the single life.

i know i have disappeared a bit over the last month or so. oops! while ive been tryin to figure out where to take this little blog of mine, ive also been working on myself. when one gets out of a 3+ year relationship in which they lived with the person for 2 years it takes a little time to get the new swing of things. and oh, ive been gettin my swing back:)

i forgot how much being single can be! not that i want to do forever, trust me, but ive been havin a blast! to get off work and decide to go for a run then do some errands just because you feel like it and not have to tell anyone where youre going, amazing. i dont have to feel bad about going out after work with friends while others go to work at night anymore. if i want to pick up and go to a soccer game with my parents on a friday night, i can, and there is no one to make me feel bad about going when they cant. i can meet a friend for coffee at the drop of a hat and talk about running for hours with her:) if i want to get out of the house for awhile and walk around town square by myself, i totally can. ive even reconnected with old friends i never should have really lost touch with. and sleep. oh beautiful sleep. i can leave the tv on as i fall asleep, or sleep until 1pm on sundays and not have anyone say a word. oh and i have flannel sheets on my bed again. they.are.glorious! i love them. 

heres a few of the things ive been enjoying, to say the least hehehe, the last few months...

you can get tattoos without explaining why.

welcome new little ones!
taya breyon rivers 02.10.2013

start playing indoor soccer again
with some of your old teammates!

go to a preseason mls game with your parents:)

have tequilla shots on a tuesday during the rebel game!

run with people who love it as much as you do

pedicures with your mom on a sunday,
just beacuse you want too

you can run away to flagstaff!

because your best friend needs you,
and you want to play in the snow:)

celebrate st pattys day on fremont street.

and get to party with new friends!



run away to san diego for a race.

and go to the beach even if it was chilly:)

single kb (as a friend coined for me) has definitley been having a good time. its been awesome to find myself again and do the things that truly make me happy! who knows where this will all take me...but i cant wait to see what new adventure i get to go on next:)

its my turn to take back the power.

for most of my life ive kept 2 things inside pretty well. the first not totally being comfortable in my own skin and second my knee pain. now let me clear somethings up. this is not a pity party or in no way am i fishing for nice compliments. this is simply my story and how i finally took charge of my own body issues!

i am comfortable with who i am, amazingly grateful for the people in my life and for the things i am able to do on a daily basis. but somehow i have managed to surround myself with beautifully skinny girls (who i wouldnt trade for the world) and just dont feel 100% comfortable all the time. i in no way feel overweight, i just dont want to be the heavy girl at the 5k anymore for example. i want to be able to go to any store and not worry about them having my jeans size. or have people look at me and go youre a runner? i want to look as great as i feel. i have the training part down, i can rattle off my plan, mileage for the week, and all the times of my races at the drop of a hat. i got it dialed and it works wonders for me. so why havent i lost any weight in the last 3 years other than the few in the beginning? it doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out why a runner doing 20+/- miles a week with 2 days of cross-training isnt losing weight...its the nutrition.

 

so it all came to pass about a month and a half ago at a work happy hour as i sat there with my iced tea drooling over the alcohol and and cheeseburgers with fries everyone was eating and not having to worry about working those off. i was never blessed with that type of metabolism, i mean a lot of it is in the genes people. now some of these beautiful ladies work rockin hard to not have to worry about that friday night happy hour, i just wondered why working just as much as they did didnt seem to be making a difference. it was also a day where my hair sucked, i wasnt loving anything in my closet, and couldnt eat a french fry without feeling bad. it wasnt a good day to say the least. the next morning i got up to complete my 12 miles (which felt great) knowing they were all loving their beds as my alarm went off at 4am to beat at least a little bit of the heat. i knew something had to change and i was the only one who could really and truly make that happen.

monday morning i went into my boss, the pain still a little raw (it was written all over my face) and asked for her nutritionists phone number. she had raved about joanie forever. telling all of us how great she was and that she worked with anyone. she changed your food yes, but not to a crazy calorie counting diet plan or something we send to your house or you can only eat these 3 foods. she was real. finally realizing it was the nutrition meant i needed help, someone that could work with me and my likes/dislikes and being a runner. you see its often frowned upon for runners to go on diets because we cant totally cut out any one food. but there had to be an answer somewhere.

source

so i called the next morning and by wednesday afternoon i was sitting in her office going over bloodwork and talking all about me and my body. she listened to everything and gave me quite a few faces when i told her about the things i was eating. we worked out a plan and she made a "highly recommended" suggestion that i go to the grocery store to stock up on my new things that night! its made up of lots and lots of fruits and veggies, whole grain foods, lean meats/proteins, and things with the lowest sugar/fat possible plus how many of each i should be eating per day. she had lots of great suggestions about particular brands and broke everything down for me. i literally took home a book of information comparing darn near every brand of cereal for example with all its nutritional value. i got on the scale and didnt love what i saw at 170.5 pounds. we did measurements of literally every part of my body and she gave me an "approved joanie" list of things to buy. i headed back to work that day actually feeling great about the step i had taken and was ready to make the change. now i wasnt looking to be a size 2 (or 4 or 6 for that matter), that was never in the cards for me. but i wanted to feel good about myself, and that the work i was doing on the pavement showed!

source

friday afternoon i went to see her again and we talked all about how my couple days had been and what i had been eating. she was seriously impressed with my willingness to try new food (except spinach, kale, beans, or oatmeal to name a few) and could tell i was committed. she made me get back on that scale and i was terrified to say the least. turns out i had lost 3 pounds just changing my diet in 3 days!!! i was ecstatic to already have some changes. now yes i know most of it was water weight and flushing out the bad stuff from my body, but i took it!

things fell into place with joanie quickly, not that it wasnt and still is a struggle some days. the pizza on fridays, donuts/pastries on saturday mornings, lunch dates with friends, and the offers of lets go get fast food after the et race were abundant. i have never been to so many birthday parties with delicious looking cake in such a short time. i have had days (quite a few actually) when all i really wanted to do was eat like i used too. the problem was i didnt used to eat awful, especially during half marathon training. but now comparing i didnt eat great either.

i can make my own healthier version of things
like mac & cheese! you dont have to
give up everything to be healthy!

i can now say from july 18th to september 5th i am down 14.5 pounds and 27 inches!!! i have a few weeks left with joanie and am hoping to have a big update friday when i get down to 155 pounds because then we can measure again. keep your fingers crossed:) i feel wayyy better about myself and things are fitting so much better than they used to. my body feels happier when i run having these healthy things and a better balance inside it. i know for a fact i made the right choice going to her!

now that i had the nutrition part under control something else had now reflared up, knee pain. i havent had the best luck over the years. it started when i was 12 and developed osgood schlatters disease in both knees, its common in young athletes actually. basically your body is growing and the impact of sports is putting too much pressure on the tendons in your legs which is causing pain in the knees. most grow out of it, which i did. until freshmen year of high school when i got patellar tendonist in my left knee along with knee cap falling on top of it and to the outside of my leg. the arches in both my feet also fell at the same time. i had to quit everything cold turkey and went to 6 weeks of physical therapy. it helped a lot but i was told i would always probably have some knee pain when exercising, i just had to decide what i could really deal with.

so i took that for a long while and usually icing a few times helped until about 3 weeks ago when i got a bad tightness in the backs of both my knees and the front hurt a lot and quite often. with my past track record of knee pain i decided i should go to a sports doc asap. my mom luckily had a great one that worked on her foot last summer that was also a runner so i knew he would get it. luckily again i got a same week appointment and was into see dr hanson quickly. we took xrays and did ligament tests which i passed all of them. we talked about my changing to minimalist shoes and everything was fine till he had me hop on one knee at a time and it hurt real bad in my right knee. he told me i needed to get into see his friend ron, a physical therapist quickly. there was 8 weeks till my race and he knew ron could fix me in plenty of time.

those just dont look right!

about 5 minutes later i called ron and made an appointment for that next tuesday. i was still cleared to run by both guys as long as it didnt hurt. the 8 miler that weekend wasnt my best run ever, but i couldnt back down now. tuesday came quickly and it seemed like ron had all the answers. he listened to all my stories, did some general tests, had me run on the treadmill and knew immediately what was wrong. he didnt even need xrays to tell him what he already knew. basically it was everything but my knees haha! it all came down to my hips which oddly didnt surprise me. i had hip/knee issues as a kid too. when i was 6 months old i wore a brace to pull my knees apart because they were a bit bowed in and couldnt even go around my moms hip when she would hold me. luckily the brace worked and i never had to have surgery. but now its allll coming full circle lol.

we worked mostly on my form that day and i found out that my glutes had terrible strength. i needed to build them up quickly so i could stop using my hips so much to propel me forward but the rest of my body. we worked on shortening my stride and upping the tempo. i was totally out of breath and my entire lower body was sore, except my knee. ron told me this was his favorite thing to treat and i might even get faster. i didnt really believe that until my next 2 runs!

boom!!

ive been back once after the initial and dang do my muscles need work. i am at a 1 pound weight on each leg when the average is 7-8 pounds. ron says he can fix me in 9 sessions like i said and i might even be really mad at him when this is all done. he told me ive had knee pain for so long and people have always told me it wasnt fixable, he tells me it is and were gonna do it together.

gotta do my own work!

for the first time in a long time i feel really in control of my own body. i feel skinnier in my clothes and people around me are starting to seriously notice. the support i have received from friends, family, and richard has been amazing! my knees are feeling better and i improved my 9 mile route time by 10 minutes from year ago! i know these things are working together and i couldnt be happier with both results:)


ps if you live in the las vegas area and would like information for either one of them, please let me know! i would be more than happy to pass it along and let them hep you on your journey:) also if you have any questions, i would love to help in anyway i can!!

the summer traditions.

two years ago our very first date was the midnight showing of transformers 2. i wanted to see the movie really bad and my original date (my brother) was in california, so i figured that this new guy would want to see it too.  it was a great first date! we were able to talk since we had to score seats pretty early and able to do the movie together. i tried to give him the signs to hold my hand throughout the movie, but it didnt happen that night. we did share our 1st kiss though. obviously being the hopeless romantic that i am it became an instant tradition i wanted to continue whenever i could.

last summer we added another tradition with the mens world cup.  one of the things that struck me about richard was his love for soccer. i had never met a guy that was into it at all, let alone as much as me! for multiple world cups i have been up at all kinds of hours to watch us matches and having any game on in the background while getting ready in the morning. most of the games were on during the week which makes it hard to watch with others.  finally we were able to gather together during the us vs ghana game at hennesseys on fremont street. vanessa decided to join us and we cheered the hell out of that place! we scored bar seats and even had a small crowd behind us. we lost the game and that ended our time at the cup, but it was really fun!

USA! USA! USA!

this year we had a full schedule continuing our traditions we began the previous 2 summers. transformers 3 was coming out this summer, so was harry potter part 2, and the womens world cup was all happening!  we began with transformers 3 which i could not wait for. like i said i am a hopeless romantic so the fact this was happening almost 2 years to the date of our 1st date i could not be more excited.

we bought our tickets a few weeks in advance sure they were going to sell out. many people thought it was really silly that we were going at midnight, i mean who does that at our age. but as it got closer it seemed like so many people tried to join. i was so proud that richard (with a push from me, lets be honest) stood firm and said it was going to just the 2 of us. i arrived at about 10pm to stake out our spot with goodies in tow...

i was there in plenty of time to grab a good spot in line so we could have prime seating. richard showed up in perfect time as were just getting ready to go into the theater. he was so worried about getting good seats after the harry potter part 1 disaster in november in which we ended up sitting in the 3rd row because we were late. the movie was great, i am still partial to the 1st one and think the 2nd one had a better story line, but the movie had more than 1 meaning for me. by the time we got home at 315am, yes am, i was beat. i had scheduled my late work day for the next morning but that tuesday night midnight showing kicked my butt for the rest of the week! soooo worth it.

the womens world cup holds an extremely special place in my heart. playing most of my childhood and seeing women succeed in a man driven sport warms me all the way through. i also had the amazing luck to attend the 1999 womens world cup final at the rose bowl to watch the us vs china game that ended in penalty kicks of all things. it was an amazing game and amazing experience.

brandi chastain

this year i felt was our time to take the trophy back. the team hadnt had much luck in the world cup since and the team was finally looking strong enough to take it. the first game was on a tuesday so i was able to watch it at home with richard. the second game was on the saturday of fourth of july weekend so we made the trek back to hennesseys. this year the group expanded and expanded. not really my favorite idea, i liked it just being the 3 of us. but what a game to watch together! and the spirit of our group was awesome.

getting his war paint on!

USA! USA! USA!

harry potter part 2 was our next big adventure. i am a HUGE harry potter fan. i mean i went to the midnight parties with my mom (another HUGE fan) to pick up the books so i could start reading them the second i woke up in the morning. then there was the trip to florida last year where we got to be one of the first people to get into the wizarding world of harry potter.  thank goodness richard loves my quirks and obsession with harry potter and has hopped on the train even more since we started dating.

all ready at platform 9 3/4

we couldnt decide which theater to go too, of course we were going at midnight. i was very strong in my stance to go by ourselves and that worked, for a little while. this time people were actively asking and wanting to go with us. after going by ourselves to transformers richard was also strong on the side to go on our own. then we found out some friends of ours had already bought tickets for the same time without even talking about. once there were some going more jumped on board and we were going with a group. i still went equally as early so we could score some sweet spots, which we did. while waiting i got to give anthony the readers digest version of the first movie, accompanied by the 13 year-old in front of me. richard joined with plenty of time and nick saved the day by bringing a ton of chicken nuggets (and by a ton i mean 90, no kidding) since we were all starving that late at night. the movie of course was phenomenal.

movie time goodies, yes that is a capriottis sandwich.

since the us women kick ass we secured our spot in the final after the crazy quarter and semi-final games. we decided to skip hennesseys for the quarter final, it was too rich for my blood after the 1st round, plus we were holding out for the final instead. and it was very cool to stay at home and celebrate on our couch:) once we made it through to the finals we knew we were headed right back to the bar. it was already the plan when suddenly "the group" started to expand and expand. one of the things we really loved was the small group we had to do these things. we thought about staying home, just going to a bar nearby, or going to watch with my parents and brother from another mother instead. in the end i know we made the right choice by heading back to hennesseys.

we got there super early with american spirit in full force, had some breakfast, and a few drinks. we met up with kassen and mark who had staked out spots on the couchs while we sat at the bar. i rarely ever get to sit at the bar, plus you cant mess with the mojo. it was a really tough game and i think the women even underestimated japan a little bit. they had so many opportunities to put the game away that they did not capitalize on. unfortunately japan did capitalize and even the score every time they were down sending us to penalty kicks. after 3 unscored goals by the us and 3 scored by japan, we pretty much knew we were done. after all the heart and determination and fans they had acquired to watch them walk away with 2nd place was heart wrenching. 

richard and i learned this summer to always keep our traditions alive. that we sometimes start trends. no matter how many people jump on board even if its only for the moment we are the 2 most important people in the equation. and of course, silly traditions keep things interesting.