Wow!  It’s been well over a month since my last post, as usual time is flying and I have been busy!

After the holidays I started officially training for IMLOU and it has been met with mixed success….I’ve had some good weeks and some weeks where training was nonexistent.  I also had some pretty big events going on in January so those took priority and training took a backseat.

The first big event was my tri club’s Frozen Buns Run 5 & 10K race on January 18th, and this year I was co-race director (what did I sign up for? Kidding :)).  We started planning for this event in August and boy was it a lot for work!  It was a lot of fun though and despite having a lower number of participants this year compared to last year, it still was a big success.  One of the tasks I was in charge of was the race schwag (we typically do something different from the typical t-shirt) so I picked out these awesome stainless steel travel mugs (love them!):

Once FBR was over, I was still in go-mode as I had a baby shower I was throwing for a friend the following weekend, so most of my nights the week after the race were spent running errands for items for the party.  One of the ‘games’ we had at the shower was to guess how many m&m’s were in a jar (her theme for the baby’s room is elephants with white, purple and grey), so Friday night I was busy sorting out m&m’s to pick out the purple and white ones 🙂

I wore gloves while sorting/counting….I promise! 😉

Once the shower was over, I had a big night out with one of my good friends for her birthday.  We went to a fancy dinner at Lucas Park Grille downtown, and after dinner we were off to the City Museum!  There was one slide that everyone went down and all I could hear were screams.  I was the last of the group to approach the slide and when I looked down I couldn’t see anything.  Nothing!  Did I mention I am afraid of heights?

View from the top of the slide….yeah…I told you it was scary.

It took my friends and two twelve-year olds next to me at the top to finally coach me to go down the slide after being stuck up there for ten minutes.  When I finally went down…oh boy was it a drop – and scary!  That was the last slide I went down for the night, and decided that the bar was a bit more my style after doing lots of climbing around.

A motion shot of me getting off the evil scary slide!

The last week of January I did fit some training in….but I spent most of it in Cancun!

View from our hotel balcony

I went with three of my best girl friends that I met through the tri club over the past two years and we had an absolute blast.  Although we only had a day and a half of real sunshine since it was rainy and cold on Friday (We arrived Thursday afternoon and left late Sunday morning)…however it wouldn’t have mattered to me anyways since I spent most of the time under a huge umbrella 🙂  I burn so darn easily that I am making it my mission this year to not get burnt!  Especially while training!  Back to Cancun, the food was pretty good, we got some workouts in and the conversation was great.  No drama, nada.  Such a great group of girls, I feel so lucky to have them as my friends!

The four of us on the last night

After Cancun it’s been back to the grind this week and back on the trainer/treadmill/ and in the pool.

Ooh!  I also recently purchased a new piece of home fitness equipment, a Bosu ball!

It arrived the night before I left for Cancun, so I haven’t had a chance to use it yet, but so far I had found tons of exercises I can do on it to get a full body workout in.  I figured that I do a lot of workouts from home (riding my trainer during the week or running around my neighborhood and then tack on this short workout after) so this will help me get in strength training without having to head to the gym. Plus, I use it at PT quite a bit, so it will be nice to have one at home when I no longer need to go. Yes, you read that correctly it’s been 3 months since I had my sling off and I am STILL going to PT.  I am hoping that I will be cleared to say adios to PT after my next appointment in March.

Finally – how could I forget.. JMR also purchased his very first road bike!  A Giant Defy…pretty snazzy!  Sadly, because the weather in Saint Louis stinks this time of year, we haven’t had a chance to go ride so he could try it out, but hopefully in another month the weather will be nicer.  In the meantime, he bought a trainer tire so he can ride it inside on my trainer 🙂

Ignore the messiness surrounding the bike…

Phew!  So now that I’m all caught up…..

As of Monday….IMLOU is 30 weeks away!!  It sounds far away, but really, it isn’t since I still need a few months to build up my base before the tough training begins!

Adios!