New year, new domain!

Starting today, Kara’s Marathon has a new home:

http://www.karathon.com !!

All future posts will only be published on karathon.com, so make sure to update your bookmarks and Google readers!!

2009: a year in pictures

First, let’s start with New Year’s Eve 2008 in Buffalo with the in-laws:

February: Boston!

Matt’s fuzzy pillow:

June: Spain!

June: windy wedding in Long Beach

More puppy love:

Crazy eyes McGee:

Thanksgiving!

Our first Christmas “tree”:

“Christmas morning” in South Carolina in early December:

Girls on the Run 5k:

JackRabbit commercial shoot:

Sabres/Rangers!

Christmas at my godmother’s house:

My fuzzy friend in the first snowfall of 2009:

Here’s to a fantastic 2010! Happy New Year!

Here’s to 2010!

Morning!  So, apartment guests and a very long late afternoon nap interfered slightly with my posting last night — many apologies!  I promise to prioritize blogging in the New Year and not leave you guys hanging

Speaking of which, it’s time for my 2010 New Year’s Resolutions!  As opposed to my relatively boring and crummy 2009, 2010 is going to be a HUGE one for me/us: I’ll be running my first marathon, Matt is getting his Ph.D., we’ll be taking a big vacation to celebrate Matt’s graduation, we’ll (more than likely) be moving out of our apartment, and hopefully starting to think more seriously about adding to our family. 

I’ve divided up my resolutions into a few different categories, and I’ve added some mini-goals to a few resolutions that will take longer to achieve (paying down debt and losing weight, for example).  I really like lists!    I’ll re-post this list a few times during the year — maybe even the first of every month? — to see how I’m doing and where I can improve. 

Here goes:

Fitness

• Run a sub-2:30 half-marathon, either the Buffalo Half in May or maybe the Philadelphia Distance Run in September
• Go to the gym at least 3 times per week
• Do yoga at least once a week
• Train for and complete the 2010 NYC Marathon, ideally in under 5 hours
• Become a certified Spinning instructor
• Incorporate strength training into my workout schedule at least once per week, either at the gym or at home on the Wii.

Weight Loss

• Get into the healthy weight range for my height.  I’m 5’5″, so that would be between 120-150 lbs., totally reachable in 2010.  I think I’ve failed in the past because I set unreasonable weight goals for myself, so this time I’m going to just focus on the range and then find my happy weight within it.  Mini-goal for January: lose 5 lbs. of holiday nonsense weight to get back on track with a bang!
• Finish 2010 lighter than when I started it.  This is one of my huge regrets about 2009 — right now, I’m about 10 or so lbs. heavier than I was on 1/1/09, and it’s frustrating to think that I “wasted” this year, weight loss-wise.
• Track everything I eat.  If I don’t track [and exercise], I don’t lose.  Period.

Financial

• Stick to my budget/saving plan and significantly pay down my debt in 2010, in preparation for merging our finances, house down payments and babies.  I’m hoping that thinking about the long-term will help me stick to my budget; while I’m in pretty good shape financially, I do have some debt and don’t want to be the reason we get a bad mortgage rate or anything like that.  Also, babies are expensive!  We can’t be thinking about paying off credit cards on top of paying for day care, baby clothes and all sorts of other stuff.
• Don’t use credit cards at all in 2010.  My only exception to this rule will be if I lose enough weight that my clothes don’t fit anymore, and I need to buy some new ones.  If that wonderful situation comes to pass, I’ll set a strict budget for myself and have some fun!
• Make sure $$ in savings STAYS in savings.  I’ve got a direct deposit into my savings account for personal stuff and Christmas 2010 (I realized this year that I should start saving NOW), but I have to pretend this money is under lock and key until December.  
• Try to find a part-time job of some kind to pay off debt faster/pad our savings account.  I’ve got too much free time in the evenings, and you know what they say about idle hands (you use them to shove food in your mouth), so finding some low-stress part-time gig, maybe even some freelance writing, sounds like it would make a ton of sense for me.  Anyone want to hire me?
• Limit take-out to two meals per week.  This will be good for our wallets and my waistline!  Mini-goal: limit take-out to 3 meals/week in January, if it is too hard to adjust for both of us.

Health

• Go 99.9% vegetarian!  That 0.1% will be locally and humanely raised meat enjoyed on a special occasion only.  And who knows?  Maybe I’ll lose my taste for meat altogether and stay veggie 100% of the year…
• Commit to eating locally grown foods in season.  I know I won’t be able to do this 100%, but I would like to visit the farmer’s market and reduce my carbon footprint as much as possible this year by becoming a locavore.  Plus, fresh foods in season taste SO much better than their scary available-year-round counterparts!  Mini-goal: hit the farmer’s market at least twice in January.
• Track everything I eat on the blog.  I think the hardest thing will be to remember to take pictures of everything!  I’m sure I can do it though.
• Cut out certain “dangerous” foods from my life, at least temporarily.  I’m going to cut out chocolate, peanut butter and all sweets (candy, cookies, etc.) for at least the month of January, and maybe longer.  It is too hard for me to have these things around without bingeing on them, so I’m just going to stop cold turkey. 
• Pass my certification exam to be a Nutrition and Wellness Consultant.  One of the items on my to-do list today is to write up a reading/study schedule, and I can’t wait!  Mini-goal: finish the Nutrition textbook by the end of February.

Life/Happiness/Etc.

• Make blogging a priority.  I’m committing to blogging at least once a day for the year — I think that’s totally manageable!
• “Come out of the closet” as a health blogger.  I’ve only really shared my blog and weight loss journey with a few close friends and family members, and that needs to change.  Even though I’ve made substantial progress, I’m still pretty ashamed of how overweight I used to be.  Part of getting over that and really owning my journey is sharing my story with the world.  I’m going to post links to my blog on Facebook, continue to comment on other health blogs, and generally work on getting my name out there in the world.
• Watch less TV/read more.
• Cook more/experiment with new ingredients.  This is going to be a BIG one now that I’m going vegetarian.  I’m excited to try new fruits and veggies, new cooking methods (I think the crockpot will be my new BFF), and generally have more fun with my food!
• Improve our apartment organization/toss clutter.  Our one-bedroom apartment is getting a bit too crowded, and most of that is my fault.  I need to stay on top of messes (if there’s an available flat surface, I’ll pile some crap on it), clean more regularly, figure out a better organization system for our stuff, and stop bringing more stuff into the apartment (the “don’t use credit cards” resolution will help that for sure).

Alright, that’s my list!  I know it is exhaustive and a little bit intense, but my frustration with my lack of progress in 2009 is really motivating me to start 2010 with a bang and make it a great year.  I want to be in amazing shape — physically, emotionally and financially – for our summer vacation (UGH bathing suits!), the marathon, the move and (maybe) trying for babies.

Do you make resolutions?  If so, are you successful at keeping them? 

Highs and lows

Happy almost New Year, bloggie friends!  Apologies for my long absence; I spent every waking moment of my “vacation” (it was fun, but wasn’t very relaxing at all!) catching up on sleep, catching up with family, and running around like a crazy person.  I also ate close to my body weight in cookies, a fact my pants are not letting me forget today. 

The past week has been full of awesome highs and not so great lows.  Here are a few:

Highs:

• A fun and stress-free Christmas Eve with my family and Christmas Day with Matt’s
• Spending Christmas morning relaxing and opening presents with the in-laws
• Getting cute new cold weather running clothes from Santa!
• Spending some of my hard-earned $ at the mall – I never go to the mall!
• Buying this bad boy on crazy sale
• Playing Clue for the first time and winning my first game
• Spending time with Matt’s wonderful grandmothers
• Shopping at Wegman’s, also known as the best grocery store in the history of the world
• The rental car agent who was SURE she knew me from somewhere (nope, lady, I live in a city you’ve never visited) and who removed the $0.40 per-mile surcharge on our car rental; 400+ miles home=an additional $160 we did NOT need to spend

Lows:

• Not sleeping well on the soft mattress at the in-law’s house (and the 5-day backache that followed
• Horrendous cramps all day yesterday
• Our 7-hour drive home taking over 8 1/2 hours, thanks to tons of snow and icy driving conditions between Buffalo and Syracuse
• Coming home to a flooded kitchen in our apartment
• Staying up until 2am cleaning our apartment alone (Matt drove out to my dad’s to pick up our pup)
• Matt’s morning today: driving to NYC in rush hour traffic, spending 30 minutes looking for a parking spot, finally finding a spot and dropping off the pup at our apt. only to get a ticket in the 5 minutes he was upstairs ($95!), then coming home from dropping off the car to dog poop all over the floor

Here’s hoping that today is a better day!

The calm before the cookie avalanche

Evening!  Hope your Christmas Eve (or Thursday, if you don’t celebrate the holiday) is going well, blog friends!  I’ll post a recap of Christmas Eve dinner sometime tomorrow or over the weekend; we’ll see when the festivities die down!  When I’m visiting the in-laws I tend not to sleep very much — my brother and sister-in-law are both college students with correspondingly crazy sleep schedules — so I might wind up writing some of my posts at 3am

Anyway, I wanted to make sure my pre-celebration eats were as substantial and nutritious as possible; I foresee an avalanche of cookies (delicious!) headed my way over the next few days.  I didn’t get off to the best start; instead of having a real breakfast, I just had two cups of coffee.  Honestly, it wasn’t a decision made to save calories, I just wasn’t hungry!  Too much cookie snacking while baking last night, I guess…

Around noontime I ran a few quick errands (bank, returning some extra Christmas presents) and grabbed an awesome lunch: a Hugh Jass salad with cucumber, carrot, onion, broccoli and fresh mozzarella:

Served with pita chips and a single-serve hummus on the side.  Tasty and super-filling!  I usually get a bit of shredded cheddar cheese on my salads, but I decided to change it up and go with the fresh mozz.  Honestly, it’s not my favorite cheese; I like its creamy, soft mouth feel (ahem-that’swhatshesaid), but it always tastes sorta bland and flavorless to me.

I finished off my lunch with a pumpkin scone:

SO yummy!  This was my sorta festive, sorta healthy treat for the day. 

So, on a slightly more somber note, I was inspired by Erin’s post to reflect a bit about the holidays and missing loved ones.  My mom passed away almost four years ago, and memories of her and the last Christmas we spent together are still incredibly fresh in my mind. 

The last two weeks of her life were spent in a hospital bed, and my dad and I took turns visiting her every day, during every available window of visiting hours (she was in the cardiac ICU, and they only let visitors in a few times a day).  It was scary and heartbreaking and I ate like it was my job to mask all the pain I was feeling.

There are so many emotions associated with the loss of a loved one: anger and sadness that they are gone and missing out on important events in your life, frustration that they didn’t take better care of themselves when they were alive, regret that you never got to say a proper goodbye, etc.  I bought a ton of books to deal with my grief and anger (largely due to the fact that most of my mom’s health problems were her own fault), but unfortunately nothing but time made things better.

Christmas, like all holidays (for me, Mother’s Day is the WORST day of the year, hands down), is pretty tough to get through without thinking about my mom constantly.  It doesn’t have anything to do with any special Christmas memories or anything, just this lingering feeling of sadness that someone very important is missing.  The Christmas list feels incomplete without her name on it, I guess; I love buying presents for people, even my notoriously difficult to shop for mom.

Making things worse is the fact that the anniversary of her death (January 4th) is right around the corner.  I start dreading that day the moment winter hits.  I’ve been lucky the past two years; January 4th fell on a weekend in ’08 and ’09, so it was totally acceptable to spend the day curled up on the couch, doing absolutely nothing but wallowing in sadness.  This year, I have to be at work and pretend to be human for the day, and I’m already dreading it.

I don’t want to end this post on a somber note, so let me say this: tell the people you love that you love them, as often as you possibly can, no matter what.  Treasure every minute you have with your family members.  Memorize their favorite stories.  Ask them questions about their lives.  Learn from them.  Never take them for granted.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Wonderful Christmastime

Merry Christmas Eve, everyone!  I’ve got an almost full day at work, followed by a hair appointment, dinner/exchanging gifts at my aunt and uncle’s, handing off Barkley (and his big bag of stuff) to my Dad, and finally heading to the airport to spend Christmas Day with Matt’s family.  And all on 5 hours of sleep – phew!

This will be the fourth year Matt and I have spent Christmas together – we started in 2006, the year we got engaged – and we’re very lucky that our respective family get-togethers schedule well around each other!  We get to see my entire family (the local extended fam on my mom’s side, the people we usually spend holidays with) on Christmas Eve, then get to see most of Matt’s big extended family (just his mom’s side) Christmas Day.  Usually we’re also able to see some of the cousins/Matt’s grandma on his dad’s side too, since we stay upstate for a few days and try to get in as much family time as we can.  Thank goodness Matt’s family is just a short plane trip away!

The one thing that isn’t so fun this year is our flight schedule.  We’ve taken the first flight out on Christmas morning the past three years – it leaves NYC around 7ish and arrives in Buffalo by 8:30.  We both hated waking up that early, but it became a bit of a tradition to catch a cab to JFK airport at 5am!  Also, the airport is dead on Christmas morning (not to mention the mostly empty plane), which makes travel FAR more pleasant. 

This year, however, JetBlue decided to cancel the early morning departure to Buffalo, so we had to choose between arriving around noontime Christmas Day (BOO) or taking the last flight out on Christmas Eve.  We decided on the latter – who wants to open presents around the tree at noon?  (You have to exchange gifts in the morning, preferably in PJs.  Them’s the rules!)  Unfortunately, leaving at 11 on Christmas Eve means we have to cut my family celebration a bit short so we can get to the airport on time, which is no fun.  Also, we haven’t been at the airport on Christmas Eve before, so we’re a little nervous about the crowds…

I’ll be back later tonight posting from terminal 5 – hope everyone has a wonderful day!

In a runk

(That’s rut + funk, by the way)

So, remember this post?  I committed earlier this month to following the fake-it-‘til-you-make-it approach of weight loss, tracking and exercising whatever I ate, and hoping that increased accountability would result in better outcomes.  Well, it hasn’t worked out exactly like that.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that I haven’t posted many of my eats in the past week.  That’s because they have been about 85% garbage: peanut butter truffles, cupcakes, far too much take-out, etc. etc. 

Also, now that I’m committed to going veggie in the New Year, I’m embarking on some sort of “meat last hurrah” (hmm, that sounds vaguely dirty), very similar to the “last meal” before a diet starts.  Yesterday, for example, I had ribs from one of our favorite places for the last time.  When we’re in Buffalo later this week, I’ll say goodbye to chicken wings (don’t call them Buffalo wings there!), pepperoni pizza and meatball subs. 

I fall victim to the all-or-nothing mentality far too often.  It’s a little different with going vegetarian – there are things that will be out of my diet for good come January 1^st – but I struggle with having treats/indulgences in moderation.  More often than not, if I bring cookies into the house, they are gone before I can even portion them out.  Peanut butter?  Forget it!  The jar is gone in a matter of days, and I wind up hiding it at the bottom of the garbage can in embarrassment (yes, Matt – I hide food from you sometimes, and I’m sorry!).  If treats are in the house I eat them without restraint, but if I decide to eliminate them from my diet, I crave them constantly.  So what’s the solution?

Members of Overeaters Anonymous actually eliminate certain foods from their diet that they believe they have no control over, like white flour and sugar.  OA treats food like an addiction, just like alcoholism or drug abuse, and the only way to successfully recover from an addiction is to eliminate the thing you crave from your life, full stop.  For example, a recovering alcoholic can’t just have a sip of wine with dinner – they have to finish the whole bottle, and then some – so they abstain completely. 

Unfortunately, you can’t eliminate food from your diet entirely, so you have to focus on the things you are most drawn to and  binge on.  If you could eat pasta every meal of every day, it’s gotta go.  If cookies are your vice, you probably should cut sugar and chocolate from your diet entirely.  It’s an interesting theory, but I don’t know if I could really commit to it for the long-term.  Food is meant to be enjoyed, right?  We’re supposed to be able to have everything in moderation, aren’t we?

Then, there’s intuitive eating.  I won’t go into all the details of this philosophy – Allison has an awesome post about this today – but basically IE suggests that you listen to what your body is craving, eat what you want when you’re hungry, and stop when you’re satisfied.  That’s the ideal in theory, but how many of us are really in-tune with our bodies to know what we’re really craving?  If I listened to what I think my body is telling me, I’d have peanut butter and chocolate at every meal and weigh close to 400 lbs., I’m sure   The thing is, though, that’s not really my body talking.  That’s my brain when it is bored/sad/stressed and wants something comforting and delicious! 

So, where do I go from here?  With the holidays in full-swing I’m not going to make any broad, sweeping commitments to changing my diet – I’m just going to do my best to get through the next few days with minimal scale damage.  My plan is to really enjoy the stuff I only eat once a year, and cut back on the other boring stuff.  I don’t need to fill up on chips and pretzels before Christmas Eve dinner, you know? 

I’m also going to do my best to take pictures of what I eat (and blog about them) while I’m in Buffalo for the long weekend, and get in at least one trip to the gym.  My in-laws are INCREDIBLY supportive of my weight loss journey, so I know it won’t be an issue if I run out for an hour or something for a workout. 

My other big plan for the remainder of the year is to actually finish reading Intuitive Eating – I’ve struggled to get through it for months now, largely because it feels like it was written for me!

Alright, time to finish up lunch — hope everyone has a great day!

What are your goals for the rest of the year?  Do you have a holiday treats survival plan? 

Have you read Intuitive Eating?  If so, what did you think?

Full house

Afternoon, blog friends!  Quick post-and-run during lunch, as I’ve got a crazy busy day today!  Also, I feel sleepy-hungover (so overtired that it feels like you partied a little too hard last night, even thuogh you didn’t), so apologies for any spelling or coherence errors in this post

I had a very successful afternoon doing round one of Christmas cookie baking; I made peanut butter cup cookies, oatmeal flax cookies and oatmeal craisin (I don’t love raisins).  Round two is scheduled for Wednesday night, and sugar cookies, homemade buttercream frosting and classic Toll House chocolate chip cookies are on the agenda.  Full recap of my baking adventures to come tomorrow!!

After a long day and even longer evening of catching up with an old friend — Terry, Matt’s old co-worker and groomsman at our wedding – we crashed at 2:30am, totally exhausted.  Unfortunately, I had to be up bright and early for an 8am meeting, so I was up at 7:30 and out the door in a matter of minutes.  Thank goodness I live 5 blocks from the office!

During the meeting I snacked on some fresh fruit salad and a cup of pomegranate green tea (unpictured, for obvious reasons), then ran out to Starbucks for some serious breakfast: venti skinny vanilla latte and oatmeal with brown sugar.  My stomach needed something hearty, and my brain needed the caffeine!

I also had a Fruit2Day as a mid-afternoon snack.  I don’t usually have so many fruit/veggie servings done this early in the day, so it was a nice change of pace!  I think I’m officially done with Clif bars, at least for the next few months, so you’ll be seeing lots more fruit and grain breakfast combos.

Lunch was a mixed bag of stuff: mixed greens salad with pesto tortellini, pita chips and hummus:

Not bad!  I’m not a huge fan of microgreens like arugula and radicchio(and am generally not a big veggie person, like Caitlin), so I’d have a nice bite of leaves with a tortellini.  Perfecto!

I may have snacked on a few of the cookies I brought with me today, but I didn’t photograph them, ergo they don’t exist

Time to get back to work!  Half-marathon training starts today — I’ve got a 2-miler scheduled that I’m going to crank out as fast as I can after work.  Then, dinner with one of my oldest and best friends, followed by a maids-of-honor sleepover at our apartment   It’s a busy day, and we’ll have a pretty full apartment tonight — our one-bedroom is not built for a big crowd — but I can’t wait!!

Back tomorrow (most likely) with a recap — have a great day!

P.S.: I’m getting the H1N1 vaccine tomorrow morning at work — did anyone else get it?  If so, did you have any side effects?  Matt got the nasal spray and he was fine, but I’m getting the shot… 

Snow Dogs

So, after a couple of glasses of wine last night, I knew I wasn’t going to run this morning.  Guess I’m not hardcore, but that’s okay…but congrats to Nicole for finishing the 15K in under 2 hours and qualifying for guaranteed entry into the 2010 NYC Marathon!!  I’ll see you out there

Anyway, happy first snow in NYC!  The weather outside is not so frightful right now, but it sounds like the worst is still to come — close to two feet of snow is expected to accumulate overnight.  Ugh!  I busted out these puppies to take Barkley for a walk:

I know my boots aren’t particularly unsightly, but they are by far my least favorite pair of shoes.  I love looking at pictures of snow-covered city streets, but HATE walking around in the snow!  The snow immediately turns to dirty, exhaust-coated slush, and the snow and salt stain your pants every time you go outside.  Double ugh!  Also, winter is my least favorite season to be a dog owner; no matter how cold it is, the pup still needs to go outside

Speaking of my four-legged friend, here are a few shots I took on his afternoon walk:

I love the mid-snowfall shots!  I also took a few shots of my favorite snow puppy:

Got some dandruff there, pup?

While we were out on our stroll, we made a stop at Barkley’s favorite place on earth: the pet store!  Now, we’re not the types of pet owners that like to dress up our dog (no offense to those who do, of course!), but boots/foot coverings are really necessary in the city in the wintertime.  The ice, cold slush and salt on the sidewalk (or whatever chemical de-icers places use) really irritate his paws.  Last year, Barkley would actually balance on three legs while waiting for the light to change so one paw would be off the cold sidewalk — poor thing!

We’ll give his new paw covers a try tonight and I’ll report back with how well they work.  Barkley might’ve also gotten an early visit from Santa Paws today…

This is my favorite picture from the “Santa Paws” Google image search, btw:

Alright, time to veg out some more with Don Draper, Mario, Luigi and wine  Back later!  Be sure to drive safe if you’re traveling in this snow!!

Hardcore.

**On an unrelated blog bizness note, I’m going to make the move to self-hosting to start 2010 on a new foot!  Let me know what you like about my current layout and what you’d like to see change.  Should I add any additional pages?  Additional post tags?  Also, can you see my current banner?  I can view it on some computers, but not others.

You’ll see this in a number of posts in the next week, as I make the final tweaks to karathon.com!  **

While I consider myself to be a runner, sometimes I don’t think I’m a real runner.  I say this because I NEVER run in the rain, snow, cold or extreme heat, unless I absolutely have to (one of my nine races to qualify for guaranteed marathon entry was a 10K in the rain).  I’m perfectly happy to run on the treadmill — when I’m not training for a race, I don’t run super long distances anyway — but, like I said, I feel less hardcore than other runners (like this super hardcore woman, for example).

So, anyway, there’s a 15K race tomorrow morning — 9.3 miles! — that a friend of mine (my lovely workout buddy Nicole!) suggested we run together.  She has to run it; the 15K is the last NYRR race of the year to qualify for the 2010 NYC Marathon, and she still has one more to complete to guarantee her place.  I, on the other hand, don’t have to, and have had to run, or not to run? in a constant loop (like the numbers from the radio tower on LOST) in my head all day.

On the one hand, it would be lovely to start the day off with a long run with great company.  Also, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t regret it if I went.  I’ve only ever regretted running one race: the 2007 Grete’s Great Gallop Half-Marathon in Central Park.  I wasn’t prepared AT ALL for 13.1 miles, much less 13.1 incredibly hilly miles in the park!  I crapped out at mile 8 and walked home with my tail between my legs, in a TON of pain.  Ugh

On the other hand, there are a few cons: the race starts at 8am.  It is going to snow in NYC tomorrow.  Even if it isn’t snowing during the race, it is COLD out.  Race day registration will cost me $25, $25 I don’t need to spend.  Also, you haven’t run more than 6 miles in MONTHS.  Decisions, decisions!

The one good thing is that I have an answer for (almost!) all of the cons.

The race starts at 8am? That’s not that early!  You should be up anyway; your weekday sleep is all messed up when you sleep in too late on weekends.

It is going to snow in NYC tomorrow.  Weather forecast says it won’t snow until Saturday afternoon.  BOOM!  Lawyered.

Even if it isn’t snowing during the race, it is COLD out.  Remember how you JUST said you wanted to be more of a hardcore runner?  Running a 15K in below-freezing weather totally gives you running street cred, and even more if it snows during the race!!

Race day registration will cost me $25, $25 I don’t need to spend.  Eh, you’ve wasted plenty of money on stuff you don’t need before.  Plus, you just spent some $$ on cold weather running gear — you need to use it to make it worthwhile!

Also, you haven’t run more than 6 miles in MONTHS.  Okay, this one is a pretty legit excuse.

So, what would you do if you were me?  Would you brave the cold, spend the cash and run in the morning with your friend?  Or would you stay snuggled up in bed, warm and dry but decidedly NOT hardcore?  It’s a tough call…