I Run These Towns

Today is my 35th birthday, and it has me thinking of one of my all-time favorite movies: 13 Going on 30. If you haven't seen it (sadness) it's a 2004 film where a 13-year-old girl wants nothing more than to be grown up.  She wakes up one day in her own 30-year-old body (which, lucky for her, happens to be Jennifer Garner's body) while still mentally a teenager.  I remember being a little girl and wanting desperately to be a grown up. Sometimes I feel deliciously grown up like when I'm having dinner and a cocktail by myself in an airport. However at 13 nobody tells you about the mortgage payment or taking the dog to the vet or never actually having a snow day.  Despite that I wouldn't trade 35 for 30 or 25 or 13 for anything. As I reflect on this milestone birthday (halfway to 70? Gulp.), I realize that this age is unlike any other.  I remember a decade ago I was in the midst of a long relationship ending, I had just graduated from law school with no job prospec...

William Shakespeare said, "A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow."  I love this quote, and it's one that popped into my head after my third trip to Washington, D.C. this year to visit my best friend who recently moved back from overseas. Over a decade ago I met Charlotte, and we became instant friends. You've had that, right? That person you meet and feel like you've known that person forever.  Our friendship has made it through some rocky patches - things like long distances and girl drama - and yet she is still my go to friend for all of life's triumphs and crises.  After her living overseas for several years, I'm so excited to have her back on the same continent, in the same time zone, just a quick direct flight to National Airport. This is a friend who has always been so supportive of my running and even loaned me her fabulous pup for a quick ...

I think saying "no" is something many of us struggle with. We want to be helpful, we want people to like us. I have a tendency to say yes to everything, and when my schedule is bursting at the seams I wonder how on earth that happened. I'm working hard at saying no more often, and I'm starting with baby showers. I'm not a fan of showers in general - wedding showers or baby showers. I know the intention is good, but it's something that women are obligated to attend with and on behalf of other women, and they're mostly torture. I get the need for them, and I know that showers will never go away. But for the foreseeable future I will be saying no baby showers (with the rare exception of several good friends).  Despite the significant number of my amazing friends who are having children (many are already having their second or third child), I haven't attended a baby shower in about two and a half years. The last one I attended was when we had just deci...

I love running (obviously), but I've made a conscious effort to fit running into my already busy life and NOT build my life around running. It can be challenging, especially when training for a marathon, but running is part of my life. It isn't my entire life. Take this past weekend as an example. My sister, brother-in-law and niece came to Michigan to visit. They don't get up here very often (as a matter of fact it was my BIL's first time here), and I needed to get in a 12 mile long run over the weekend. I started thinking about them arriving Friday evening and how stressed I would be knowing I needed to run Saturday morning. So I got up at the crack of dawn on Friday and ran 12 miles before work. I was exhausted by lunch time, but my long run was finished. That meant enjoying gin and tonics Friday evening, walking around Michigan State's campus and sleeping in on Saturday morning. I did get up on Sunday morning and ran a quick three miles before we headed to G...

Last weekend my husband and I took a rather impromptu trip to Indianapolis, only about three and a half hours south, to get away for a few days.  I also decided to sign up for the Double Road Race , a new way to race where runners run a 10k, have a "halftime" and then run a 5k. We dropped our dogs off at the kennel and hightailed it to Indy.  It's an easy drive down I-69 through a lot of corn and...corn.  We dropped our stuff off at our hotel about a half a mile from downtown and immediately headed out to check things out.  Thanks to Yelp , lunch was a burger place, Punch Burger , downtown. I built my own turkey burger complete with guacamole and pico de gallo with (the kicker) sweet potato tots. It was the perfect way to introduce me to Indy. After lunch we headed to the state capitol building. We are on a mission to see all 50 state capitol buildings, and we arrived at the Indiana State Capitol at 2:10, exactly ten minutes after it closed. That means we will re...

I think I like the idea of a staycation, but I am way too restless to stay in my house for too long. I'll end up cleaning and organizing the whole place (not that it doesn't need it). We travel so much on the weekends that I've considered the last few weekends at home staycations of sorts. We've essentially been home for four straight weekends (potentially a new world record for us), and we've gotten to discover all the fun things we can do in our adopted hometown. This is random, but a few weekends ago we had some friends over for dinner and bought our dinner meat at Mert's Specialty Meats .  We've been hearing about Mert's for a while, and it turns out it's awesome. Maybe that doesn't seem like a fun thing to do on the weekend, but we love 1) entertaining and 2) food (not necessarily in that order), and their pork chops were delicious. Don't even get me started on the deliciousness of bacon and blue cheese stuffed burgers. I was the 1995 ...

This isn't my first post about the dressing for success, but I like it so much that I wanted to do another one. I like shoes. And clothes. A lot. I enjoy shopping, and traveling, and running. It's a rough life. I have a goal to be the best dressed runner at every race I'm running. I mostly succeed. I work hard at picking out something cute to wear for a race (I already know what I'm wearing for Marine Corps), and I think it's important. For me I love being a runner, but just as I do in the rest of my life I have to do it with style. Life, afterall, is too short to not spend it looking like I've got it together. One of my fav race outfits from the Cherry Blossom 10-miler earlier this year I am a loyal follower of " What Not to Wea r" (sadly in its last season), and I continue to be amazed at the number of people who think the way they dress is not important. When people see you, the first thing they see if you appearance. And if you look like a h...