Finisher Certificate

Suicide Prevention Week

This week is National Suicide Prevention Week. Please consider donating to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention if you haven't already. Any penny helps!!


Dear Friend,

I will be joining with thousands of people nationwide this fall to walk in the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention's (AFSP) Out of the Darkness Community Walk.

My personal fundraising goal is $1,250. I would appreciate any support that you give me for this worthwhile cause.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention is at the forefront of research, advocacy, education and prevention initiatives designed to reduce loss of life from suicide. With more than 36,000 lives lost each year in the U.S. and over one million worldwide, the importance of AFSP's mission has never been greater, nor our work more urgent.

I hope you will consider supporting my participation in this event. Any contribution will help the work of AFSP, and all donations are 100% tax deductible.

Donating online is safe and easy! To make an online donation click the "Support Me" link in this post and then click the "Support Me" button on my fundraising page. If you would rather donate by check please make the check payable to AFSP and mail it in with the offline donation form.

Thank you for considering this request for your support. If you have any questions about the Out of the Darkness Community Walks or AFSP do not hesitate to contact me or visit 
www.afsp.org


Sincerely,
Carlee

Support me!

Go Lions!

49ers owner takes verbal shot at Lions coach

FS Detroit Staff Reports

Some people just can't help themselves. They have to shake things up.

Put San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York in that category.

Although his coach, Jim Harbaugh, and Lions coach Jim Schwartz have downplayed Handshake-gate 2011 this week, York ended a 49ers pep rally Thursday afternoon with a backhanded comment directed at Schwartz. 

Watch the above YouTube video (its poster, who must be a 49ers fan, had difficulty spelling Schwartz) to see what York had to say.

The 49ers and Lions play in San Francisco on Sunday night.

Happy Birthday Babe!!

Today is Ryan's 29th Birthday!! We have been the same age for the last 3 days, but today came and he is now a year older than me :)

Tonight we went to the Sunset Market to grab some dinner and dessert. Of course Ryan picked funnel cake for his picture cake.

And then we found some birthday balloons that matched his hat (okay, they were for the Junior Seau memorial statue that they are trying to put on the pier).

And then when we got home, Ry got to open his birthday gift from me...

 A RED WINGS OLD SCHOOL SWEATER :)

The last picture was his 'slapshot picture' - it came with sound effects and all, but I couldn't capture that in the picture :)

Race Hotel

Alright, so I am frugal – and I am not ashamed to admit it J When Ryan and I go up to Disneyland, we always drive back home. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, we live about 45 minutes away, so it is hard for us to justify spending the money on the hotel room when we can just drive and sleep in our own bed. Next, since we have annual passes, we will normally go up and just spend a couple hours at the park [another reason why I LOVE the annual passes, because you don’t feel like you have to jam pack everything into one day and stay from open to close when you are dropping $90 a person on the ticket], so we normally aren’t too tired or anything and can manage driving home.

A couple years ago we were gifted a couple nights of hotel stay up at Disney for an anniversary gift. It was the year that Disney was doing the promotion that you got in FREE on your birthday. At that point we had our annual passes, so if you went on your birthday they would give you a gift card for the amount of the pass (I think at that point it was just the single park admission and it was like a gift card of like $67 – not too shabby). We used the hotel stay over the weekend of our birthdays and had a great time. Other than that I think we had only stayed up there one other time, and it might have been before we had passes and it was because we were going to go all day and wanted to get up there super early (I am like a kid when it comes to Disney… don’t make fun J ).

Well, when the information about my race came out, and they said that we should be at the starting line at 4:45am, I decided that we should probably just stay the night before. If not, we would have had to leave around 3:30 or earlier (because I would never want to risk running late for it), which means we would have been up around 2:30am or so!

As I mentioned before, since we live so close to the parks, it is hard for me to justify a hotel room, let alone an expensive one. Since I knew we would really only be using the room to sleep (and not even that long since we are out of there by 4:30am), I looked up a cheap hotel that was still in walking distance to the park. The reason I wanted it walking distance was because I didn’t want to have to deal with parking a car down there, pay for the parking, etc, with all of the race participants, closed roads, etc. Also, I wanted it close enough so that we didn’t have to walk super far after I had already run 13.1 miles.

We found a hotel (or maybe it was actually considered a motel J) online and I booked the room. Ryan and I got up there around noon on Saturday. We pulled in and went to check in. I honestly had to try not to laugh when we checked in. The gentleman didn’t have anything in a computer system. He pulled out a little slip of paper and had us fill out our contact information with a pencil. Then he asked to see Ryan’s drivers license, looked at it, and gave it back. Then he went into a drawer and pulled out TWO remotes. He hands them over to Ryan and says ‘This one for sound. This one for power and channel.’. Then he went into another drawer, said we would be in room 210, and got out a box of these old keys. These were the plastic card keys, BUT THEY HAD HOLES DRILLED IN THEM IN THE PATTERN FOR THE SPECIFIC LOCK!  I felt like I was in the 1960s or something.

Thankfully we really were only in the hotel room for a short period  of time (mostly to watch Michigan lose the football game and then to ‘sleep’ before the race). I know, I know, you get what you pay for, and since we paid little WE GOT LITTLE J . Lesson learned…

OTB in Colombia?

Team returns from inital trip to Medellin, Colombia

A team from OTB has recently returned from their initial trip to Medellin, Colombia. The purpose of the trip was to do a feasibility study of the area in order to determine if the area would benefit from an Outside the Bowl Super Kitchen.

It was a busy three days full of meetings, presentations, and more than a few tours of the city and some of the surrounding area. Medellin is a busy and very modern city of over 3.5 million people. However, according to a recent report by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), nearly 30 %  or over 1 million live in severe poverty. The OTB team had a chance to visit some of the most impoverished areas of the city and meet some of the people struggling to survive there.

The video below will give you just a glimpse into Medellin.

Race Recap

I can’t believe it has been a week since my race and I haven’t sat down to write any sort of ‘recap’ yet – but I guess that is what happens when life gets in the way.

The race went well. My 'coach' was thinking I should shoot for a finish time of about 1:57, which seemed incredibly ambitious to me. I was thinking that finishing a half marathon was an amazing feat in and of it itself, but that my original goal of 2 hours and 30 minutes was still what I figured I would try to shoot for. A couple weeks before the race, I found out a friend from college was going to be flying in for it, so we chatted about strategies and she said that shooting for 2:15 would be totally doable. I know, I am probably a lot faster and more capable than I give myself credit, but at the same time, I didn’t want to set myself up to ‘fail’ (fail in my own eyes, if I didn’t meet my goal time) and disappoint myself or others.

Ryan and I headed up to Anaheim Saturday afternoon. Our hotel had a check-in time of 12-noon, so we hit the road around 11:15am or so to get up there around the time we would be able to get into the room. Once we checked into the room (more on the hotel room later), we dropped our stuff off and headed to the Expo to pick up my bib and meet up with my friend and her husband. The Expo was cool, seeing all of the gear and the vendors, but I am ‘frugal’ and wasn’t planning on buying anything, so it was more of just a quick walk through for us. After the Expo we went to Downtown Disney to walk around a bit and grab some lunch. After checking out the scene (my friend and her husband LOVE Disney, but have only been to Disney World, so this was a super cool experience for them to see Disneyland firsthand), Ryan and I decided to go back to the hotel to watch Michigan lose to Alabama (not the best way to spend the evening, but hey, it could have been worse). My pre-race dinner was Domino’s pizza J .

They had told us that although the race started at 5:30am, they would recommend that we are in our corrals by about 4:45am. Ryan and I left our hotel around 4:30am (yes, that means I was ‘awake’ by about 3:30am – even though I would say I don’t think I slept more than about an hour that night – which I will blame my fibro and probably a little pre-race jitters and anxiety thrown in there). We walked over to the hotel that my friend and her husband were staying at and met up with them there (figuring it would be easier than trying to find them somewhere closer to the starting line).

There were over 17,000 runners that were signed up to run this race, so you can imagine that organization needs to be of the utmost importance. They put the top finishers (base on finishing times that they have provided) further up front, that way they don’t have to weave in and out of slower folks and can just take off). Since I did not have proof of finishing time (since this was my first half marathon and hadn’t run anything further than a 5k before this race) I was put in one of the back corrals. (They put your corral on your bib, that way they can monitor where people are supposed to be). We were in corral E and started probably 20 or 25 minutes after the ELITE group started (by the way, the top male finisher finished in 1 hour and 5 minutes and the top female in 1 hour and 24 minutes).

The sun was just coming up when we were crossing the Start Line.  The first 3 or 4 miles were all within Disney. We ran through California Adventure, through the back lots, through Downtown Disney, through Disneyland, etc. It was super fun to see the park from a different angle than we are used to seeing it – but hey, it was still busy J. Ryan was able to get some pictures of us in Downtown Disney and my friend’s husband was allowed into the park (due to his chEAR squad advantages) and took some pictures of us running down Main Street and exiting Cinderella’s Castle. I do have to say, running through Disney was fun, but it was very congested. We had to do a lot of weaving, jumping up on sidewalks, cutting back and forth around other runners, etc. I think by the time we finished the race we had put on an extra tenth of a mile just from weaving in and out of all of the people.

After we left Disney’s property, we headed out to the streets of Anaheim. It seemed like we were running east FOREVER – mainly because we were running directly into the sun that was rising in the sky. It was crazy how bright it was. I had on my sunglasses and I still felt like we were looking down the whole time. Disney had set up entertainment along the way – cheerleading squads, dance teams, mariachi bands, a whole mile of old, vintage cars and their owners, etc. It was super awesome to think that these people came out to just support us and cheer us on – AND THEY DIDN’T EVEN KNOW US! I made sure to say ‘thank you’ to just about everyone I could – whether it was a security officer or police man directing traffic, a vintage car driver that came out with their old car, the volunteers passing out water, etc. I was just so blown away by everyone’s generosity and friendly demeanor.

My ‘coach’ had originally suggested that I run through the water stations – not that I shouldn't take the water, but that I should literally run and drink at the same time. When I mentioned this so my friend, she said that she hadn’t quite mastered the running and drinking so thought we should walk through them. She said that she had walked through them in her last 4 half marathons and was able to make up the time she lost when walking (not to mention if gives your legs a little rest, even if it is only for 30 seconds or so). My coach said that a lot of runners actually start drinking too late, so suggested that we get some water around miles 2, 4, 8 and 10. We actually got water at all of the stops (I think there were 7 or 8 of them throughout the race) and I don’t think it was too bad. I think in the future I may only get water at 4 or 5 of them, but I do think I will continue walking through the water stations (I wouldn’t want to choke in the middle of the race due to trying to save a second or two on my time).

Anyway, back to the race, after the streets of Anaheim, we ran by the Honda Center (which is where the Anaheim Ducks play hockey) and then to the Angels Stadium. The Angels stadium was super fun. There were a few steep areas to get through the tunnels and stuff, but they were super quick. When we entered the stadium, we ran around the warning track down the first base line and then down the third base line. It was so fun because the stands were filled (okay, not totally filled, but a decent amount of people) with a bunch of boy scouts and girl scouts that were cheering us on. Again, it just made me smile because they were honestly just out there to lift our spirits and encourage us – how sweet. Not to mention, I love baseball so it was cool to actually be on the field (and we actually went to see the Tigers play the Angels this past weekend).

After the stadium we went back onto the streets and were heading back to Disney. We saw some of the freeway signs for Disney Way and knew we had to be close. And thankfully these last couple miles we were running with the sun, so it wasn't blinding us any longer. When we made it back to Disney property we knew we were close - especially because when we hit mile 2 earlier in the race on the other side of the street it said mile 12 - it sort of felt like deja vu J. We kicked it in on the last half mile or so. I finished with a time of 2:12 and my friend was just a few seconds behind me and came in at 2:13 (which was actually a 3 minute personal best for her, and of course it was a personal best for me, seeing as this was the first time I had run a half marathon J).

Afterwards we got our medals, some insta-cooling towels (which slightly weirded me out because they smelt like Windex and after rubbing my face with it for a while I was struck with the thought of 'I wonder what kind of nasty chemicals are covering this thing to make it instantly cold?!'), bananas, waters, power aids, snack boxes, etc. We even took finishing pictures, which everyone commented that it looks like we were walking the red carpet because there was this backdrop behind us and the sub glaring in our face making us look like the paparazzi were attacking us. 

Quite a few people asked me how the race went, and I think I still have the same answer - it was easier than I thought it would be (but obviously not ""easy""). I know that may sound like a strange answer, but I think it makes sense. I trained HARD for this race. Technically this race was 9 months in the making. I started "training" in January - adding 2 miles of walking a day on my lunch break, then hitting the gym starting in February and really kicking it into speed the last 5 or 6 months. My workouts were not easy. Some days I was riding my bike 28 miles. Some days I would do elliptical for an hour and then still run outside for another hour. When my IT band started flaring up, I was running 4 miles on my short days and 6 miles on my long days (this was before I was cross training, but just was strictly running outside). Then when I started adding in cross training and trying to take some of the strain off my IT band (thanks to some words of wisdom from my 'coach') I would run for an hour at the most, which would be around 6 or 6.5 miles. So technically, before this race, I had NO IDEA how my body would do running 13.1 miles at one time. I mean, honestly, my IT band could have frozen up and I could have had to stop at mile 8, I may could have passed out at mile 9 from all of the physical exertion, my legs could have fallen off at mile 11 (okay, maybe my legs falling off might not have been an honest thought in my head, but you get the point). And I have to say, my body did great. All of the cross training really paid off (even though I would continually tell my 'coach' that if I wasn't running I wasn't training and I didn't know why I had to bike for 2.5 hours on Saturday mornings). I think my body was used to going for the long of a time at that hard of a level, it was just doing it in a slightly different way, so it was able to tackle the run easier than I thought it would.

So... what's next?! Well, Ryan and I have two upcoming 5ks on the calendar (the Awesome 80s Run and the Color Run) in the next month and a half, after that, I'm not too sure. I still am working out (more on that later), I still enjoy running, and want to continue, but I don't know if the half marathon distance will be "my" distance. I am talking Ryan into possibly doing one with me - and if he agrees then of course I will do another. My sister-in-law has asked me to do a full marathon with her too. Running is fun, and I am glad I found it, and I am excited to see what could be next J.

[PS If you want to see more pictures from the race (or any of my other races) check out the album here.]