No AM group run today.

The group I have been meeting with for a couple of weeks decided we would run Monday and Wednesday this week. We normally run on Tuesday and Thursday, but with Thursday being Thanksgiving - we just adjusted.

There was a discussion on our FB group page about running this morning. It seemed like a few girls were on board. When my alarm went off at 5 this morning I promptly checked the FB page because that last thing I wanted to do was show up and have no one there. One girl posted last night that she wouldn't be there this morning because she thinks her hip flexor is jacked (bummer). Another girl's husband is out of town and she has a daughter who she, obviously, can't leave in the morning to run. I knew that another girl was sick yesterday, but she intended to run today. I ended up texting one of the girls because I had a bad feeling that I would be the only one to show up. I'm glad I did because, sure enough, I would have been there by myself. I snuggled back into bed and went back to sleep for a few hours.

So it sucks about not getting a run in this morning, but I think I am going to do some speed work/intervals on the treadmill at the gym tonight. Tomorrow morning or after work I am going to do some cross training at the gym. Wednesday morning we are hopefully still meeting so I can get some easy miles in before the Turkey Trax 5k on Thanksgiving morning.

I did get in a little less than 4.5 miles on Saturday before we started tailgating for the Mizzou game. My 5am wake up call seems to be getting easier and easier each time. I went to the normal spot that I meet our group, but decided it was too dark and uncomfortable to run there by myself. So I drove across town to campus where I knew it would be better lit and more traffic. I just took off and really didn't have a route or a plan in place. I basically just ran until I was running out of time to meet to shower and meet our tailgating friends. It felt pretty good and I ran about a 9:20 pace.

That 5am start to my day really kicked me in the ass about 6 that evening. I was done. A full day of tailgating and watching the football game.did me in. Justin and I grabbed some Thai take out and vegged out the rest of the night. We were in bed by 9:30.

And I will leave you with some tailgating pics. :)

Justin and I showing off our "black out" outfits for the day.
I told him he looked like a cheerleader so we posed accordingly. :)

Justin with his bestfriend's sister who is, obviously, much taller than him.

MIL, Justin, and Me outside of the stadium

Family friends.

Accountability

I am happy to report that my 5:30am wake up call followed by a run was successful last Saturday. I may or may not have hit snooze a couple of times, but I did make it out the door by a little after 6. Not bad considering I was seriously doubting myself to even get out of bed that early.

Since I was getting started a little later than I would have liked - I knew that I was going to have to cut my mileage shorter than I had planned. I ended up running a little over 3 miles. Not a great distance, but at least I made it out there.

The first mile of my run was pretty darn dark. It was a new experience for me. My eyes and mind were playing tricks on me. I really wasn't a fan of it all. I will definitely be asking for a head lamp for Christmas...along with reflective gear. I pointed all of this out to Justin last weekend when we were at a sporting goods store. :)

I am also happy to report that Mizzou won their first game. It was a close one, but they pulled it out.

Justin and I made the trip to Tempe, AZ this past weekend to watch Mizzou play at Arizona State. We weren't quite so fortunate there. We lost in overtime. It was disappointing, but they rallied to come back in the 4th quarter so I don't think it was a complete loss.

I got up fairly early in Tempe to go for a run as well. Our hotel was very close to the campus so I did a few miles around their campus. I know people mention that Arizona is a dry heat....I'm sorry, but 90* is 90* regardless of the "type" of heat. It was only 7am at the point, mind you. I think it got up to 113* that day before a little bit of rain came through.

I don't have much more to report at this point. Mizzou is back at home this weekend and it's a 6pm game. We will probably start tailgating around noon so a morning run should not be that hard to manage. There is a Susan G Komen 5k this Sunday, but I haven't signed up just yet. I know Saturday will be a long night so a race the next day may not go so well. I will probably still do the race just because of the cause, but I don't anticipate good results.

A lot of the blogs I read post their weekly training plan and then follow up with how they did later in the week. I think this is something I may have to try out around here. I know there for a while this blog was a way to keep me accountable and I would feel guilty missing runs because I knew I would report back here that I missed them. So, I think if I post my weekly plan then I might stick to it more. At this point I am not training for anything in particular. I have a half in mind for the spring so I am loosely training for that, but it's still 6 months away so it's not a major deal right now.

I hope everyone is enjoying the break in the crazy hot temps (at least around here). If you are not, I'm sorry. I hope relief comes soon. I know my pace has dropped a few seconds with the temperature drop. I can only hope that continues...in a big way.

Later, y'all!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Football season has kicked off, my friends. NFL preseason started a couple of weeks ago. College football started last night. This is my favorite time of the year.

We are season ticket holders (along with the ILs) for Mizzou football. We have gotten our tailgating routines down to a science...almost. There seem to always be a couple of hiccups and speed bumps regardless of our intense planning.

Tailgating prep started last weekend. I completed the first couple steps of vodka infused gummy bears. So far - they are very yummy, but definitely very sweet. The tailgating totes were also busted out and organized. Apparently we left a bag of chips in one of the totes from last season. Oops. :) The coolers are being packed tonight and we may even pack up the truck bed since tomorrow's game is at 11am. Tailgating time is going to be limited so the more we do ahead of time the better.

I am very anxious to get this season started. Our starting QB from last year (Blaine Gabbert) decided not to return for his senior season and entered the NFL draft instead. Our new starting QB is James Franklin. He got some snaps last year and I think he is going to do just fine. It is, of course, a little nerve wracking when a new QB takes the reins.

I have grand plans to get up at 0530 to get in some sort of run tomorrow morning. Our tailgating begins at 8 so if I want to run - it has to be super early. I tend to be awful when it comes to getting up that early to run. We'll see if the butterflies in my tummy for Mizzou's home opener will get my rear out of bed to run tomorrow morning.

Happy football season to you. I hope you all have a great holiday weekend. Any big plans?? Races?? Tailgating?? Who will you be cheering for this football season??

Go Mizzou!!

ps
As I was finishing this post - an ESPN analyzer chose Missouri as his choice for the underrated team in the preseason rankings (they are currently at #21). I like to hear that.

Final day of 2010....

I ran my first 5k race on Thanksgiving day. I had a blast and instantly started searching for my next race. The soonest one that would work with my schedule was New Year's Eve. I signed up in mid-December...I was, somehow, the 9th person to sign up. I thought that was odd with the race just being a couple of weeks away. That actually made me nervous that it would be an incredibly small race. It wasn't too terribly small. There were about 280 people that participated. This was about 100-150 less than Thanksgiving, but still an OK size.

The race began at 4pm. The temperature at that point was about 59 degrees. It was unbelievably great. I decided to wear shorts and short-sleeves because it was so warm. I didn't really research the course of the race. The majority of it was through downtown Columbia and part of Mizzou's campus. It was a little windy that day anyway...but add to that larger buildings and it was SUPER windy. In hind site, I would have probably worn capri tights instead. The temperature dropped about 10-12 degrees by the time I finished the race. Brrrr.

My time at my Thanksgiving race was 28:06...I was very pleased with that. I was so pleased that I was nervous to run another because I was worried I would never be able to beat that time. I completely underestimated myself for my first race (I expected 30-34 minutes) and I underestimated myself once again on New Year's Eve. My time for NYE was 26:08. I was very pleased and even a bit impressed with myself. I suppose upping my mileage as I train for a half marathon makes a difference with speed as well.

I placed 93 out of 280 who finished. I was 3rd out of 17 in my age/gender group.

I look forward to improving my times as I continue racing. My goal for 2011 is to get my 5k time sub 25 minutes. After my race on NYE - I feel much more confident to achieve this.

Speaking of the half marathon training - this will take place in Nashville, TN with 3 of my favorite girls from college. I am really excited to accomplish this distance for the first time together. Pardon me if my blog becomes very running concentrated. It's become a beloved hobby.

Tellatubbies (sp?) at the finish line.

Me, post-race, with the tellatubby (sp?).

Alive.

We are alive and well. It might be hard to believe since my blogging has been awful lately. It's just "that time of year." We are buuusy. I think we have spent a total of about 4 weekends at our house in KC over the past 6 months or so. Kind of crazy.

Lately we have been busy with football season. Season tickets at Mizzou (which is 2 hours from where we live now) makes for lots of time out of time, traveling, and just being tied up for an entire Saturday (love it!).

Now that (college) football season is coming to a close, the holiday season is upon us which of course means parties, family gatherings, shopping, and never-ending traveling.

I have also started the Couch to 5k running program. I usually go to the gym when I get off work at night (1030 pm) so I don't typically have time to blog after work. I will blog more about that training program later...I have quite the list to blog about actually. Many happenings over the last couple of months (football pics, my father-in-law's surprise 50th bday, etc.).

The great news that I have to share is that Justin got a job in Columbia (our hometown). We are VERY excited about this. In the very near future I will devote an entire post to this....it's very much deserving of its own post, I think. :) Needless to say, I am incredibly proud of Justin and I am so anxious to get the next chapter of our lives started in Columbia.

I hope some of my followers are still reading my blog when I finally do find the time to write. I hope you are all enjoying the holiday season. And season's greetings from the Foster's. :)

Darn it Mizzou!

I am a University of Missouri Tiger fan through and through. There is no doubt about that. My main focus is on football, but I keep up with the rest of it just because.

For those living under a rock for the last couple of months - it's football season. If you don't care, then this post will be of no interest to you. Buh-bye!

In all seriousness, I LOVE college football season. 9AM every Saturday, you will find me watching college Game Day on ESPN (unless it was this Saturday and I slept until 1040, oops). I love watching the polls, the upsets, undefeated stay undefeated, the Big 12 rock (sometimes), KU losing, Mizzou winning, and the list goes on and on.

When this season started, there were lots of questions among Mizzou fans as to how this season would go. Their first game was against Illinois and we thought many of those questions got some very positive answers. The next couple of games were decent. There were a few flaws, but no team is perfect...right? Yeah, we quickly found out that Mizzou is far from perfect this year.

Perfection was not a prediction by anyone, I am pretty sure. 4 quarters worth of effort from EVERYONE (coaches included) were expected. Unfortunately, in the last couple of games (happen to be losses as well) - effort was put forth for about 3 quarters. It was quite embarrassing actually.

They played Nebraska last week. It was a total defensive battle (think 9-0 at halftime). Mizzou was winning that battle. And then we watched them implode in approximately 3 minutes. It was pathetic. Players, fans, coaches, everyone - licked our wounds and continued on with our optimism.

Fast forward to yesterday. Mizzou traveled to Stillwater, OK to take on the Oklahoma State Cowboys. And again, everyone was hopeful that the previous loss would light a fire under the team's ass and we would come out on top. That was actually the case in the first half. They played very well and hung with OSU with many lead changes. It was a fun game to watch. Not so much in the 2nd half. The implosion happened once again.

Yeah, this would be the reaction you could expect to see when shit hits the fan for Mizzou.

Next week is homecoming and the Texas Longhorns come to town. Unfortunately, I am anticipating our 3rd loss in a row...which means 0-3 in conference play. I would love to be proved wrong, but with the performances in the last couple of weeks - I am not holding my breath.

Despite all of this, my loyalty holds strong. M-I-Z! Z-O-U! Fight Tigers!!

Any other college football fans out there? How is your team doing? What are your predictions for the rest of the season?

M-I-Z! Z-O-U!

College football started this week and I could not be more excited about that!

I love me some University of Missouri Tigers. I always have and always will. I have to admit that it has been nice being a Mizzou fan when they have been having success in the last few years, but I was a fan during the tough times also. My dad has been taking me to games for as long as I can remember. For all the Mizzou fans out there (anyone?), I can remember the first time that my dad let me and a friend sit on the hill by ourselves. We thought we were hot stuff! :)

Mizzou played in St. Louis Saturday again Illinois. Mizzou v. Illini in STL is a fairly recent tradition. They started doing that in 2002. Last I heard, next year could be the final year of the "contract." It's been nice having a pretty good game as the season opener. I would rather them be tested in the first game than play a rinky dink school and stomp all over them. Although, Mizzou sorta stomped all over Illinois on Saturday. Ha.

There were some great games this weekend on top of the Mizzou game. The Big 12 did well...Oklahoma and Colorado were the only two teams that lost. I am never too sad to see OU lose, but I am VERY sad to see that their QB (Sam Bradford) was injured. That makes me incredibly sad because he chose to stay at OU instead of going to the NFL.

I am just so excited that the season has begun. I could go on and on about it. I am sure there will be more posts as the season goes on. We have season tickets to Mizzou so we get to test those out for the first time this coming up weekend. I am super excited!! :) GO TIGERS!

Wait for it....

We are having major computer issues in the Foster home. I got a laptop for high school graduation 6 years ago...Justin got a desktop for HS grad 6 years ago as well. Needless to say, it's time for us to get a new computer.

We typically only use the laptop these days. It's just easier. However, the laptop is being very finicky about when it will turn on and when it won't. You never know if it will want to turn on today or not. Good times. On top of that, when it does turn on it won't connect to the internet. Perfect! Of course, it chooses to turn on late at night so I can't call our internet provider to fix the internet problem.

So needless to say, my updates might be few and far between until we get a new computer.

And to add to the lack of technology in our house, I can't find the cord for our external hard drive. I have tons of pictures from the last two weeks (wedding and girls weekend) that I can't upload to our computer even if it was working properly. I have to upload pics to the external hard drive because the hard drive on our computer says it is low on space. How?? Yeah, I have no clue. I have cleared out everything I can possibly think of (pics and documents have been moved to the external hard drive, we have removed programs that we don't use, etc.). The lap top is just done for!

As for last weekend, I can give a little update but it would be so much more fun with pictures. We made the 2 1/2 hour trip on Friday mid-day. This got us into Springfield at a decent time so that we could have lunch, do a little shopping (SO not needed for me!), and just hang out. We played a little Catch Phrase and had a couple of drinks before going to the bar. We had fun that night, but we were all looking forward to Saturday night for the real fun.

Saturday came and I had plans to meet up with Justin's at his friend's house to meet their new twin baby girls (ADORABLE!...again, I need pics for this post!!). After I left, my girls and I had a nice relaxing day at the pool. The weather was perfect (when the sun was out, a bit chilly when it wasn't) to just lounge around on rafts and hang out. It was great.

Saturday evening we played some more games (of course Apples to Apples!) and had some drinks before heading to dinner. Dinner was delicious...mac and cheese, amazing! After dinner we went to piano bar. Piano bars just about lead the list of the most fun bars to me. I love them. After the piano bar we went to Moonlight Delight, Midnight Delight, Midnight Rodeo, Midnight Hodeo...take your pick. It's a country bar that you can get into if you are 18...last time there were high school students there in prom attire. It is a blast! Of course we go there a bit later in the night every time so that might have something to do with it.

After Moonlight Delight, we went home and made all kind of (un)healthy foods and went to bed. Sunday was a veg out day all around. We hung out on the couch and watched a couple of movies before heading back to Kansas City. The drive home was loooong, but it was an awesome weekend. I cannot wait to go back!

As if the last few weekends have not been eventful enough, I have another exciting weekend coming up. I am going to the lake with a few friends. One of my friends, Abbey and her family, have a house down there. It should be a good time as well. Not to mention, Mizzou kicks of the season again Illinois on Saturday. Abbey's family love Mizzou as well so we will definitely be catching the game amongst all the other festivities. I am also anxious to see Oklahoma State host Georgia. That should be a good Big 12 v SEC match up. As much as I am not a fan of OSU, I am rooting for the Big 12 all the way.

Hopefully I can have some updates with pictures included in the near future. Until then, this will have to do. I hope everyone has a great week!

Busted brackets!!

Well, here we are - the final four. My brackets are completely busted. There is not a chance in hell that I could even crack the top 25 out of like 55 people in our work pool. It's ok though. This sure has been an interesting tournament.

The actual final 4:
-Michigan State (this is who I will be rooting for from here on out)
-UConn (boo, they beat Mizzou)
-Villanova
-North Carolina (they do have a Missouri boy, so they are cool too)

My 1st final 4:
-Michigan State
-UConn
-Pitt
- Syracus
**with Pitt winning it all....it's too bad they are out.

My 2nd final 4:
-Louisville
-Memphis
-Duke
-UNC
**1 outta 4 aint bad. RIGHT?? Oh and I have Louisville winning this one.

Have I mentioned yet that I CANNOT wait for football season? I will settle for (consistent) spring and summer weather in the meantime though.

My Sweet Sixteen

As promised, I am sharing my bracket. Now that it is down to 16 teams, it seems a bit more manageable to break it down into my two brackets.

**Italicized teams are the ones that are out of the tournament, but I have to be truthful about my bracket.

From my 1st/best bracket:
Louisville
Utah
KU
Michigan State
UConn
Washington
Mizzou (duh!)
Memphis
Pitt
Florida State
Villanova
Duke
North Carolina
Gonzaga
Syracuse
Oklahoma


And my 2nd/awful bracket:
Siena
Utah
West Virginia
Michigan State
UConn
Purdue
Mizzou (duh!)
Memphis
Pitt
Wisconsin
UCLA
Texas
North Carolina
Western Kentucky
Syracuse
Oklahoma

Eeek, that's a lot of italics on my 2nd bracket. In fact, my 2nd bracket is tied for last place in my work pool - out of about 100 brackets. Awful!

Mizzou takes on Memphis tonight at 2030 central time. I got my shift switched so I will be home (hopefully) right at tip off. I am super excited and really hope they play well enough to make it to the elite eight.

I have to be completely honest though - in my good (#1) bracket, I have them losing to Memphis. I know, horrible fan. BUT, money is on the line here so I have to be smart about it. And I have witness how hit and miss Mizzou has been this either.

Either way, GO TIGERS!!

Big 12 Champs!!!

Yeah Mizzou basketball!!! Big 12 champions!!

This definitely makes up for the embarrassing lose they had at KU.

KU ended up being the regular season conference champs and then MU won the Big 12 Tournament. Basketball is weird. I, obviously, prefer football.

I will admit, I have jumped on the basketball bandwagon. My dad used to take me to games when I was younger and I enjoyed following the team when Norm Stewart was the coach. Once Quin Snyder took over, the team when down hill...and in a hurry. At that point, I stopped watching or caring. Players were constantly getting in trouble with the law and they were not winning games. There were very few people who did no lose interest during that time. The crowd turn out got to be so dismal that it was almost sad to see the empty stands on television.

I am glad to see that they are having sell out games again. With that being said, I will be back on the Mizzou bandwagon. Of course, I will never be as much of a basketball fan as I am a football fan...but this is a start. :)

The day after being crowned conference champs the team found out their fate in the NCAA tournament. Their were awarded with the #3 seed. They will face the #14 team in their bracket, Cornell on Friday.

We always do NCAA bball tourney brackets at work. I have begun my research to help me fill out my bracket (or 2...or 3) in the next couple of days. I will put my (favorite) bracket on my blog and let everyone know how it turns out for me.

M-I-Z! Z-O-U!

Yeah Missouri!! Way to go!!

Mizzou just beat Kansas. The Missouri/Kansas rivalry is HUGE!! I am not a big basketball fan (read: I don't follow basketball until we do our march madness brackets at work), but I definitely pay attention when Mizzou plays Kansas.

The final score tonight: 62-60. Kansas had a 14 point lead at half. A Mizzou guy hit a shot with 1.3 seconds left to win the game. Yahooooo!!!

The winning shot!!

The Mizzou crowd that rushed the court after the game. Yeah, this game is a BIG DEAL.

Congrats to the U. of Missouri...and I'm sorry to Kansas (ha, no I'm not!!). :):):)