S Club Mama

I scoured the internet for running shoes tonight for hours. Seriously. There are so many choices but 1. I don't have that much money. I have $120 - which is a lot of money but shipping costs can add up. 2. All of the cool color combos I have found in shoes I like....are men's and they don't have my size. 3. The coolest looking ones are minimalist ones and I'm not sure I want to make that plunge. If I don't like how I feel when I run in them, I can't return them. I don't have that money to waste. If anyone has a size 9 or 9.5 that they would like to loan me to try (or just give me) I'm game. LOL 4. I kind of do want to try minimalist but again, scared it won't be for my body. Nike Free Runs are awesome though. 5. Really wish I had the money for Nike ID shoes - I designed some sweet ones tonight! 6. My husband is awesome and said we can go to the closest "big" town to look for shoes this Wednesday. So I need to know what I'm looking...

I have been thinking long and hard about running in the Lincoln Marathon in May. It's a fairly flat course and ...I just can't stop thinking about running a full marathon. I almost feel like God has placed it on my heart to run - is that silly? Would He place a marathon on my heart? I don't know. Since the thoughts won't leave my head (I dreamed about running last night a lot), I started to think about training plans. The one thing that scares me about running a full marathon (besides the 26.2 consecutive miles) is the training. It's such a time commitment; I know others who have much busier lives than I do that have trained, but I really like being with my husband and my kids. It's the 16, 18, 20 mile runs that are daunting - those are precious hours of my family time. How do you give that up? Something I've toyed with but am unsure if it would work is to sort of train every other week. On the "off" weeks do cross training and weight lifting...

Am I the only runner who doesn't really care to run 8, 7, 6 (etc) mile splits? Sure I don't want to run 12, 13, 14 (etc) mile splits...but I'm perfectly happy in the 9-11 range. I read a lot of running blogs (a lot) and it seems most of them talk about speed work and a bunch of other fancy training things I don't use. I have no desire to be super speedy. Sure, I'd like to win a small race (5K, maybe 10K) in a small town. But even in our little hillbilly-ish race, I wouldn't have won. The fastest woman had a time of about 23 minutes. Phew! That's fast for 3.1 miles. I come in around 27 minutes at my fastest. If you're a runner, do you do speed work? What other techniques do you use to train - and why? Do you, like me, have no desire to be Road Runner?

There are times when humility is forced upon you - you're proven wrong or God really speaks to a sin in your life and knocks you on your tush. And then there are times when your heart is just humbled by the people you are in contact with. Recently my Facebook page has been bombarded by such sweet comments in regards to this picture. I don't know that anyone thought I looked really bad before, but I've heard "you look great" and "hot mama" a lot this week. Makes me blush. I appreciate that - who doesn't want friends to think you look nice? And the fact that I feel good about myself means so much in this circumstance.  I can say 'thank you' when someone compliments me and actually believe them. How often, as a woman, does that happen? I have been asked numerous times in the past few weeks for running advice. Me? Running advice? It's very humbling to have someone ask for your help, especially in an area where you never thought you...