Savannah Scrapbooking

Ridin' the Rails to Trails... (Yet another reason why I love Savannah!)

In my continual efforts to find numerous and sundry ways to torture, torment and titillate myself, I decided to pack up the ol' bikeroo and head down to the trail that runs alongside Hwy 80 on the way to the beach.

It used to be the railroad track that ran out to Tybee way back in the good ol' days, like when my mom used to go out there to skate at the old pavillion.  They used to take the train. Cool right?

Nowadays, it's no longer a train track, but a six mile gravel trail that leads through some of the most beautiful scenery in Savannah. 

There are a couple of different options for tackling the trail.  You can either park your car and start down on the Ft. Pulaski end which would give you the full six miles down and six miles back, or you can start in the middle and go three miles one way, three back, then three the other direction and three back.  Or you can go willy nilly and go for however long your legs will carry you!  (Which is what I did, for a grand total of 16.76 miles.)

However, please be aware that even though you may feel like the Million Dollar Man while the wind is at your back, once you change direction and head into that wind without trees or buildings to block it, you're gonna have try a little lot harder. 

There are plenty of benches and picnic tables sprinkled through the trail, so you can always find a horizontal plane on which to pass out.  Just sayin... not that somewhere during mile 14, while pedaling against the wind and clamoring over twenty feet of washed out ruts did I ever once even consider such a thing.

The west end of the trail was blocked off last time we went running down there, we assumed because of some erosion or something, but today it only had a little piece of fence up with plenty of room to go around, and there was a bouncy blonde jogger heading back from the direction of the forbidden zone, so I figured I'd go check it out. 

There was definitely some erosion...

So I just closed my eyes and rode on through.  The bushes were thicker on this part of the trail, I guess because most people turn around when they hit the bridge, but I kept on trucking.  I mean heck, if Freddy Kruger didn't hack the bouncy blonde jogger to bits then it had to be safe, right? 

And I'm SO glad I ventured on because I found the coolest little area at the end of the trail! 

The picture doesn't do it justice (I took it with my boob-sweat soaked phone), but there are picnic tables, and momentos hanging from the trees...

 and a rickety homemade walkway out to the water...

It's got an official sign and all...

I mean that's pretty neato right?

It looks like a youth group has been there recently and decorated it with prayer banners...

I indulged myself for a few minutes, reading some of the prayers and nosing around the site looking at the names and dates carved, written and burned into the picnic tables and trees.  It's kind of magical in there in the dense shade of the oaks... I could've stayed all day.

Or maybe that was just my inner self-preservationist trying to avoid the three miles riding into the wind that stood between me and my car.

So, perhaps if you're feelin' froggy, you may want to take a nice walk or bike ride out there, I think you'd dig it. 

And now I'm going to change out the bags of frozen cauliflower on my knees. 

;)

 

 

 

 

A Running Haiku...

Ten miles on Monday,

means a blister on my toe...

and bra burn too, ouch.

Dig it? 

;)

 

I'm kind of a badass you know...

Because badasses run so much that they wear out their earbuds...

Badasses wear out their running shoes, their knees, their sports bras, and their husband's patience when they announce every night at dinner how many miles they've run that day.

Badasses also wear out bags of frozen vegetables...

9 miles today... ouch!

Uh huh... I'm kind of a badass.

;)

Sometimes running sucks...

Yes, sometimes running sucks.

Especially when you coax yourself into your super absorbent, moisture wicking sport socks, manipulate your boobs into the vice-like, velcro strapped running bra of steel, and bribe yourself into lacing up your Asics by saying things like:

1.) Oh it's not that hot outside.

2.) You KNOW you'll feel awesome after you're done.

3.) So what if you and Sid drank two bottles of REALLY good Pinot Grigio at Troy last night?

4.) Just get out there and run two miles... two measly stinkin' miles you freakin' puss.

5.) You can jump in the pool as SOON as you're done.

6.) It doesn't matter if you didn't eat breakfast... heck I'm sure there's still enough of that CHOCOLATE LAVA CAKE left in your tank from last night right?

7.) Okay, big deal if you didn't poop yet, you're only going two miles... you can pinch walk home if you need to.

Then, deluded as hell, you hit play on your Ipod, press the start button on your Garmin and you take off like the wind.

And it hurts.

Your legs creak.

Your fat roll blobs.

Your back moans.

And your brain says, "WHAT THE FU@# ARE WE DOING HERE???"

You run slooooooooow... like your high dollar kicks are filled with molasses.  You quit looking at your Garmin because the pace is just too damned depressing, especially when it's hurting this bad.  You push it to the 2 mile mark and walk, wimpering and pouting (because this is utterly ridiculous) the last .40 back to your house

And you collapse on the floor and let your calico lick the salt off your limbs...

And then you take a handful of Ibuprofen, drink eighteen gallons of water, eat a big ass salad, and before you know it, you feel all better and don't even twitch or anything as the post traumatic stress filters its way out of you body via that belated poop. 

Sometimes running sucks. And then it doesn't.

The end. 

;)

 

Big Nasty recap...

It's been two days, and I can still catch a whiff of stinkiness when my hair moves.  Two days, four hair washings, and the yes, there it is... a gentle reminder of the absolute greatness that I experienced while participating in Saturday's Big Nasty mud run.

The course was a little over four miles long and challenged us with about twenty different obstacles interspersed with sloppy trails, knee deep sippy holes and general swampy goodness. 

My team, appropriately named 'Slippery When Wet' (courtesy of the hottie neighbor) consisted of Kristine, her hubby Teddy, her coworker Nick and of course, yours truly.

Don't we look so squeaky clean and full of optimism? I'd been chomping at the bit to do this for so long that I barely slept the night before... I was ready for some mud action!

We piled out of the minivan (sexy) about thirty minutes before our 8:50am start, taped our shoes so they wouldn't get sucked off by the muck, and headed over to watch the earlier waves of runners conquer the 'Peanut Butter Pit.'  I've gotta tell you, it's SO surreal to see folks plunging, diving, and belly flopping into a three foot deep mud pit and knowing that you're about to have to do the same thing REAL soon.  We cheered, laughed and contemplated our own mortality until they called for our group.  We did some last minute stretching, found a nice safe spot near the back of the pack and took off like... like... like... lambs to the slaughter, as they shouted 'GO!'

I vaguely remember climbing up a hill, then down a hill and then all of a sudden I was slobbering through a pit of orangy brown goo.  It was GLORIOUS!!  Teddy and Nick 'alligator crawled' through it, I'm not sure how Kristine did it, but I pretty much just floundered, staggered and fell to my knees in the freezing cold ooze... laughing my ass off the entire time.

I found my way to the side, was pulled to my feet by Teddy (I think) and headed in the direction of the other runners.  My feet, globbed with mud, felt like they were concrete blocks, and I was pretty sure there was a grain of sandy mud in my butt crack.  Oh good, only four miles to go.

I have no idea of the order of the obstacles after that, but I know we climbed a really high dirt hill and Kristine kept yelling, "Land on your heels!" or something like that.  There was a beautiful blue lake that had rafts that we had to climb over, it was one of my favorite obstacles because it washed the speck of ass chafing sand out of my crack, and Kristine went face first off the raft and came up looking like a drowned kitten, at which time I laughed my ass off again.

Then there were some logs in a mud pit that we had to go OVER AND UNDER... there was a sign telling us to go OVER AND UNDER and there was a person (female I think) that kept yelling repeatedly OVER AND UNDER.  So imagine my surprise when I got to the end and looked back at Kristine only to see her going UNDER every log!  Her face, including blingy sunglasses and her hair were covered in black mud.  And when she would rise up between the logs to take a breath, I could see that there were globs of muck running down into her teeth.  Oh thank you God... this was worth the entry fee... Have I mentioned that I laughed my ass off? 

Somewhere along the way Nick started calling her Mud Run Barbie, and well come on, we all know it's the perfect moniker for my extra girly-fied bff.  And although I don't have any good pics from her mid-race, I have this little beauty for you...

After Kristine regained her eyesight (the mud got in her contacts... NOT cool) we headed through the woods for a mile or so, we were tromping right along through the swamps and the muck fields and we conquered some smallish walls that we had to climb over and crawl under and then all of a sudden Teddy, who'd run up ahead said something like, "Oh crap."  We rounded the corner and found ourselves faced with a 15-20 high wall.  Now I've gotta tell you something... I'm a bit of a monkey.  Yes it's true.  I LOVE to climb, and I'm pretty good at it, but I do NOT like heights and/or climbing DOWN... especially when the wall is already covered with mud from previous climbers and my hands and shoes are slick with goop.  However, I made that wall my bitch... no worries here...

(That's me right after I got across the top of the wall and was starting down... thanks for the stellar photography Nick!)

After the wall there were some tires, easy peasy, some big sewer pipes to crawl through that were hard on my boney knees, a few more sippy holes and a really cold knee deep water hazard through which we had to Army crawl  (I did more of a 'kick worm' technique, but it worked so whatever.)

I had to pee for the last two miles, but I never could make myself just open up and wee wee when I was in the water... performance anxiety I guess. 

Slowly but surely, we made our way through the miles, laughing and playing and praying that Kristine's cramping feet wouldn't stop working.  We carried tires as we ran through a section of the course, we fought our way through the goopiest, nastiest, stinkiest 100 yards of pitch black, tar thick muck and found ourselves doing some sort of reverse rapelling up a wall.  If not for our menfolk, Kristine and I would have never have gotten up that wall so quickly... who knew there was a technique to scrambling up a mudslickened wall of plywood?  Excellent!

We made our way through the final mud pit, and crossed the finish line laughing and holding hands.  It was the perfect ending to a perfect race.  And sure, it took us twice as long as the winning team (1:30) to finish, but it was SO much fun that I was wishing that we'd had more time to play. 

I've already posted the pics on Facebook, but I'm gonna throw them on here for posterity...

 

 

Dirty Girls... (It's a mud run, get your mind outta the gutter!)

Oh my GOSH!!!!!  We  had the MOST fun this morning! 

Kristine, Tricia and I sloshed, laughed and squealed through our first 'mud run'... the Yemassee SC, Filthy 5K.  It was 3.1 miles of tranquil forests punctuated with belly crawling through mud pits, climbing mud hills (and sliding down on our ass... not on purpose), scooting through tires, and of course the imfamous, MUD PIT...

We did our homework and came prepared because we'd heard that the mud is not only slippery as a eel's hiney, but also has the tendency to suck the shoes off of your feet.  So we wrapped our tootsies in duct tape...

And who doesn't love them some hot pink duct tape right?

It was a smallish event, less than a hundred folks participated, but the group was filled with kind, happy people and the coordinators were patient and accomodating.  Apparently this place is usually a mud bog and playground for pick up trucks and atv's like on the Travel Channel's 'Mud People'.  But today it was all about the two legged boggers, no truckies allowed.

Okay, so we came in next to last, but we looked good and had fun, and dangit that's all that mattered today.

(Before the run, the rain and the mud)

(Obligatory "Hey look at us, we think we're tough" photos.)

We started the run just as the clouds let loose and the rain poured down, of course... it seems to be the norm for me these days, running in the rain.  We slipped through the woods until we hit the first obstacle, a pit full of muddy water where we had to crawl under low ropes.  Hilarious!  It's SO freakin' unnatural to throw yourself into a mud pit... especially a cold mud pit.  I just followed Trish and Kristine's asses through it, laughing all the way.

The event coordinators took pics so hopefully I'll be able to get some of them off of their Facebook page eventually. Until then, you'll just have to imagine us in our pink and black suits, wallowing in the mud.  I still crack up every time I think of Kristine as she charged up a slippery hill that totally looked like it would just be sandy, but ended up being clay-like, and BUSTING her patooty as she went down the other side. Omg, I laughed!  And then Tricia followed her and landed right behind her... bwaahahaaaa!! It was like a scene from Goonies.  I stayed behind and took pics and then shimmied down the side where the leaves kept it a little drier. 

Oh and don't even get me started giggling about us trying to make it through the 200 foot long mud pit at the end of the race.  Ahhaaahaaa... it was SO funny!  I'd try to put one foot in font of the other, but then the muck would suck me down, and I'd lose my balance, collapsing into the water up to my waist, finally ending up in it neck deep.  There's nothing better than my memory of Trish up to her earlobes in the caramel colored water...and my prissy Kristine, dragging herself through that ooze... oh it's too much!  I LOVED every minute of it!  (With the one exception of the six foot wall we had to climb... getting up was a cinch, but jumping down scared me.  Eeeek!) 

(After the run, the rain and the mud...not much difference from afar.)

 And only one injury...

The wall bit Tricia, but she was a big girl and didn't cry.  Hey, now she's got a battle wound.  Go Tricia!

I'm gonna have muddy dreams when I go to sleep tonight for sure!  I can't wait to do another one of these mud runs, oh it was hilarious, and I think I've got Kristine talked into doing the Big Nasty Mud Run in Pooler next month.  It's only a few weeks away, so I guess we'll have to see.  It looks a LOT harder than today's run, but I think it'd be a cool challenge.  Anyone else wanna get muddy? 

 

 

How to run for an hour and forty minutes without getting bored to pieces...

About a year and a half ago I sat on the screened porch of my friends' house talking to this dude named Ron.  He'd run like twenty miles or something ridiculous that morning and as we enjoyed the beer we'd pilfered from our friends' fridge, I asked him how he did it. 

At that point, I'd never run more than a mile in my life, and I thought it was absolutely INSANE to consider running through the streets for anything longer than oh... say like a minute and a half.  He told me he listened to the radio (I think he even said talk radio, but don't quote me on it) and the minutes and miles just ticked by. 

INSANE.

He was clearly insane.

Oh but wait a minute.  I guess that makes me insane now too doesn't it?  Hmmm... we kind of already knew that though right?

So tonight while I gasped and grunted my way through 8.5 miles... an hour and forty minutes, I tried to think of some of the ways I keep myself from getting bored. 

Of course, the first of these thoughts was something like, "Hey I can get Miss Priss to take a pic of me running up the driveway where the rockin' ass azaleas are blooming so I can put it in the post..."

LOOK at those azaleas.  AWESOME. (Those are not my dogs.)

A lot of my running time is spent thinking of stuff to blog about, or stupid/witty/ entertaining Facebook updates like, "I'm making my way through 'The Hunger Games' one turd at a time." Is it inappropriate to say turd on Facebook?  I think we're not supposed to talk about pooping on there.  Everytime I do, somebody gets all offended about the doody talkin' and says, "TMI."  And then I feel guilty, so I try not to post alot about it.  But I think about it alot when I'm running.  Especially when I ate Japanese food for dinner the night before.

I also pray a lot.  Sometimes it's stuff like, "Dear Lord Jesus, please don't let me pass out and die right here in the street, because I'm feelin' like I might pass out and die right here in the street."  And other times it's, "Holy God THANK YOU for letting me be able to do this, because I know I'm gonna feel like I conquered the world when I get home." 

When I'm on a roll with my never ending novel, I like to think up plot lines and scenarios for my characters, Rosie, Daylon, Gina, Ellen and Nanny.  I've had some serious lightbulb moments out there on the road, in fact my main character had a name change somewhere out there during one of those many miles.  Oh and it's so funny, but of course I can't tell you because it's a big secret, but if I ever finish it, you'll have to buy it immediately so I can be rich and go on Oprah, even if she is on her own weird channel that I don't understand or know how to find.

Of course I always have my trusty Ipod to jam out to the whole time.  I have the strongest memories from music that I've listened to.  I can tell you exactly where I was or who I was with or what I was doing while listening to so many of the songs on my playlist.  Like the time I was sitting in the old scrapbook store on Mall Boulevard creating a display page titled 'Country Road Take Me Home' while listening to Montgomery Gentry's "Our Town"... or the time I did naughty stuff as a teenager while listening to Prince, the Scorpians or Whitesnake.  And I can't listen to Whitney Houston's "How Will I know" without being transported right back to my middle school days snacking on orange soda, sugar babies and vinegar and salt potato chips that we bought from the fish camp down the road.  And don't even get me started on the butterflies that still, to this day, flutter in my stomach when I hear "Around the Way Girl" by LL Cool J, or Roxette's "She's Got the Look" because they take me back to my first nights spent dancing and 'getting to know' Big Dave.   These songs pack my head with scenes that play out in technicolor detail like  movies, carrying me along the streets of my 'hood.

And when all this fails and I find myself falling into a running rut, I try to mix things up by hitting a new route (like Rails to Trails or Tribble park) and I also like running with my friends.  Of course, this means that I have to continuously talk about how FABULOUS running is, so I can talk my friends into trying it and then coerce, bully and peer pressure them into doing things like signing up for the Yemassee Filthy 5K mud run... hee hee.  Just ask Kristine since she'll be doing this with Tricia, Miss Priss and me this coming Saturday.  Mwahahahaaaa.  I can't wait!!

On a totally self-centric note, I am posting this photo even though I have absolutely NO idea of what I'm doing, because it makes me look skinny.

(And that is not my kid.)
The end.

 

 

 

I need to brag...

I've gotta do it. 

I've gotta spend a few minutes bragging about my BFF, the illustrious Kristine, aka, Teeny. 

See, several months ago (September maybe?)  She was exasperated.  Her scale was whispering evil things to her, and she'd hit an all time high.  It was time for a change, so she asked me if I had any ideas to help her peel off some pounds. 

My answer was simple... RUN.

If there's one thing I figured out in the last year as I've experimented with this fitness stuff, it's that moving my body (torturous as it may seem) is the ticket to losing flab and feeling awesome.

Kristine was full of questions, like:

How do I start?  Do I walk first?  What if I can't run?  (She was an athlete way back in the stone age when she was a teenager, but even then she hated running.) 

I told her about my walk/run strategy, and she bravely unearthed the treadmill that had been folded up in a corner of their living room for the past three years and gave it a go. 

After making the decision to move her arms and legs, my sweet friend had to conquer something that I too feared... looking stupid. Let's face, we've all seen someone jogging along the side of the road who kind of looks like they're either flailing through a storm surge or suffering from a major gas attack, and we chuckle a little and think, "poor struggling dumbass."  Well, the same holds true for Kristine on the treadmill... she had to get over the fact that her family could see her sweating, panting and yes, flailing, on the treadmill while she watched episodes of Grey's Anatomy and CSI. 

And then once she finally got brave enough to venture into the great outdoors, she had to overcome her fear of looking like a dumbass in front of the whole world (or at least her neighborhood.)  But she DID IT.  She got it in her head, that no matter what she looked like, she still looked better than the old gas bag sitting on the couch watching reruns of America's Next Top Model.  And she was RIGHT.

And so she progressed.  Over the last six months she's challenged herself to overcome obstacles like oh I don't know... say a full time job which keeps her at the office until 7pm or later some nights, or the fact that she has FOUR sons to keep up with doctor appointments, wrestling matches, work schedules and homework assignments.  No matter what, at least a few times a week, no matter how late at night it is, she manages to lace up her sneakers and hit the treadmill for a couple of miles or more. 

She's kind of a badass if you ask me.

Now, fast forward to this past Friday... the March of Dimes, Shamrock 5K in downtown Savannah.  I'd planned to run the race with my friend Trish, but asked Kristine if she wanted to join us.  Of course she said yes, because she's generally game to try just about anything (um... did I mention that I'm trying to get her to sign up for the Yemmassee Filthy 5K Mud Run in two weeks?) 

She really wanted to beat her time in the Wounded Warrior 5K we did back in October, so she trained really hard.  She's kind of competitive that way, ya know.

And so as we suited up in our glorious (albeit dorky) tutu's for the Shamrock run, she was prepared... even if she didn't really know it.

We'd talked about staying together, but I knew she wanted to see if she'd really improved since the last race, so I told her to run her own race, which meant leaving us in her dust.  And that she did, baby!

That starter's horn blew, and I never saw her again until the finish.  My bestie flew like the wind!  She went into the race thinking she'd run/walk in two minute intervals, but post race she said that she just kind of ran as far as she could then walked and then ran again.  Two of her coworkers (dudes) ran the race and gave her some stiff competition, but she ended up besting one of them. (Sorry Randy!! hehee!)

And will she kill me for this pic?  Oh probably...

...but I wanted to include it because this is the face and body of all out DETERMINATION.  I love this!  (It rained on us the whole time, so that's not actually sweat glistening on her skin, it's good ol' coastal acid rain.)

Kristine finished the Shamrock 5k, her second race ever, in 35:26...three minutes faster than her last 5K.   BOOMYAH! 

I'm a little proud of her.

Can you tell?

Hmmm... in short I guess we could sum this up as, "Overworked, overwrought, mom of four tries something completely out of her comfort zone and in the process, drops a couple of dress sizes and ROCKS a 5k."

Yep, that should do it.

Love you Teeny!!!

 

 

 

 

Nine miles...

We did it! Mendy, Tricia and I braved the gusty winds and the {brrrrr} chilly temps to head out for a run along the old Tybee railroad path.  In running this morning, we honored the memory of Sherry Arnold, who went out for her usual run one morning in January and never came back.  It's a heartbreaking story. 

Her cousin, who has a blog called Shut Up and Run, created a 'virtual run' by which to honor and remember Sherry's life.  So Mendy, Tricia and I donned our commemorative bibs and snapped this pic before our run...

We even saw another runner wearing a bib too! 

It was a gorgeous day, sure the wind was sort of OUT OF CONTROL, but it  made me feel like I was flying when it was pushing at my back.  We put nine miles under our treads, and I only had to blow my nose in my shirttail 4 times. 

I'd say that was a pretty good day. 

Here's to you Sherry!

;)

Running and Remembering...

Planning on going for a run this Saturday?  A walk?  A jog?

I am.

I'm planning to run with some friends, on the old railroad trail out off of Highway 80 (Tybee)...

And I'm going to be wearing this bib...

...in honor of a woman I never met, but will never forget.  Sherry, a mother, a teacher, a sister, left her house a few of weeks ago on a Saturday morning for her usual run.  She never returned.

Here's the link to her cousin's blog post:  http://www.shutupandrun.net/2012/01/virtual-run-for-sherry-arnold-february.html

If you're going to move your body this Saturday, I'd love for you to consider printing a bib and wearing it while you think about Sherry.  People all over the world will be doing the same thing.  It's kind of awesome.

Perhaps you'd like to tackle the old railroad trail with us... we'll be there around 10:30.