Livin' the Dream in Lima

As some of you may know, I've been  traveling around quite a bit this week for my spring break. I spent some time with my BFF in Moline, IL before heading up to Milwaukee with mi madre for a whirlwind "foodie fun" trip.  Our first stop: Taste of Home magazine visitor center! Rather than give you a play by play of the trip, I thought I'd just highlight the important details. Much more fun that way. At the visitor center they have an awesome outlet store for Taste of Home products.  Like this super-awesome " Egg Cuber ." Because everyone needs to be able to make a square egg. (?!?) To be completely honest, I would probably eat hard-boiled eggs more often if they were square. And if they didn't give me gas. Unfortunately this super-fab product did not come home with me. I might have purchased 4 new cookbooks though. Whoops. They also had a great selection of clothing at the outlet store. Forget the Limited, I'm stocking my wardrobe wi...

Spring break! Woot woot for a week free of whining, excuses, and waking up early. ;-) Now, spring break vacations usually mean a trip to the beach or somewhere else equally tropical. Not this year. I'm taking a grand ole' tour of the Midwest! Starting with a trip home to see my parents, then up to northern IL to see my BFF from college, and then to Wisconsin for a girly getaway with my mom. Lots of driving, yes. Lots of fun, totally ! Sadly, I am sans Business Man this week, because not all jobs have spring breaks. Who woulda thunk? I got home last night, and enjoyed a nice dinner out with my mom, dad, aunt, uncle, & cousin. One of the best things about coming home? Whenever we eat out, my meal's always taken care of. Thanks Tina & Kent! This morning, I woke up too early, around 7. Stupid time zone difference. Oh wells. I got up and had one thing on the brain: Yasso 800's ! It was too cold for it being March 27th. 23*F with a windchill of 15*F. Yikes. ...

Some days, more than others, you appreciate the simple things in life. A sunny, springtime day. (Even though it's 27*F outside... I'm wondering if the temps will ever get warm again.) Yes, the sun is out. It is behind me in the pic. The ability to walk down stairs without pain. Or get up off the couch without pain. Who knew running 20 miles would make someone so sore, two days later? (I think I've got a solid case of DOMS--delayed onset muscle soreness... hoping to be good to go by tomorrow.) A relaxing morning sipping coffee with the one you love while browsing through old cookbooks. And, finally, one of life's simplest treats: banana bread.  Yum-O! I've had some ripe bananas on my counter all week, just begging to be made into a loaf of bread. I spent some time in the kitchen this morning working on a few 'projects', and this happened to be one of them.  I know everyone probably has their go-to recipe for banana bread, but I wa...

Goodness, it has been a looong week. Next week is Spring Break, and all the kidd-os at school have decided to just shut down this week... ya know, cuz' we'll be on break soon! That means they shouldn't have to do any work, or keep in dress code, or bring pencils to math class, or anything of that sort. It also includes whining. Lots and lots of whining. And not just from the students. Anyways, tomorrow marks the last day of school before break, and we even get out early! I originally was planning on doing my long run for this week tomorrow, since I'd have extra time, but figured that I'd probably want to party hard after school (aka take a long nap) rather than go run for 3 hours. So, I decided to do my long run today. And I ran inside. On the treadmill. Before pic... super excited to be a hamster for 3 hours. Did I mention it is cold again in the Bean Town? I mean, it's not super-cold, but it's cold. I spent 2 hours outside with the kidd-os at...

First of all, I want to say "Hello and welcome!" to anyone coming over from SkinnyRunner 's site! Thanks for checking out my lil' blog! And, SR said I'm from Boston, the Beantown. Not exactly... I'm from a small town in Ohio named after a bean, hence the "Bean Town".  Here are a few links to some of my race recaps, if you're interested. :-) BBO 4-Mile (3/12/2011) Indianapolis Monumental Half-Marathon (11/6/2010) Run Clark Lake  (8/7/2010) As I've just got 6 weeks to go until the Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon... I decided I'd better pick up the slack on my speed workouts. I started out the training cycle super-strong, with a tempo workout and interval workout each week. That slowly faded to just a tempo run, and then now, just easy runs. Not cool. Source So yesterday I decided to give Yasso 800's a try. The idea of the workout is that you take your goal marathon time and run it as an 800m interval. Then a...

This past Friday night, my Business Man and I took a road trip north! One of my BFF's from college (Kristi) and her husband just moved back up to Michigan about a month ago, when he finished his training with the National Guard. I hadn't seen Kristi or her sweet babe since October, and her husband (Clay) since last July at our wedding! We were long overdue for a visit. We took off as soon as school let out, and got there in time for din-din, and were served some dee-lish fish & chips. They then introduced me to a new game, Settlers of Catan. Now, sometimes I get a little confused with games that require a lot of thought and strategy. I thought for sure that I would not like this game. But once I got the hang of it, it was super-fun! Now I can see why people can play it for hours on end. I did not win, but I did win the award for Longest Road. That's gotta count for something, right? Sweet, sweet victory! The next day, we got up and went for a run. Obviously....