Today, Run DMT is featured as a guest blogger on Good Mourning, Glory! Read about how my family coexists and incorporates other cultures into our Christmas traditions with the help from our Advent calendar.
When you stop by, check out the other Coexist guest bloggers and her great giveaways too.
Last Saturday, Tiffany and I ran 13 miles to prepare for the Women’s Half Marathon this Sunday. This has been longest our run on the Starkey Trail and it was good that we did. We now know we don’t like running long distances on the trail. We prefer running in our neighborhood because of the available bathrooms and convenient snack stops. Thankfully, there are water stations along the trail, but all that rehydration only makes you need to pee more and there’s a lot to be said about bathroom breaks that don’t require you to relieve yourself in palm fronds or behind a tree.
As for our run, we weren’t really pushing it and so our time wasn’t the greatest. We were conserving our energy for Sunday’s race. We’re both hoping to finish under 2 hours.
13 Miles
2:38:36
Ave Pace 12:12
As for the rest of the week, I ran on Monday and Tuesday, but my times were o.k. My calves were pretty sore from Saturday’s run, so I decided to rest the remainder of the week.
Monday 11/15
4.05 Miles
39:46
Ave Pace 9:49
Tuesday 11/16
3.28 Miles
30:59
Ave Pace 9:26
I’m really looking forward to race on Sunday. Much like the Race for the Cure, the course will follow along the streets of St. Pete. Although I’ve been studying over the course map, I didn’t see any bathroom stops, first aid stations, water stations or snack stops and for a moment I thought our Starkey Trail run had prepared us for this race more than we realized! Then, I found all my lovely stops on the FAQ page. Phew.
WHERE ARE THE AID STATIONS AND WHAT IS BEING SERVED?
Half Marathon Course Aid Stations:
Mile 1.75 (Water and Lemon-Lime Gatorade)
Mile 4 (Water and Lemon-Lime Gatorade)
Mile 6 (Water and Lemon-Lime Gatorade)
Mile 8.1 (GU Gel – Espresso Love, Chocolate Outrage, Vanilla Bean, Tri Berry, Stawberry Banana)
Mile 8.2 (Water and Lemon-Lime Gatorade)
Mile 10 (Water and Lemon-Lime Gatorade)
Mile 12 (Water and Lemon-Lime Gatorade)All aid stations will also have portable toilets.
(Thank goodness!)
Have I mentioned how excited I am about “the ultimate race goodie bag”, my hot pink Crocs and my medal? 
All Half Marathon participants will receive the ultimate goodie bag including: official Women’s Half Marathon Crocs and a reusable, recycled Kendall Kollection tote bag designed by Jacqueline Savage McFee. Also included in the bag will be additional Kendall Kollection products manufactured by Carolina Pad, race chocolates and more!
Bathroom breaks, bling and goodie bags with shoes and chocolate. What more could a woman ask for?
I found “Jesus” at The Hungryhouse Wife’s Halloween party.
With all the delicious food, great music and fun costumes, the party was a truly heavenly event. Or perhaps it was simply sinful?
To kick off the holiday season, Diane of Good Mourning, Glory! will be hosting a week long blog carnival complete with guest bloggers and giveaways to celebrate diversity and coexistence. Yours truly will be a guest blogger on Saturday, November 21.
Therefore, to celebrate the Coexist Blog Carnival, Diane (also our Musical Monday host) has requested this week’s participants pick a song with a coexist theme. I chose From a Distance by Bette Midler.
Several years ago during my teaching days, my elementary students sang From a Distance for our holiday concert. The words are much more meaningful when you hear a choir of young children from different ethnicities sing the song. I still get choked thinking about their sweet voices.
As I searched for the video, I stumbled upon a Christmas version of From a Distance. It’s a nice twist to a song already about peace, harmony and love for everyman.
I hope you watch the Christmas version. The images are truly stunning.
I’m fairly new to exhilarating world of running, but even as a fairly new competitor I can appreciate one thing: THE BLING.
Some races ring a medal around each runner’s neck as the athletes cross the finish line. Then, there are races where I actually qualify in my age division and I am awarded for my efforts with a shiny new bit of bling. But whether I get a medal for just being there or one for being my best, the bling all means the same to me. I trained for it, therefore I earned.
After a race, I have been seen around town wearing my medal proudly at the supermarket or at the local pub while downing a pint with friends. After all, you can only wear your medal for so long before you look like a wannabe Flo-Jo.
As proud as I am of all my achievements and my medals, my bibs and bling are stuffed into drawer in my nightstand, however, I have been toying with the idea of displaying my bling on a curtain rod like MJ of Runner with a Knitting Problem.
Then, while visiting another runner blog (Mile By Mile), I stumbled upon her post asking what other runners did with all their medals. She mentioned Medals 4 Mettle, a non-profit organization that collects medals from athletes and redistributes the medals by awarding them to people who face greater challenges in their lives, such as debilitating disease or disability.
Taken from the Medals 4 Mettle website:
Its mission is to celebrate and reward the individual and collective courage of all human beings by facilitating the gifting of marathon finisher’s medals from marathoners to people who have demonstrated similar mettle, or courage. The recipients can be any age and might have exhibited such mettle by dealing with disease, handicaps or any similar challenge. Marathon runners around the world, and others who have won medals, give their medals to Medals4Mettle. Then our nationwide network of physicians and others award these medals to those who might not be able to run a marathon, but are in their own marathon to continue to live their life. As marathoners run through the streets, large crowds cheer the runners for their effort. Medals4Mettle lets these runners, healthy enough to compete in such an event, to return the cheers to those who have supported them.
So, as I stuff my small achievements into a sock drawer, it seems I don’t truly appreciate my medals as much as I should. Medals 4 Mettle reminds us that others have huge hurdles yet to overcome and I can share my accomplishments with others who have survived and lived to tell about their HUGE ACHEIVEMENTS.
In the spirit of selfless acts and 30 Gifts in 30 Days, Medals 4 Mettle offers just one more to give. Now I pose the same question:
What will you do with all your medals?
If you would like to donate to Medals 4 Mettle, visit their contacts page to find a chapter near you.
***A special THANK YOU to MJ of Runner with a Knitting Problem for the use of her photo. Thanks, Sweetie!***
Although, I haven’t racked up the miles as much as I would have liked to this week, it seems that the miles that I did manage to run recorded some of my best times.
There were some nasty winds brought on my Hurricane Ida Tuesday morning, however, my new running mantra (Run in all weather because you never know what weather race day will bring. NO EXCUSES!”) requires forces me to run in all weather. Now, if only I could get enough rest at night to get up out of bed in the morning. It looks like I need a mantra to make me move, too.
5 Miles
47:10
Ave Pace 9:26
On Thursday, I ran again on very frigid (for Florida) morning. A cold snap had rolled through and our temperatures dropped to the low 50s. There was more wind again, but it didn’t seem to slow me down too much.
5.05 Miles
48:00
Ave Pace 9:30
As I ran my 5 miles, I spotted a squashed creature in the road. I thought it was toad due to all the rain, but upon closer inspection, I realized it was a baby alligator about a foot in length. Seems like the rains and winds of Ida in addition to a cold snap confused all walks of life and I had to wonder: Do you cry crocodile tears when an alligator gets run over?
Today, I ran once again, but only 3 miles since I wanted to do some strength training. It was another cold morning (relative to Florida) but I believe the shorter distance did me some good or maybe it’s the cold snap.
3.10 Miles
28:14
Ave Pace 9:06
Tomorrow, Tiffany and I will meet the Striders for another 12-13 miles along the trail. Next Sunday is the Women’s Half Marathon and we are hoping to finish under 2 hours. Then, on Thanksgiving morning, we’ll be joining several Striders and thousands of people for the Turkey Trot. I would love to beat my time from last year with a finish time of 54:00 otherwise i maybe crying crocodile tears once more.
Thank you to our veterans for sacrificing themselves to protect our freedoms. For all that you sacrificed, we celebrate and honor you.
We salute you.
God bless America.
The other day, a friend on Facebook shared in her status update how she would be spending the month of November. For the next 30 days, she and her family would demonstrate acts of giving, which had been inspired by the book 29 Gifts by Cami Walker.
In her memoir, Ms. Walker shares how simple acts of giving helped heal her body, mind and spirit. With the popularity of her book, she founded 29-Day Giving Challenge, a website which encourages others to do the same.
Admiring my friend’s quest and yet moved by everyone’s compassion for one other on the 29-Day Giving Challenge website, I decided to spend the month of November doing the same. With simple random acts of kindness (RAK) over the next 30 days, I would be teaching my two girls how to do their part to make the world a better place. With our small gestures of giving, we would let other know we care. Even the simplest of gestures can mean the world to a friend or a fellow human being.
If you would like to join us in our 30 Days of Giving Challenge, here are some ideas to help get you started.
More than a simple list of RAK, I will be taking our 30 Days of Giving Challenge one step further with my girls to make our month of giving a bit more meaningful and colorful. Since my girls and I love crafts as much as random acts of kindness, we will create a Thanksgiving craft to display their accomplishments and a cornucopia (the symbol of a bountiful harvest) seems to be the best representation for our bountiful supply of gifts!
For our cornucopia craft, the girls will cut out a cornucopia shape printed on a sheet of brown construction paper. (We’ll use this one from DLTK as a template.) Then, using the smaller templates, they’ll cut and color the leaves, fruits and vegetables to fill their cornucopias. After completing a random act of kindness, we’ll record what each girl gave on one of the shapes and paste it to their cornucopias. By the end of November, their horn should be plenty full. Then, as a reward for their kindness, I’ll laminate their cornucopias so they can use them as placemats and cherish their gifts of giving every day.
Now, that I’ve crawled out from under my never ending pile of laundry, I can write about our camping trip. Of course we had a fabulous time!
This was our second camping trip to Hillsborough Rive State Park, which I feel is the perfect campground for families. Our friends and we reserved campsites in the second loop which circles the playground. Our children played all day on the playground while we sat around and drank beer always staying in our line of sight. The restrooms are also located in the middle of the loop, which is very convenient too.
The moderately sized campsites offer a decent amount of shade provided by large pine and oak trees. With our camping limited supplies, my family and I don’t require a lot of room.
Hillsborough River State Park always offers a number of hiking trails, with the Florida Trail being the longest at approximately 3.6 miles. Saturday morning, I woke up with an obsession to run one of the trails at the park, but I really don’t know what possessed me to run the Florida trail by myself without my camera or mace. Along the path, the trail narrowed and I found the uneven terrain very challenging since I am used to running on flat paved surfaces. With several steep inclines, lots of overgrown weeds and trees roots, this trail definitely seemed to be the trail less traveled. The Florida Trail followed the river with an occasional rickety bridge to run across and some trees bent over the trail required a limbo move while I ran. The scenery was gorgeous, however, I couldn’t really enjoy the view because I was too busy watching my step as I stumbled over tree roots.
As I ran along the overgrown trail, I cleared the path for the next hiker or runner by running through spider webs. At one point, I completely lost my footing and wiped out. I fell to the ground and rolled. Fortunately, I suffered minor scrapes. I bounced back up, shook it off and kept running.
Then, I heard some rustling behind me and out of the corner my eye, I spotted a long bushy tail. After reading flyers posted around the park with warnings about coyotes, I became nervous that I was being followed by one. After being spotted, the fluffy tail creature hopped into a tree. Now, I worried that whatever creature I saw would pounce on me and drag my bloody carcass through the woods never to be found again. Thankfully, that never happened and I lived to tell my tail trail run tale. (Later, I learned from my friend John that I probably encountered a Red Fox.) But I had to laugh about all these silly events during my run which made me think of my running partner, Tiffany, who detests nature and running through it on our Starkey Trail runs with the Striders. I felt a bit like that as I ran along the Florida trail on my own. I had nature all over me!
5 Miles
54:12
Ave Pace 10:50
Later that morning, everyone went canoeing.
Our friends headed south down the river but we went north in the wrong direction. Our little detour led us to some small rapids which we may have missed if we followed the crowd or if a Park Ranger caught us.
The scenery along the Hillsborough River is much like the scenery along any Florida river with large canopies of large Cypress trees and Cypress knees popping up along the river banks. We saw a few large hollowed Cypress trees in the middle of the river which reminded us of something from a fantasy novel.
There were also these beautiful overgrown lavender wildflowers that I had never seen before and they attracted a variety of butterflies.
Of course, during our canoe trip, we spotted the usual Florida inhabitants such as turtles, gators and several herons.
Eventually, we caught up to our friends.
One set of friends had white knuckles as it was her first canoe trip and rumor has it that they flipped their canoe. Their faces have been blacked out to protect their identity.
Like, I said in my Mr. E’s Beautiful Blue’s post, this year’s camping trip was something out of a bad slapstick comedy film. Later that evening, one friend stumbled into a fire pit. We believe her fateful fall may have been caused by her blood alcohol level and the Benadryl another camper slipped her to help with her allergies. Before she plummeted face first into the fire pit, another friend caught her, but not before she singed some of her hair. Thankfully, she was fine and didn’t suffer any burns, but it was still scary. This photo was taken before the fateful fall into the fire. Again, the faces have been blacked out to protect the identity of the fallen and her drug pusher.
With all the ups and downs (literally), we had a great time. We’re already planning our next camping trip with mace and minus the Benadryl.
