I feel like the next month is all about marathons. Over the weekend, I enjoyed cheering on friends running the Marine Corps Marathon here in DC. If you ran, a big congratulations! I’m proud of you. 🙂
Matt and I cheered at the beginning and the end of the race – first at mile 2, and then later on at mile 25.5ish. It was so inspiring watching everyone. I can’t wait until it’s my turn in 3 weeks in Richmond. 🙂
Also, I wanted to give some love to the behind the scenes heroes of the race: the volunteers. After cheering at mile 2, Matt and I went and got coffee and strolled around, looping back towards the course, which meant we got a front row view of the clean up crew dealing with the aftermath of the first water stop.
I’ve done so many races but I’d never had this perspective before! It really made me appreciate the volunteers (at this race, they were a combination of military and boy scouts) even more than I already did. It was also crazy to see all the clothes everyone had thrown away – this spot was at the top of a big hill and everyone must have been overheated enough to toss their gear, because there were hundreds of gloves, shirts, jackets, etc. strewn about. I sure hope they all got donated and not thrown away! It will be fun to spectate the NYC marathon this coming weekend, too! All marathons, all the time, apparently.
I have running on the brain so much that on Friday night, we carved pumpkins with friends… and I bet you can guess which one is mine. 😉
I normally just carve a basic jack-o-lantern style pumpkin, but this year I decided to get creative. I love how it came out! I just Googled “running girl”, found a graphic I liked in Google Images, and drew a version of it on my pumpkin. I used the lines I drew as a guide for cutting.
Thanks to our friends Lauren and Steve for having us over for the fun carving party (and dinner)! And congrats to Lauren for rocking a new marathon PR on Sunday at the MCM!!
By the way, this is completely unrelated but if you’re in the D.C. area and you’re a CrossFit fan, mark your calendars for the Wade’s Army fundraiser workout on Saturday, November 9th at CrossFit DC.
This is the second year of the Wade’s Army workout, put on by the CrossFit Football crew, which supports the fight against the pediatric cancer Neuroblastoma in remembrance of Wade DeBruin, Sept. 22, 2009 – Nov. 12, 2011. Matt and I won’t be able to join for the workout this year (we did last year!) because it’s the week before my marathon, but we’ll be donating. I hope some of you will consider joining for the workout and/or donating to this great cause, too, even if you can’t make it out on the 9th. Check out Team CrossFit DC’s Wade’s Army Page for more information! And here’s the workout, which is the same one we did last year. It’s hard but fun:
‘WADE’
Complete 5 rounds:50 lbs One Arm DB Power Snatch – 11 reps
50 lbs One Arm DB Thrusters – 12 reps
Pull Ups w/ the 50 lbs DB – 11 reps
Continuing this random post, while I’m speaking of CrossFit… did you know that Reebok has an option on their website to design your own shoes?
As part of my ongoing partnership with Reebok, I was lucky enough to receive a gift card this month to design my own shoes on their site. Fun!
The first thing you do on their design your own shoe page is to select a type of shoe! You can choose between a ton of their different shoes for all sorts of activities, including their CrossFit Nanos and Nano Speeds, their running shoes, my old favorites the RealFlex Scream, and more. Once you’ve picked your shoe, it’s time to design! You can either start from scratch with a totally blank colored shoe (seen above), or you can start with a color base design and simply customize it. I decided to go from scratch!
I chose the CrossFit Nano Speeds, and you can literally customize the color on every inch of them, from the sole to the lace eyelets to the sock lining and more. You can also add customized text on the back if you want!
The site is really easy to use and they offer a ton of colors, too. You can also save your creation and come back later to finish it, which I loved since I tend to have the attention span of a kitten.
Wait, what was I talking about? 😉 Juuust kidding.
I decided to go for a gray/black/pink/yellow/blue theme. Here’s my final creation! I love how it came out.
I’ll do a full review of the design your own shoe website/product when the shoes arrive (they take about a month or so to make it to you once you order them), and I’ll also be sharing a giveaway so one of you can win a gift card to design your own shoes. Stay tuned! This would be a great Christmas gift idea, don’t you think? In case you’re wondering – the color customization adds about $25 or so to the base price of the shoe model you pick. Not too bad considering you can make it exactly how you want it!
Time to get back down to work. I know I don’t talk about it much on here, but my AnneTheRD business is still going really well! I’ve been doing a mix of private client nutrition counseling work as well as some corporate wellness presentations and health fair staffing. Last week, I worked at a health fair as the dietitian on behalf of a healthy food service company. The picture below is of my table (the idea was all the company’s, not mine, but I loved it)! Passerbys had to guess the names of the greens in order to be entered into a raffle, and once they came over to me, that was my opportunity to talk to them more about the nutrition in each of the greens, share some recipes we had printed out using them, and talk about the food service company’s healthy initiatives in the cafeteria at their office, too.
Can you guess all the greens? Most people did well with 1 to 3 but had trouble with 4 to 6! 🙂
Anyway! Every work day is different, which is perfect for me, and I’m so happy to be doing something I love. I also have a new and exciting sports nutrition related partnership starting soon – I’ll share more details once it’s all finalized!
Have a great day, my friends! And stay tuned – I have a new recipe coming at ya tomorrow! For a sneak preview, check out the picture I posted this morning on Instagram. 🙂
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Some Other Things of Note Today:
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- “Why are there more runners in D.C.? It’s not where we are, it’s who we are.” – via the Washington Post
- “25 Things Non-Runners Don’t Get About Runners” – I especially love #7. Lol!
- “Time To End the War Against Saturated Fat?” – via the Los Angeles Times. (Yes, yes it is.)
- Because it’s never too early for stocking stuffer ideas: I came across these Exercise Cards on Kickstarter and love this idea. There are 50 bodyweight exercises and 5 workouts included and the illustrations look great!
