people on! College town, it had the best feel! We got to see Hilary Biscay run in for her 1st Ironman victory and Amanda Lovato run by with a big smile on her face looking great!

*Out on the race course!

If you follow Ironman than you probably know this, but we knew that both Chris McDonald (Big Sexy) and Hilary Biscay were racing in Wisconsin this weekend after finishing Ironman Louisville only one week earlier! Back to back Ironman’s and Big Sexy finished 2nd in Louisville while Hilary came in 4th. They BOTH won Ironman WI this year! How cool is that! And furthermore, we read Hilary’s blog to figure out why in the world she was doing this and it was a dare! Her and McDonald did it in a matter of trash talking because they’re both on the same team and apparently, it worked out very well for them!

*Hilary with about 2 miles to go to her finish!

*The finishers area at night! I thought it was beautiful!

So after hours of spectating, which is very exhausting, we go to head home. Unfortunately, we hadn’t noted where we had parked. Unbeknownst to us, there are like 10 parking decks in Madison that look a whole lot alike. It was dark and everything looked different as the race had cleared out quite a bit at this point. We walked around for about 2 hours before FINALLY getting a police officer to help us locate our car. I called Adam not sure if it had been stolen or what! Yes… a little stupid on our part, but I will say Madison is very confusing! So 3 hours later, we finally get to our car! We don’t make it into bed Sunday night until after midnight and then yet AGAIN get up less than 5 hours later to go stand in line to get our slot!

*Adam says it's pretty obvious at this point that we had both had 2 margaritas! :)

We arrived at the registration area at 5:30am and we were already about 75 people back! There were maybe 20 people that actually camped out and within 30 min there were hundreds of people! What we didn’t know going into this was that a new thing this year is if you volunteer for the race, you get priority registration. So at 7am it split into 2 separate lines with volunteers in one and slackers like us in another. There were at least 600 volunteers in that line. So at 9am the doors opened and we sat back and watched all 600+ people walk through the line before us. Some that had even gotten there just minutes before. Oh well… you live and learn. It went pretty quickly though, and finally after waiting in line for 4.5 hours, we got our number!

*In the first picture, you can see part of the line and how it is looping around where the transition area was. There's me also on my computer. It was cold and rainy that day, good thing it held off for one more day for the racers! I felt like I was back in college trying to score football tickets! :)

A few more quick stops later, we were on the road by 12:30pm Eastern time. Amy is a wonderful travel partner. We got to talking so much about everything and were going off of the directions TO Madison and just reversing them. Unfortunately, after traveling for what seemed like FOREVER through that horribly long state of Illinois, and many phone calls to my chastising husband, we finally concluded that we had gone the wrong way. For AWHILE! Had it not been for the interstate making this weird change, within an hour or two we would have seen the “Welcome To Wisconsin” sign and been completely out of our minds. So… our 13 hour trip home on Monday turned out to be an 18 hour trip that had to be split between two days. We drove on Monday evening until 9:30pm when we were so tired and it was storming, we had to stop. We spent the night in Effingham, Illinois I kid you not! And just to commemorate this quite memorable part of our trip, I bought this in the gas station in Effingham on Tuesday morning on our way home!

Finally, after another 9+ hours in the car on Tuesday, we got home! Oh I was useless on Tuesday. I couldn’t even think straight. I just kind of set there as I talked with my family. I’m still not even quite 100% yet, but things are starting to get back into the swing of things!

However though… even if I knew what I know now, I’d do it again in a hearbeat! Other than the little parking issue and the extra day of driving, it was a blast! I had so much fun with Amy! I am so looking forward to training with her over the next year in preparing for another new Ironman experience! Congratulations to all of you Ironman Wisconsin people! I can’t wait to be one of you next year!

"Things That Make You Go Hmmmm!"

2008-09-03T18:02:00.002-04:00

Do you remember this lovely song from 1990! Can you believe it was almost 20 years ago?? Yikes!

This has been my theme lately!

For example...

"What's That Brown Spot??"
That's the game I've played the past couple of days! :) It started with one of my toes. I was painting my toes for my race this weekend, one of my usual race traditions!, when I started picking at one of them. What was with that brown spot on my toe?? After some investigation, I discovered, Oh... it was just another bruised/dead toe nail! No biggie, that's just what happens isn't it? :)

Then the game continued in such a fun manner with my other foot. There was a specific spot on the bottom of my foot that hurt like you know what! There was a small puncture wound, and there was something brown inside! Yuck! The question was... Is it a splinter or just dirt?? Hmmmm... After some careful surgical procedures, ones a regular person should not try at home, I concluded that it was not a splinter but a place where one USED to be. I guess from running in that crappy transition area from my race, I stabbed my foot with something. It wiggled itself out, but left the reminisce of it's filth. Mystery solved!

Yet another opportunity to play the game today after my somewhat frustrating bike ride! After getting both kids off to school, I set out to do bike hill repeats in my neighborhood. You would know that is quite something if you knew my neighborhood! :) Attempting to be the properly prepared little triathlete, I got all of my stuff set up and out ahead of time, so as soon as I got home from drop-off duty, I'd be set! Loaded up, IPod running, I carefully attempt to descend down my extremely steep driveway without being clipped into my pedals (I'm having clipping issues. A story for another day.) I hit the ridge where the driveway meets the street and immediately start to fumble to the ground. I catch myself when my well... body area that claims me as a girl collides with the handlebar stem. OUCH! Not a good place to bring your body to a stop! One of my water bottles drops to the ground and explodes. So I place my bike in the grass and head back inside to retrieve another one. Heading into attempt #2, I start on a less steep decent deciding that I was the fault of my last almost crash. DOWN the hill I go, clipping myself in, when I hit a curve and begin to SLIDE! Ok... that is not right! Curve 2, slide again, somehow manage to keep from crashing a 3rd time in less than 10 min! Realize all of this is because of a flat. Nice! Walk myself and my bike BACK up the hill to proceed to change the tire. I am NOT good at this. Get the darn tire off, get out replacement tube, check tire to be sure the problem area is not still there, get everything put back together, BUT can not get the tire 100% back on. There's like a 2 in section that will not freaking budge! I'm on the ground holding this stinking tire in every which direction I can and it just isn't happening. Even tried to get a guy neighbor to help me, but he didn't answer the door (probably saw desperate woman holding tire in hand and decided to ignore it!) and so I switched it out, put my zipp on there and got my ride in. After riding, while showering off, I got to play the What's That Brown Spot?? game again!! Scrubbing my legs, was it Grease or Bruises?? Neither remove easily. Some spots are apparent because of the pain, but some required much time and effort to figure out!!

Finally when heading out of the shower to discover that the towel that I used once last night and hung up in my bathroom had a mysterious brown spot on it... I had had enough of this game, decided NOT to investigate, went with the safe assumption that one of my children attempted to "clean" themselves with mommy's towel, and got a new, cleaner one! :) I've grown tired of this game and hope it does not continue!

More things to ponder...

*My house as been infected with flies this summer. It's an unfortunate occurrence when you have a 4 year old and 5 year old that can NEVER remember to shut the door! The flies are seriously driving me crazy. Weird thing I discovered today though as I was vacuuming, they all seem to die in my bedroom. Ummm... what's that all about? Should I be alerted that something is wrong with my bedroom?? :)

*For the past 24 hours my Coach Jen has been constantly eliminating food from my diet! I've spent my day munching on carrots, veggies, applesauce, etc. I've had plenty of food, but why am I so horribly tired?! I'm seriously on a sugar crash! It's not like I sit around and eat sugar all day. Well... not everyday, but apparently it kind of is. If I'm hungry, I'll grab a granola bar or a z bar. They unfortunately ended up in the "junk" pile. It's not really like I'm that sad that they're gone. I wasn't in love with them or anything, but I was sitting around at 4:30pm asking myself if it was too early to eat dinner! I was on the phone with my niece and seriously couldn't even focus! So why is it when you eat sugar, you feel like crap and your body stores it in excess as fat, but when you come off of it, you go in like detox or something. Ahh!! I know there's the whole scientific stuff behind this so that there isn't really a hmmmm involved, but remember, I'm not at 100% mentally today, so bare with me! :)

Lastly, I've been driving my car under a lease for the past 3 years. Friday, Adam went and took care of the paperwork to buy it outright. I LOVE my car, so completely happy about it, which is good since it has more miles on it than you can imagine, so turning it in was not an option! :) So purchased out-right on Friday...Monday, my air conditioning dies! It is actually dying a slow death too, so took me until this afternoon to figure it out. But smoky smell + hissing noise + lack of super cold air= problem. So all day I've been driving in my car literally with that "hmmmmm" look on my face! I'm sure that was a sight!

Or maybe... I'm just REALLY confused from my lack of sugar and none of this is really happening??? Hmmmm?? If you don't hear from me in a couple of days, send chocolate and ice cream ASAP!!

Callaway Gardens Triathlon!

2008-09-01T08:42:00.004-04:00

Yesterday was my Callaway Gardens Triathlon! I said in my last report that this is a special race to me because I did this race in 2006 as my very first triathlon! And I was really excited to go back and do it a second time after training for the past almost 2 years since then to see the difference!

It's been a really great weekend overall. We went Saturday to my sister's house in Franklin, GA (about 45 min from Callaway Gardens) to spend the night. I dropped Adam and the kids off and headed over to the Gardens to register and get my pre-race brick in. Callaway is a really beautiful place, and they do special events for the Labor Day Weekend! They have a man-made beach, a little train that goes around the lake, putt-putt, Florida State University puts on a circus during the summer months that is really neat. This weekend they were doing a Hot Air Balloon special and had all sorts of neat activities going on. It is also like a Botanical Gardens place as well, with camping and golf and cottages and such. Just a neat place overall!

So everything went fine on Saturday. Got all my little pre-race workouts in. Funny story... got to thinking I might try the whole have shoes clipped in on the bike for the start of the race thing this time. I've practiced it, but never really felt completely comfortable with it. I'm fine with leaving my shoes on my bike to move into T2, but feel like I need to really nail the shoes in bike for T1 before trying it in the race. The transition area for this race is funky and can be long, and since I REALLY need to clean my pedals and have a super hard time getting clipped in on my left shoe, I thought I'd practice it and see if I could do it. Well.... didn't go so well! :) My shoes kept flopping and getting stuck so it'd stop the bike! I almost fell twice and ended up somehow putting this big gash in my right foot! It started bleeding like crazy! :) So I figured, I'd just suck it up and run with my bike shoes on for at least this race!

But the one thing I did notice there on Saturday was that 90% of the fun involved water. Not a good environment for a 4 year old with a full-length arm non-waterproof cast! So though we wanted to take the kids to the race on Sunday, we decided against it. I think that giant waterslide would have been too heartbreaking for her!

So didn't sleep well on Saturday night of course because I never do. But that was ok. Was having some stomach issues before the race as well, but was feeling positive, so was ready to go!

This race is kind of strange, first of all, it is the Oldest triathlon other than the Hawaii Ironman in the United States. So that's kind of cool. But it's REALLY laid-back. That can be good in some aspects, and not so good in others. For example, transition area... First come, First serve. No bike in/bike out, run out signs, so even though I got there in time to kind of get my pick of transition, didn't really know where to set up! So set up close to what we thought would be bike out to keep from having to run too far in my bike shoes. Because I knew where you came in from the swim and it's a LONG way from the opposite end of transition! Oh, and no race instructions in packet or anything, so it's not like I didn't look! :)

So all set for the race with my race plan in mind, I head down to the start. Went off in Wave 4/5, which was all women! :) The only girls that went beforehand were those representing collegiate teams. All collegiates went in wave 1 and there were a ton of schools represented! I thought that was so cool! I couldn't help but think how cool it would have been to be apart of something like that when I was in college! The swim was supposed to be a 1k, but it never really is I guess. I think it's actually between 850-900 meters, which is always good for me!

I line up at the front, the gun goes off and I immediately see 7-8 girls start to pull away. I wanted to latch on to the back of the pack and try to stay with them so I decided I was going to WORK to catch up to them, but as soon as I started to get close, we made a sharp left turn and entered into a sea of orange caps! All the 40+ guys that had headed out before us that were struggling/taking it easy. I've had issues before in navigating through these people, but I tried not to let them slow me down and kept pushing. Never saw the other pink caps again, but stuck with my race plan that I was not doing 1 race today, but 3. Race the swim, Race the Bike, Race the run as if they were individual races! So I didn't let myself slack off on the swim and kept pushing it the best I could.

*That looks SCREAMS determination! HA HA! :)

Finished in 14:13 this year as compared to my 17:58 from last time! That was good! Actually came out of the water in 13:50, so I felt pretty good about that, but I knew I had that lead pack ahead of me and I was determined to catch them on the bike! I haven't been the speediest in transitions in the past either, so I've been working on those. T1 this year was 1:22 and it was 2:09 last time. So that was great for me! Took me a second to get that darn left foot into my clip, but once I did, I was off!

The bike course isn't hard, but technical. A lot of sharp turns, so you have to be kind of careful, and remember last time I crashed on this bike course, so it was within my race plan NOT to do that this time! :) 2 loops, went well! Caught 4 of the girls ahead of me so was feeling good. One thing I kept doing for fun...I kept passing these speed limit signs for 20mph. Everytime I'd pass one, I'd look at my speed and say to myself, "I don't think so!" I thought that was funny. At least it kept me entertained! :)Bike time this year was 53:02 for 19 miles as compared to 1:00:09 last time.

*My LARGE rear headed up the hill!

T2 was a little tricky. They had the bike in/bike out situation all screwed up. Transition was basically divided into 2 sections. I was in section 1 and the bike in was in front of section 2. Well it caught me off guard, and I didn't want to run ALL the way around to the other side. People were going every which of way, so I just reacted and ended up crawling myself and my bike under empty bike racks! :) Still managed to get out of there in 1:20, which was faster than 2006's 1:51!

Ok... hard part, try not to fall apart on the run! Try to hold pace no matter what. This year, I've managed a 7:50 pace no matter what race, no matter what distance. In 2006, I ran this 5 mile run in 38:25, which is a 7:41 pace. So I KNEW I could do at least that this year. So no backing off! I think part of it is I think too much and let that little voice in my head take over and get me to back off. So I decided to go out Fast and build to Hard! It was a 3 mile out and back and then a 2 mile run around the lake. It wasn't hilly, but wasn't flat either. Long, false climbs mostly. It was good with the out and back because I could kind of tell who was in front of me. I was trying to not get passed and just run to people. Everytime I'd want to back off, I'd catch myself and try to push harder. There was a couple of times I literally thought to myself that if I could just walk through an aid station or walk up one of those hills, I could gain some energy and do better. But that part in me that knew better FINALLY took over and said NO! The real part of me knew if I started walking through the aid stations, I'd never get back in it. That I'd just slow from there, so I resisted YEAH!! Ended up not being super speedy, but did beat my 2006 time of 38:25 by 1 WHOLE second! I hit a 38:24 for the same 7:41 pace, but at least it beats my times from this year!

All in all, I won my 30-34 age group and came in 6th overall. I finished in 1:48:20 compared to 2:00:30 from 2006. So a little more than 12 min taken off of a less than Olympic Distance Race isn't so bad! I guess you could say I've made some improvements in the past 2 years! The key is that I stuck at it, and that was my success!

*Me with my plaque! ONE place away from the cool overall awards! :)

I have decided that part of my issue is that when I did this race 2 years ago and I was pretty much just a runner, I was about 7-8lbs lighter than I am now. I know some of it is the muscle I've gained from picking up the swim and bike, but it isn't ALL of it! I need to lose about 5lbs, and I think I could do that to improve my overall run and fitness without really losing anything on the bike, so now that's my new mission! *Refer to picture of me running out of the water! That would be JUNK in the TRUNK! :)

Wish me luck, I have a sweet tooth that is VERY fierce, and so if I come across as a complete and total *ITCH, I'm sorry!! I'll be in some detox! And I think Rachel Ross is doing this as well, so maybe her and I can call each other for some B* sessions! :)

Great Job to all of you guys out there in Louisville yesterday. I know that must have been so tough! But each and everyone of you did what you could do and that's what matters, so congratulations to you all!

Now off to eat something made from home that isn't processed... hmmmm??? :)

"Stuff"

2008-08-29T14:01:00.003-04:00

That's what I generally title emails that contain more than one topic! :)

Not too much going on at Le Chateau Mills. But all good overall!

Another busy week of baseball, ballet, school, training, and work. It was a little more hectic than this week than I would have liked. I felt like I was trying to cram in 28 hours worth of stuff into a 24 hour day. But, you know it's Friday, and it's Labor Day Weekend, and all is well! :)

I made it through my week accomplishing most of my to-do-list. Other than the fact that my house is still in desperate need of a dusting and vacuuming, and that I've been saying I was going to clean my car inside and out for the past month... a lot of other more pressing things did get accomplished.

Like I finally completed and turned in my USAT Coaching test! Yippee!! I used to be a GREAT student. Seriously was a nerd and generally had everything in early and done way beyond expectations. As of last year's plans, I'd be in grad-school right now for athletic training, and it's probably a good thing I'm not! Because since college I've completed 3 tests/certifications. I "studied" for and took the GRE, I "studied" for and took my certification test for NASM, and now I've completed my USAT certification materials. Each and everyone turned into a nightmare of procrastination!! I could never find the time to really and truly study or work on my material, and when I did, I was too tired to want to deal with it. So both the GRE and the NASM tests were taken without having completed the study material and with me hitting the send button at the end of the test praying, "Oh God, PLEASE let me pass this test!" And my USAT stuff was due September 1st, and I turned it in today! So great student I am no longer!

But now that that is off of my plate, I can relax a bit, and not worry too much about my house because I'm going to be off racing this weekend anyways. I'm off to take a second shot at the Callaway Gardens International Distance Race. The first time I did it was labor day weekend of 2006, and I skipped last year because of Ironman training. So I'm back this year to see if I've improved any since my very first triathlon!!

I was talking to Coach Jen about it earlier today and discussing my splits. Let's HOPE I do better! :) To prepare for this race I thought, "swim... I know how to swim!" Ugh, gun went off and I was immediately proven WRONG! It is supposed to be a 1k swim. They said that particular year of 2006 that it was short, more like 700m. My time... almost 18 min! HA! Let's hope that comes down a bit this year, even if it turns out to be a 1k! :) At the time I had a road bike. And I think I did well on the bike. It's not the fastest of courses. It has a lot of turns. So even with the top finishers, you see for women top speeds of 20-21mph. It's a 30k bike, and my split that year was right at 1:00. So this year I'm hoping to shave a little bit of time off of that. Surprisingly though, my run wasn't so bad! 8k, roughly 5 miles in 38:25 for a 7:41 pace. Better than any of my races so far this year. And I think it was because I didn't think about it too much. I went and went HARD. And I've got to play with that again this year. I KNOW I'm more fit now than I was then, so I'm hoping to come in at a faster time of course!

*Me on my road bike for my first tri! All Smiles! :)

Oh, and did I mention that at this very first triathlon I CRASHED! Yep, all sweaty on the bike, I decided to go for a water bottle as I was slowing for one of the many sharp turns, my hand slipped on the hood, and down I went. My stinking chain fell off too, and all I could think about was getting that thing back on because, oh my god, what if I didn't finish!! It wasn't until the run that someone asked me if I was ok, and I was like, Uhh? He said, "You're bleeding!" I looked down at my shoulder to see all of my bloody road rash! Didn't really bother me at the time, so oh well. And I thought it was pretty cool afterwards for my "battle scars!" :) I'm hoping though NOT to repeat that part of the race experience this year! Note to self... do not reach for water bottles in turns and keep hands dry!

*This is me with the kiddos after the race! You can see some of my road rash on my arm and yes, I have grease on my face! :) Look at my little people! They were so tiny!

So the race is on Sunday, and Callaway Gardens is an amazing place, so I hope to stay afterwards and enjoy the Labor Day Festivities! I won't want to stay too long though because I'll have to get back to my computer to follow Ironman Louisville! All of you guys are going to do amazing!!

A BIG shout out to!! Danielle, first Ironman, go Danielle!!

Eileen, You have SOOO much strength and speed, you go show them your pro skills!

Kate Monster, I just know you are going to do awesome!! Have a fantastic day!

Of course, BREE!! Go get your spot woman! You deserve it and are going to rock that course!!

And to #1028. I can't remember your name, but I met you in the clinic the other day! It's his first Ironman, he hasn't even done a half, and you are going to have an amazing day! I'll be following you along. Finish that swim, which I know you will, and you're all set!!

Good Luck everyone!!

Happy Labor Day!

The CRAZY Plan!!

2008-08-25T16:03:00.003-04:00

What's been on my mind lately?? Ironman 2009!

With a lump of Ironman's happening back to back, you've got to be prepared!

The world has gone Ironman crazy, and though I think that's great, slots are becoming harder and harder to come by!

I knew in June I was ready to sign up for another. I started chatting with my team mate and friend, Amy, on her plans, and we were trying to plan a race together if possible so that we could train together. Which of course is always ideal to have an Ironman pal!

CDA came and went. I've heard wonderful things about CDA, but just wasn't ready to push the GO button on that one. It's kind of a tough one from the perspective that a lot of your volume training is done during some of the coldest months. I know... I know... Jen and my northern counterparts are laughing at me, but I have thin blood! :)

So we considered Lake Placid. Ironman USA! Tough race in a great venue, but knew I'd have to go up there to sign up. I was in Alb., NM that weekend already, so that was out. DID consider for a brief moment about changing my flight from New Mexico and heading to Lake Placid before coming home to Atlanta, but Adam looked at me like I was on crack, so that CRAZY plan quickly turned into ridiculous and no LP for me in 2009!

So I was pretty much settled on Louisville! I've heard great things about it. It's a new and exciting race! It's not TOO far from here in which we could drive up. But if you don't already know this, they are NOT doing on-site registration for this event. It's online only. Plus, Amy and I were going back and forth on which would be better... Louisville or Wisconsin??

Both have pros and cons. Both have different things we were looking for.....

After a lot of discussion, and research! (Yes, I am a total tri-geek looking up the average weather for each city, the elevation maps for each course, plane ticket prices, etc! :)... I made a decision, sent Amy an email after running it by Adam of course, and crossed my fingers that she'd be on board!!

The CRAZY Plan...

Let Louisville go for 2009 and go for Wisconsin!! To ensure that we get a spot, DRIVE, yes drive, up to Wisconsin the weekend of the race! Leave on Saturday, Sept. 6th and travel via car the whole 13 hours up to the state of CHEESE! Spend Sunday watching the race, cheering on the athletes, and totally sucking up the entire Ironman race vibe! Check out the course some too! Monday morning, go get our IM WI 2009 spots and then turn around and drive back home!

I hit send and waited... wondering, ok is this woman going to think I've lost my marbles! But I was in LOVE with the plan! Spontaneous road trips are the BEST! Girls weekend jamming out in the car and enjoying an Ironman from a spectator perspective where we can live it up a little sounded like so much fun to me! And as I was trying to decide what plan B would be if she didn't like the idea of spending 26+ hours in the car with me over the course of 3 days... she is IN!!

We rode together on Saturday and actually decided to begin our journey on Friday afternoon. Split the trip up there in 1/2 so that we have more time on Sat. to actually see some of the course, and as I'd planned it, the beauty of driving means bikes are definitely coming with!

So Ironman Wisconsin 2009 here we come!!

I'm actually racing this weekend and then we'll head up the next. To all of you out there racing Louisville... Eileen, Katie, Danielle, and I think maybe Bree (that amazing woman!), I hope you guys have your BEST race!

And Wisconsin get ready! Amy and I are out to party it up! Coach Jen is going to be there and who knows... we might even stay out past midnight! ;)

Cheers!

Into the Routine/Bumps!

2008-08-21T14:12:00.002-04:00

This week has just flown by it seems!

First week settling into what will be our schedule for the next 10 months!

Cooper and Gracie are both in school each day. I pick Gracie up at 1pm and then Cooper gets off the bus around 2:45. We've done our first new ballet class, had our first Fall Baseball practice, and I'm back in the clinic training clients two days a week as well as keeping up with all of my own training!

And I'm going to throw out a shout out to Adam here too!! My schedule is nuts and hard enough for me to keep up with. But he has to keep up with it too in addition to his work stuff. He was recently promoted to a technical manager position at work, YEAH ADAM!!, that has him working seems like non-stop. He has all kinds of stuff he juggles at work with meetings and roll-out dates for builds (see, I can speak some techy lang. but don't ask me what it means! :) and yet still manages to help me take the kids to school some days when I need him to and make it to some of the practices and be a really big trouper by agreeing to play golf on Sunday instead of Saturday so I can ride my bike all day Saturday! :) PLUS... We had a big discussion last night about that IM word. The one that I plan on devoting even more time, energy, and money to next year. So... just saying THANKS HON!! For being my number one supporter in my whole crazy routine of life!

For me, routines are great! I'm mostly type A, and love myself a perfectly organized to-do list! Now, I do get bored easily, so the routine must change often, but otherwise... I'm good! PLUS... as we all know, you must be expected for the routine to get a hit at times, or if you are like me, all of the time! :)

Like yesterday, I swore off Walmart! I decided to "squeeze" in grocery shopping at Walmart between picking up Gracie and Cooper. Why Walmart rather than my beloved Publix?? Because I hate to say it, but it's cheaper. And who can't afford to save some money these days??

Well I must have been out of my mind because there is no "squeezing" something like that in when the words Walmart and Gracie are apart of the sentence!

Where does Gracie want to go as soon as we enter? The Toy section! We've been on this mission for Bakugan balls for Cooper (Yes... Bakugan balls! This insanely ridiculous idea of a toy that is a take-off of pokemon I think that Cooper is in love with! Apparently, they are one heck of an item to find and our Walmart has just recently stocked up, so being the pushover parent that I can be at times, I caved!) so I gave in and agreed to something small. And let's face it, anyone who braves Walmart in my opinion deserves some sort of treat no matter how old you are!

So the toy department of course took up a large chunk of our time. Once we finally settled on a Barbie, we were finally back in the food section. I was hurrying as the clock was ticking and finished about 15 min later than I was hoping for. Because I knew I was trying to get out of there FAST, I reluctantly settled on the self-check out aisle instead of the standard. And yes... I too hate the person that hits the self check-out aisle with a buggy full! But that huge Super Walmart had 2, yes 2 open regular lanes. They had one other person doing check-out, but she was in the 20 items or less aisles. There were several other people in line in the regular lanes with lord only knows how many weeks worth of groceries. There were a ton of those self-check-out things, so I made a quick decision and started scanning!

Well guess who thought scanning the items was such an awesome idea... Gracie! She double scanned 2-3 things that brought the lady over to our section! Now I must say, that thing beeped at me I swear to you 30 times!

"Unexpected item in baggage area!"

"Please scan your item and place it in the bag!"

"Assistance is needed!"

"You must have clearance to skip baggage!" (Despite the fact that I had bagged that stinking item!)

"You must have clearance to skip baggage!" "You must have clearance to skip baggage!"

"Gracie, I need you to stand by me!" (Me talking, not the machine. Surprise!)

"Gracie, come here!" "Gracie, don't touch that!" "No... I've already scanned that!"

"Customer assistance needed!!!!"

Ahh!! :) Had I had a baseball bat, I would have destroyed that machine! I've used them before, but never has one yelled at me for things I had not done so much in my life! :)

I can laugh about it now, but whoo, it was one of those moments as Cooper has learned lately... You must count to 10! Or 1000 in my case! :)

So needless to say, I will never use one of those things again unless forced by some horrible man with a gun or something! :)

And since enduring this experience, I have decided that there should be a new race inducted into the Olympics. The "Who can unload groceries from the car, sort through the items that need to be put in the refrigerator and put those away, leave the rest on the counter, and hop in the car to drive down to the bus stop in time for the bus Race!" I'm pretty sure I'd qualify!!

A great weekend to you all! GO BREE in Canada! We're all cheering for you!

Back on Schedule! (I hope!)

2008-08-18T10:47:00.002-04:00

Well... last week was a little skewed, but I made it through!

I think I've got most of the stomach bug behind me, and I am really praying that no one else in my family comes down with it!

The weekend wasn't a total wash. I got in 1/2 of my long brick on Saturday and did my longer run on Sunday.

My little Gracie girl had her first day of Pre-K today! So I am sitting on the couch, feet up, in my house, all alone!!, enjoying the quiet time!! She was so ready to go back. I think being at home without Cooper for the past 2 weeks was kind of hard on her, so she is very happy to have somewhere to go and have fun!

Otherwise I've pretty much been glued to NBC watching the Olympics!

It has been so amazing!!

Watching these incredibly inspirational people go after their dreams brings goosebumps to me! Of course Michael Phelps winning the 8 was amazing to watch! I was sad for Shawn Johnson that she didn't come home with a gold. She's such a cute little thing, and she did an amazing job this week! Tyson Gay getting bumped from the final 100m was a little disappointing, but everyone has done the USA proud!

I must say that I was VERY disappointed that NBC was supposed to air some coverage of the women's triathlon last night and they did NOT! Maybe MSNBC will hold true to their promise for the men's coverage today! But actually I JUST found the women's triathlon on USA, so YEAH!!

Ok... well I'm now off to get sucked into my moment in the Olympics! Have a great day everyone!!
K :)

One of Those Weeks!

2008-08-15T17:17:00.002-04:00

Well... It's been one of those weeks!

My Dad was back in the hospital with complications from his diabetes and heart disease.

Cooper went to school for his second full week, and Gracie and I spent the beginning part of the week running errands and trying to keep up with life and all the unexpectedness it throws at you.

By Wednesday, I tried to squeeze in my run and got sick during it. I chalked it off to not being fully prepared for it, emailed Jen about my bad decisions, and got my schedule readjusted to try it again today.

Thursday morning I was feeling better. Got in a quality little brick, but by Thursday afternoon I knew I'd been bitten! With the stomach bug that is!

Ughhh!! It is so frustrating. I feel like I just can't get on schedule. I was up for most of the night last night ill, and other than taking Gracie to her preschool orientation this morning and getting her a pair of ballet shoes, I've spent the day in bed with no run!

I have been on a mission today to get as much rest as possible because I am so determined to get in my big brick tomorrow. I've got my fingers crossed!!

Acworth Women's Race Report!

2008-08-10T14:32:00.003-04:00

I'm counting down to my final race of the year, Clearwater!

Today I raced a fun, local event that my sponsor helps to put on. It's an all women's race and is basically designed for beginners. It is a very short sprint: 400yd swim, 13 mile bike and a supposed 5k run.

Of course it's not any sort of an A race or anything, and quite honestly, though I do enjoy being finished in roughly an hour, sprints are just not my distance. However, I really like doing them as a test to my fitness level. How often are we told during our training to go threshold for over an hour?! So they make for great opportunities!

I had several little goals for the race...

1. Attempt to beat all of my splits from last year. In Sprint distance racing, this can sometimes be hard because there is not a lot of room to play with the time. But, I've got some pretty big room for improvement, so I figured I could do something small!

2. Hope to take off 1 min total from last year's time between the swim and transitions.

3. Come in the top on the bike and catch my teammate, Jennifer Lesser, who is an AMAZING swimmer, and whom I knew would be way up there coming out of the water before me. However, she's a great cyclist as well, so when I tried to catch her at Irongirl, it didn't happen. So I was prepared to work HARD today to try! :)

4. To continue working on trying to push on the run. I was told going into it that due to construction, they had to change it this year and they thought it was long... uhh.. yeah, it ended up being long.... 3.7 instead of 3.1! That's kind of a big difference for a sprint! :) So I was focusing on having a faster PACE than last year!

The good news is that I accomplished almost all of my goals!

Last year my swim was 6:49....This year 6:18, so a 31 second difference. Happy There! No I'm not a speedy swimmer. At least not yet! :) But I was pleased with the improvement. Oh, and my teammate Jennifer I mentioned earlier... she had the fastest swim of the day at a 5:05!! WOW!!

I wanted to focus on transitions on this race too. It never feels like I'm wasting any time in there, but I'm always on the slower side, so I was bound and determined to move my way through there today! T1 for last year..1:14.... T1 this year.. 1:04. Ok, again... pretty happy with that. Would like to see that go down to sub 1:00, but a 10 second make up from last year I'm happy with!

My bike I wasn't sure how much I could do with because I had a pretty good bike last year. The bike is short, but kind of hilly and I pulled off a 36:52 last year.... This year I did a 36:30. Again, really happy with that. I came in 3rd on the bike split for today! And I did finally catch Jennifer! Well, we kind of came in together pretty much. I beat her into T2 by seconds. And normally the bike is a place that I can work, but not kill myself and still do pretty well. Well today, I REALLY worked for that time!

T2... again, out to be super speedy! So far I've made up 41 seconds between the swim and T1, so I've got 19 seconds to go to meet my 1:00 time cut between all 3. Last year I did a 1:00 flat in T2 and this year I was at 45 seconds!! So, soooo close! I missed my goal by 4 seconds, but still happy! I'll take it and especially the sub min in there! THAT is a key thing I've been missing!

The Run... well here, is where I wasn't as happy. As usual I should probably say. I came out of T2 just ahead of Jennifer and another girl in my age group. Within the first few minutes, they'd both taken me. I came out of T2 in 4th place overall and ended up finishing 10th overall!

10 overall this year compared to 15th overall from last year... Yeah... that's great! But there is a part of me that wants to kick myself for losing it all there in the end! My run last year was a 23:58 for a 5k, which is a 7:44 pace. This year I ran a 28:53 for a 3.7 something run and again that is a 7:44 pace. It was a little hilly, but I CAN run faster than that.

I guess it's like I told Jen... there is something inside of me that doesn't want to go where I need to go to do what I need to do on that run. It's like I'm scared of running at that point where I feel like I can't catch my breath, and I'm going to fall over and puke at any second now! I know I can do it for 1/2 mile intervals, but I truly don't believe in myself that I can hold that for 3 miles, much less almost 4. It's like I'm running out there thinking, no... just hold back and conserve because if you don't, you'll blow up!

BUT... that's what makes these races so great! I can break it down and say, ok... this is what went right and THIS is what I need to focus on and learn, and take to the next level!

So overall I'm happy! I have a tendency to be really hard on myself about this kind of stuff, so I've had my kick myself moments and I'm now learning from it and moving on!

I've got 3 races left for the season, and I want each one to get me closer and closer to my season goals! An international race on Labor Day weekend at Callaway Gardens. I'm revisiting my first triathlon ever, so I'm really looking forward to that! The South Carolina 1/2 Ironman on September 28, and then CLEARWATER!!

So starting this week, as Jen put it, "Be Ready!" Game is on! Training is on full tilt! And I'm out to spend the next 3 months learning how to SUFFER for around 5 hours!! Anybody want to join me?!!