personal goals

I am so, so proud of my soon-to-be husband this morning! He, along with some of our friends who were in town visiting, ran the Athens Half Marathon on Sunday morning. He signed up over the summer indicating that he could run it in under 2 hours and 30 minutes. After training for a few months, he set a personal goal of running it in under 2 hours. Well.....

My future mister ran 13.1 miles and beat his goal by over TEN minutes!!

1:46:25 - 259th out of 1791, 29th out of 123 in the men's 25-29 age division

He deserved it, as did the rest of our friends who ran! Here are some more pictures of our weekend:

Saturday night I cooked everyone a spaghetti dinner - the boys were watching the UGA/UK game

pinning their bibs onto their shirts

all dressed and ready to go

City Hall at 6:30 am

the runners

and they're off!

at the halfway point I started jumping up and down and causing a big racket

look at all those runners!

Jonathan at the finish line

Patrick at the finish - unfortunately this guy stepped right into my shot

Nathan at the finish

Katelyn at the finish

the future mister and his groomsmen, post-race

so proud!

City Hall at 9:55 am

Did you and/or your fiance set any personal goals prior to the wedding?

clean eating

I have always considered myself a pretty healthy eater. I don't have much of a sweet tooth and love fruits and vegetables, except for a select few (sorry brussel sprouts).

(source)

Toward the end of college I started to enjoy cooking and trying out new recipes. I even took a vegan-based nutrition course my last semester. Lately, though, I've been in sort of a cooking funk. I come home at the end of the day and just don't feel like making anything. Nothing sounds appealing, and of course I feel that whatever I do make, I've made a million times before. I have a subscription to Rachel Ray, but the few times I've tried her recipes, they haven't been too successful.

Well last week one of my co-workers came to my rescue when she introduced me to Clean Eating magazine. I only browsed through her copy, but ended up purchasing my own because it looked quite promising.


The website describes clean eating as "consuming food in its most natural state...It's not a diet; it's a lifestyle approach to food and its preparation, leading to health, well-being, and a lean look." The section I tried out first was their 5 day meal plan for less than $50. The magazine offers 5 recipes and a grocery list. I took that list with me on Sunday and it really did add up to less than $50. I've tried 4 recipes so far, and only one was a complete failure. But that was, in part, my fault because the grocery store didn't have an ingredient I needed, so I tried to substitute something else. Overall, these meals tasted good, used healthy, fresh ingredients and only took about 30-45 minutes to make. I'm excited to test out some more recipes. And I'm sure my body will start appreciating the decrease in fast food and frozen convenience meals.

I'd love to hear if you have any healthy eating tips or recipes to share!

30 day shred

When we lived in Kentucky I was a huge fan of Jazzercise and went about 3 times every week. I love to dance and it was one of the only things that didn't feel like a workout to me. Many times I have purchased gym memberships only to go a few times. That's a lot of wasted money! They have Jazzercise where we live now, but since we're trying to save money I figured it made the most sense to just rent a fitness DVD from Netflix. From reading Weddingbee and other wedding blogs, I heard a lot of good things about Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred, so I decided to give it a shot. I'm not really interested in losing weight, but rather maintaining and toning and the reviews said that these workouts were a good way to build lean muscle.

(source)

The DVD contains three, 20 minute workouts. You're supposed to start at Level 1, which is the easiest, and work yourself up to Level 3, which is the most difficult. Each workout is based on Jillian's 3-2-1 strength/cardio/ab training circuit. First you start with three minutes of strength training, then move on to two minutes of cardio, and finish with one minute of ab work.

Let me tell you, after the first day I wanted to die. It may only be 20 minutes, but it's a very difficult 20 minutes! I don't think I ever worked that hard in Jazzercise and those classes were an hour long! I woke up the next morning and thought that maybe I had been run over by a truck in my sleep. So I skipped day two. But I picked back up on day three and I've just finished day five. Although it's still difficult, I'm finding that it gets just a little bit easier every day. I'm hoping to work my way up to level two on day 10 and then level three on day 20. I'll let you know my final conclusions when I'm finished with the 30 days.

What are your tips for staying fit leading up to the wedding?