Where's the Beach?

On this day, 14 years ago, Jason and I both said, "I do." It was not a lavish affair. But we did it our way. We catered it for 78 people - sit down meal with salad, homemade manicotti (which I haven't made since), and of course cake for dessert, which I also decorated. I picked up my favorite cake, an Italian Cream cake from a local bakery for $13 each and adorned them with lace, pearls and white roses (hard to see the details). My mother custom made my dress and even made all of the flower arrangements, all white silk roses which I later took to the grave of a dear friend who would have and should have been there. My cousin officiated the ceremony on my mother's property on a hot summer evening. It was just over 100 degrees that day (but the hottest day of the year came after we were on our honeymoon at least). We giggled during the vows. I even temporarily lost my wedding ring after we walked back down the aisle. We were worry-free. Again, not

Some of you may recall a brief mention of signing up for my first marathon in December - the 3 Bridges Marathon . Somehow, it seemed like a great idea at the time. Maybe it was the wine talking. And in the future Jason is never allowed to go grab my wallet for me when I'm hastily signing up for a race without fully thinking it through. New rule. I haven't really talked much about my training or my training plan for that matter. Right now I'm not doing too much different than what I typically do with the exception of incorporating in dedicated speed work. My weekly mileage has been hovering between 40-43 miles for quite some time. I try to always keep at least one 10-miler in my weekly running so that when I do sign up for a half (or a full), then ramping up the training isn't that big of a deal. It allows me to focus more on speed since I have the distance for the most part. In other words, 10 miles isn't normally that big of a deal for me. So, my plan was

Phew, finally made it to Friday! That means Fun for Friday around here. I've been enjoying recapping my Move.Eat.Live. moments from the week, so I thought I'd share again. And, as always, I would love to hear your Move.Eat.Live. moments as well. Move I've gotten in some good runs this week, including a 10-miler yesterday morning. It's supposed to be uncomfortably hot this weekend. Since I was going to be up at the crack of dawn running yesterday anyway, I thought it'd be smart to get the run done. I had wanted another 12-miler, but will gladly take the 10, especially because it was shared in good company with Amy. I got in some good weight workouts this week as well. I love working so close to my home. This lets me get in weights easily during my lunch break. Plus, slinging some weights around can help if you're feeling stressed. Eat Last night I made a version of my garlicky tomato sauce (sorry, forgot to take pictures but I can assure you it was

Tuesday Speedwork Now that I'm on a more structured marathon plan, I've set aside Tuesdays for speedwork. I'm thankful for the company I had this week cranking out my 400s. Plus, who else is crazy enough to run up a bridge to get a sunrise picture after said speedwork? Nice Views The sun is sadly rising later and later so my RunRises are waning. At least I live in a city where we do have some nice views near the water. Not quite the same as a spectacular sunrise, but not too shabby to see either. One of the best parts about running is looking around and taking notice of your surroundings. Thursday 10-Miler I am thankful that I was able to knock out my longer run this morning. It was still warm and humid, but at least I don't have to get up at 5 am on Saturday to try to avoid this fun forecast. What happened to the Polar Vortex? Home Decor Projects I'm thankful that I have just enough talent (I use that word very very loosely), or maybe fals

I'm a bit behind on a weekend recap, so this will be more like a training lately and things I do other than running kind of post. In other words, random. Random can be good though, right? Ok, good. Glad you're with me. This weekend started off nice and early for me. I knew it was supposed to be really warm again, and humid. Maddie decided to also assist as my early morning alarm clock. Since I was up, I headed on out the door just after 6 am to get in my long run. It started off fairly decent, around 67 degrees with some clouds. The clouds of course ended up clearing off, but thankfully that was near the end of the run. I managed to get in 12 pretty good miles. The last mile and a half was where I was sort of just ready to be done. But, I had some nice views to get me through the miles. I ended up hanging out on my patio reading and recovering for a bit. I mean, keeping your feet propped up on the lounge chair or in the pool counts as recovery right? My sister ended u

Happy Friday! Dare I ask who's ready for the weekend? This week has felt longer than usual and I know that is in a large part due to some rogue dogs causing mayhem at night. But, it's Friday so let's have some fun! Here are my Move.Eat.Live. moments from the week. Move I had some pretty good training runs this week. Tuesday I got in 6 400s then knocked out my leg workout at lunch. Hello tired legs. I got in my upper body splits on Monday and Thursday but will admit that I am being negligent of chest workouts. Wednesday I took it slower and easier as recovery and also because I knew Thursday would entail a speedier run with my crazy running buddy. We enjoyed 8-miles meandering through the 'hood s witching up from our usual route. Eat Because we enjoyed the Tempeh "Fish" Tacos from last week so much, I made them again this week. I have a feeling they'll appear on the menu quite frequently. I didn't have any cherries to make the Cherry S

Happy Friday Eve! It's been one of those sleepless weeks for me. The dogs are in control basically. Heath (who is blind for those who don't know), used to be terrified of knocking down a baby gate This meant we could simply prop it into place and they would stay put in the kitchen all night. Little man has gotten brave, with the exception of storms, and started busting out of the kitchen each night. That was fine, he didn't mess with the other gate leading up the stairs ... at first. Long story short, he makes his way up nightly now and Maddie has decided she wants to follow. It took her a while to get over the idea of stepping over the fallen gate. The problem is nails on hardwood is loud, Maddie roams and roots around looking for something to get into, eat and/or destroy, they get into tiffs when she makes him move out of his bed ... and it goes on and on. So, the dogs have taken over. And I'm wiped out, especially after getting up to run on top of the lack of s

Fish tacos seem to be all the rage. Being that I don't eat meat, I have never experienced a fish taco. I will admit that I always like how fresh the tacos look with vibrant purple cabbage, tomatoes and greens. I have wanted to attempt to replicate a fish taco. I have tried with tofu, and that wasn't bad, but I wasn't totally sold. I decided to give it another shot and try using tempeh, mostly because I didn't have any tofu pressed and ready to go. I have seen blog posts over the years for recipes using dulse and kelp powder or flakes as a way to impart more of seafood-ish type of flavoring. Dulse and kelp are types of seaweeds and are known to be rich in nutrients and minerals as well as being flavorful. So I decided to just play around with some flavors and see what happened. As you'll see in the recipe, I don't have specific measurements. It was mostly done by taste and the liquid amounts were measure visually just making sure I had enough marinade for t

This morning my running buddy came over so we could try to knock out a long run. It's supposed to be warm and muggy most of the weekend, so I sort of convinced her to just get it done this morning so we wouldn't have to get up super early tomorrow to get our long run done.  Amy got to my house just after 5:30 and we headed out into the thick, soupy air. As a side note - my Garmin is messing up yet again. This is the replacement I recently paid for, second replacement I should add as the first they sent was a total dud. Now it's not charging, losing charge immediately and freezing. Garmin is completely losing my respect as a loyal customer. Ok, end of rant.  We started off and since I had to use Jason's Suunto, which displays mph not mpm, I needed to rely on Amy's watch for our pace. After some stupid training mistakes this week already, I had warned her that I needed to slow my roll. We were going to shoot for 11 miles and I wanted them to be smart tra

It's not uncommon for me to have a million things on my mind. Sometimes I can let that overwhelm me, other times I'm good about pushing some thoughts to the side to make room for others ;-) Sometimes you just need to get them off your chest though. So here it goes, my Thursday Thoughts. Sometimes Planning is Important (especially in marathon training) Wednesday I decided to do some dedicated speed work. I sort of decided mid-run, but that's another thought. I did 4 easier miles then began 400s. My plan was to do 6 of them at a 6:30 pace. After the 2nd one, I wanted to hurl. Like literally bending over trying not to barf. I quickly changed my strategy - 4 repeats would definitely suffice. After the 4th interval and a recovery, I insanely ran up the bridge (close to a quarter of a mile) to take a sunrise picture. Dedication to beauty or insanity, I'll let you be the judge of that. I was a little disheartened at my failed speedwork attempt to be honest. How cou

Hello Friends! After far too long, I'm finally changing my blog URL from http://wheres-the-beach.blogspot.com/ to my custom domain: http://blog.wheres-the-beach-fitness.com/ Please update your feed readers, bookmarks etc. If all goes as planned, all backlinks should be properly redirected. But, as we all know, technology can be fickle. I hope you all will continue to join me in my blogging journey at http://blog.wheres-the-beach-fitness.com

Today marks the 1-year anniversary of the official launch of Where's the Beach Fitness, LLC. . For many years I talked about wanting to become a certified personal trainer , or perhaps at least teach some group fitness classes. I am passionate about fitness, health and helping others. But, I always put barriers in my way, mostly doubt and fear of the what-ifs: what if I failed, what if I was a terrible trainer, what if ... what if ... I finally stopped talking and started doing by enrolling in the ISSA Certified Fitness Trainer online course. I studied daily, spent hours on the weekends studying, testing myself, trying to push doubts to the back of my mind. I had a goal. I was going to pass that test and then my next step was to start a business. Period. If it failed, it failed, but at least I tried. And, I did. I'm proud of myself for doing rather than talking. It's scary, I still have doubts, but whenever I interact with my clients, I know I made the right dec

First off, how is it already August? Why does it seem like the summers just fly right on by? Knowing how short they always seem, I have been trying to take full advantage of summer. Over the weekend our typical summer weather returned - hello heat index of 109, nice to see you. The upside was that the pool warmed back up quite nicely making for some fantastic floating and lounging time. The downside, well, 109 degrees is ever so slightly oppressive. However, to go along with our nutty weather this year, the temps have dropped again. Yesterday was 74 degrees - the high, in July? Of course, the Runner Heather is not complaining. The lower humidity and temps definitely made for some fantastic Move.Eat.Live. times this week. Move After some very tough, very hot runs over the weekend, my body was happy for mid-60s and low humidity on Tuesday's run. I got in 8 speedy miles and threw in lots of hills, including running up to the top of the bridge so I could get a good sunrise (aka