What did you do for the beads?

This guy was not playing around with the beads!


Thankfully everyone that I train with also likes to have a good time. And since we live in the Red Neck Riviera, there seems to always be something going on. So here are a few pictures with the Mardi Gras parade:





Carla, Lisa, and I at the start of the day....

And us at the end with our 'accessories'







And even the snow birds came out for the party :)



In other news - another wonderful woman that I have been recently blessed to have in my life, Eberle, is an amazing triathlete. Has done 13+ Ironmen ALL OVER THE WORLD!! Anyway - as well all know as triathletes, we seem to have too much stuff. Well, Eberle is selling a bunch of her awesome goodies on E-bay. So check out her E-BAY STORE

Yeah, she's THAT badass:


Hottie in Vancouver - figure skater Evan Lysacek. I like the 'dirty hot' guys, but this guy is not hard on the eyes at all. Thoughts? :)

The King Cake

I'm not trying to 'milk' the recovery from my marathon - BUT I like taking time off of running. LOVE it actually. I don't hate running by any means, but sometimes I just need a break :) Anyway, I ran for the first time on Thursday and felt great. So, we've made up. But I'm still waiting for a few toe nails to fall off. Next week - back at it full force since my first Tri of the season as in a MONTH! Bring on the wetsuit - I'm ready.

Big J tried to pick up a king cake for me last week on his way home for a two day visit. But since the Saints won, NOTHING was open. So I had to settle for one from Winn-Dixie. Which was still pretty darn good. Let me tell you about my love for the Kind Cake. I'm not a huge sweets person. Chocolate Cake? No thanks. Ice Cream? Umm. Nope. Candy bars? Pass along. But a KING CAKE with cream cheese filling? YES YES YES! I could sit town and eat the whole thing. Which I did. Ok, it took me two days. But it was AWESOME! Thank goodness they are only around a few weeks out of the year.




Speaking of Mardi Gras - that means that lent is right around the corner. Last year I gave up FACEBOOK AND WINE. Not so much this year. But I will give up wine. Well, overall liquor. I can do it.

Random picture:



This is my cutie brother with his 'South Butt' shirt. As you can tell it's a spoof of North Face, some kid in St. Louis decided to sell some of these fun shirts to make $$$ for college, and it took off. Well, the North Face is now suing him. Interesting. And the best part - is that a friend of mine's father is one of the top dogs for North Face. Needless to say, I give him a pretty hard time for suing a kid just trying to better his life :)

Since the Olympics have started - I'm going to have to start throwing out Olympic Hottie of the Post. And today's eye candy? Only the HOTTEST SKIER ever - Bode Miller. Yum!

A 'bridge out' sign will not stop us!

Since I've wrapped up my marathon training (for now) I have been able to spend this past week in the pool and on my bike. Thank goodness. I don't know about you guys, but I get so burnt out on running the last month of marathon training...I just want to spend some time floating around in the water or cruising around on the princess!!

Now, for all of those guys up north, I'm so sorry about the snow. But that is why I live in the 'sunshine' state, to avoid all of that goodness. And I'm not trying to rub it in that we got in a pretty darn good 60 mile ride yesterday :) But we did run into a slight issue - bridge out. But did that stop us? No way. Specially with an adventure racing junkie with us.


As you can tell - I was not too excited on the idea






Yeah. We're a bad ass biker gang.

How about those Saints? Ahhh..New Orleans fans. They just want to get drunk and have a good time. The best fans ever - just excited to be down in Miami. Big J is still down in Louisiana tuna fishing and will be partying with all of the crazy fishing Creoles munching down on 200+ lbs of crawfish and a smoked pig.

Hope everyone had a good weekend - and try not to each too many chicken wings tonight!!

Miami Marathon Race Report

Start of the marathon.

First of all I would like to give a huge shout out to my mom. She is awesome. I love her so much to come down from St. Louis to do this whirlwind trip with me. She and my father always give such amazing support to whatever crazy hobby that us kids get into. And also a huge hug to my cousin and his girlfriend Adel for showing us around South Beach as well as letting us crash at their awesome condo.

Ok. For those of you who don't know how huge Florida is, it's freaking huge. Yes, I do live in the same state - but it's a 9+ hour drive (plus a time change thrown in there) to get from Panama City Beach to Miami. But thankfully I had good old mom to help with the drive!

On Saturday, we went to my favorite french sidewalk restaurant and had the proper 'day before a marathon breakfast' - wonderful proper French crapes with amazing coffee:




My Cousin Tim and I.

Let me throw in a quick note about Tim. He is a reporter for the

Miami New Times

and writes amazing stories. He was one of the only American journalists allowed into Guantanamo Bay. Anyway - he somehow got his hands on a press pass for the Superbowl this weekend! Really? What!?! Can you bring a friend?

So after breakfast (or brunch) we walked on over to packet pickup and spent some time at the expo (which is always a good time). As I was expressing my love of KSwiss to my cousin - the Kswiss rep actually offered me a job :) Ha! After going through the maze of vendors, Tim and Adel headed back to the condo while mom and I walked around South Beach and had some lunch.


My drink at lunch. Coconut water..yumm!!

But mom's looks much better

And we also saw quite a few of these -

How many can you count?

So that evening for dinner, Tim had a ton of friends over and grilled fresh tuna, veggies, and his special super secret homemade hummus:



And I laid my goodies out so I'll be ready to head out of the house at 4:45am



Up at at it early - Tim (bless him) got up to take me downtown at 4:45...and it was...75 out with 95% humidity. HOTTER THEN HELL. Oh well. What can I do? It's Southern Florida! But the race was awesome. If anyone wants a good marathon - try this guy out. It's flat, very scenic and also has great support. Also, the start is at the American Airlines building (where the Miami Heat play) which equals clean bathrooms! Whoohoo! No need to use a port-o-potty here! But the one downer is that there are a million half marathoners and they run with the marathoners until mile 13.

My goal was to get a sub four - but ended up running a 4:16 (per the garmin 26.58 miles - ugh. I hate running extra!) But still that is a PR for me by 11 minutes! And I felt great, well, as great as you can feel after a marathon. No injuries, just come crappy purple toenails.



Hope everyone had a great weekend!!

Yes I'll take that PR

Short race report - will get some more detail and photos as soon as I get home. But what a race. The Miami Marathon is awesome. Yeah, it was a bummer that 1/2 marathoners were with the marathons until they turned off at mile 13, but the race was ran very well. Oh yeah, let me mention at 5am it was 75 out at 93% humidity? Thank goodness is was cloudy so we didn't pass out with heat stroke! But I ended up coming in at a 4:16 - was aiming for a four hour, but I'll take that! Double fist pump!

Congrats to everyone else who races this weekend!!!

I'm In Miami...

It's 4am - and you can still hear people rocking out :) It will be interesting to see people coming out of the bars as we're running by them! Love it. Ahhhh...Miami, what a great town!

Ugh. The taper.

So the Miami ING Marathon is this weekend! Mom is flying in tomorrow and we'll be heading down south on Friday. We'll be staying with my awesome cousin who lives in South Beach which is going to be a blast. I'm so excited for this weekend...if I can just get through this taper.

I'm not sure if I am the only one - but when I'm tapering I get into a mood. Just an emotional wreck. Big J is in Louisiana tuna fishing, which is a good thing I guess because he does not have to deal with me. But I'll get over it - I always do!

So what am I doing right now? I made an awesome homemade pizza, sipping on some wine and I'm watching Spirit of the Marathon to get me into the marathon mood (which is helping). If you have not seen this movie - watch it!!

And I did have a wondeful sunset to watch as I was finishing up my running this evening:


Hope everyone is having a great week!!