3 Years ago today

Thanks to a little app called timehop, your past social media posts are only a finger tap away. Funny that this one popped into my feed today.

Exactly three years ago an overly optimistic October Heather, signed April Heather up for a race two races. A 5k Friday night race and an exhausting 10k race Saturday morning bright and early.

You can read about how that went with the posts titled: Dear October Heather and one gem titled 9.2 Miles in 48 hours.

I say funny this popped up today because, well the thought had crossed my mind to do something similar, only instead of April the race would be in January! I do have the fact that weather will be much more on my side here in Arizona over the winter than it would have been back in Illinois over the winter (which was my lazy excuse last time) I've been throwing the idea around of starting to run, I'm not 100% feeling the snug clothes and I'm past the point of being able to say oh I just moved it was stressful, that's why I eat like crap and never go to the gym.

At the very least I will sign up for the 5k race, stay tuned. I might do something stupid like sign up for the 2nd day race too. You just never can tell here at North of 10th can you?! Also I need some way to kick my dad's butt on the Fitbit steps, that man is a beast! Anyone else fitbit? Oh and that #195 days.. it's 100 days less to prepare as of today #95days #DoubleEek

The Color Run

This past Saturday morning, bright and early (8am) my adventurous Arizona crew lined up at the starting line of The Color Run which calls itself the 'Happiest 5k on the planet!' and it sure did not disappoint! It was a bit breezy that morning which is unusual for us here in the valley and it was a bit chilly in the shade! 

The premise of the race is to start off clean and finish dirty, and new this year finish sparkly! There were five different color stations where colored chalk is thrown at you, Pink, Yellow, Blue, Orange and Sparkly! I should mention this was an untimed race as well aka we walked the whole way.

The Adventure crew before the race

look at that wind blowing those banners!

Do you see the unicorn? 

Pink station

Yellow station

Fun along the way

blue station (blue was the most stubborn to clean off)

Tutu and me

Orange everywhere!

The shiny sparkly finish

The rainbow finish line!

The colorful after party is tons of fun, color tosses every few minutes with a crowd of color everywhere!

We all had a colorfully good time and even have the medals to prove it! 

Free Chocolate milk fron the Nesquik bunny, sure why not! 

The leaf blowers are an attempt to clean us off (sponsored by Shout)

Post race food stop

The after after

It took a lot of scrubbing and washing to get all that color off. It amazed me that chalk could seep through all layers of clothing. I honestly still have a blue spot on the back of my neck in my hairline that I can't get un-blue and I think the sparkles will be around forever, in my hair, in the house and in the car! This was a great race and I would definitely sign up again! Who'd a thunk it that January I'd be running walking races in the desert! Have I mentioned I love Arizona!?

St. Jude Warrior - Help Sponsor the Fight!

You may remember the Warrior Dash... I have completed two of them one in 2012 and the other in 2013. It's a crazy thing to pay money to do, you go through obstacles and jump over fire, it is tons of fun too. Here let me remind you...

I survived two Warrior Dash's and vowed to never return unless I was in shape. Because let me tell you... it's no walk in the park! I sat out the 2014 race (let's just say it's because I moved) 2015 hadn't even crossed my mind.... that is, until the ROC race. Tutu had so much fun that she ended up talking me into the 2015 Arizona Warrior Dash which just happens to be April 11th. UGH! 

This means I have some work to do in the coming months (more on that later) but also this time I have decided to run this race as a St. Jude Warrior and have a fundraising goal of $300...

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is the global leader in finding cures and saving children from cancer and other deadly diseases. This is why I am competing as a St. Jude Warrior at Warrior Dash. I am going to crawl through mud and jump through fire in order to support St. Jude patients. Will you join the fight with me?

I need your support to help me raise the funds for the kids of St. Jude.

How your donation helps:

• Thanks to donors like you, no family ever receives a bill from St. Jude.
• Every child saved at St. Jude means doctors and scientists can use that knowledge to save thousands more children around the world.

If you would like to donate you can visit my fundraising page here. There are plenty of ways you can help me succeed if you choose not to donate monetarily.  I'm going to need lots of encouragement to keep myself accountable to get into shape and let the warrior within come out! 

Flashback Friday: Illinois Marathon Weekend 2013

Remember last year when October 2012 Heather thought it would be a good idea so sign up for the Mini I-Challenge and do a 5k and a 10k back to back nights? Yeah.... that was fun wasn't it? I still have blisters... ok not really but the marks are there still! 

This weekend is the Illinois Marathon weekend back home and all the Facebook posts about it make me kinda sad I didn't get to do it again, would I have been ready for it? H-no, but it's the thought that counts.... so take a walk down memory lane with me to last years' 5k and 10k Runs walks. Read the whole post here for the play-by-play.

Which brings us back to present day, and Houston we have a problem. It's called pizza... pizza is a problem. Since beginning the whole moving to Arizona adventure back in November (applying for the job, waiting, waiting some more, getting the job, relocation, moving, packing, driving, settling etc etc) I kinda started packing on the pounds again (you know after I had been doing so good working out with a trainer like 6 days a week and eating good and lost a good amount of weight) and it sucks. 

My new job requires me to be up in front of a classroom and out from the hidden comfort of my desk. It's amazing how being up in front of a group of people makes you suddenly very self aware, weird right? 

So what do I do now? Obviously it's time to get started, no more pizza for sure (even though it's soooo easy) I've been on Pinterest trying to pin healthy recipes, it's weird that when you pin them, they don't make themselves. 

Yet again here I am, finding myself on the starting end of getting the whole weight thing under control. Being lazy is so hard to change, but we've all got to start somewhere (again) right? If you know of any good single serving easy healthy meals send em my way! You can add to the comments or use the handy link at the top of the page to 'Email North of 10th' Wish me luck! 

Screaming Pumpkin 2013

'twas a lovely fall night for a run through the cemetery....

Our third running walking of the Screaming Pumpkin 10k is done and in the books. The gigantic cemetery that this race goes through is a gorgeous cemetery... that sounds weird, but it is, though we only had a short time to actually see it. Night soon fell and we were left hoping not to run into the undead. The trails are only lit by glowsticks lining the pathways and each participant is given a couple of glowstick necklaces to wear. It scares the crap out of you when you approach someone who isn't wearing any because you can barely see them.

Our costumes were a hit this year! I can gauge how good a costume is by how many people talk to you about it, and this year there were many, we even had one person ask for our picture. 

Do you remember the show 'Legends of the Hidden Temple' if you don't you probably didn't grow up with 90's Nickelodeon. But it's a Indiana Jones style game show for kids with six teams competing for the grand prize. We chose to be the Green Monkeys. We could hear several people talking about our costumes, they looked familiar and knew it was Nickelodeon but couldn't quite remember the name. Once we told them they were always like "Yeah! That's it! I loved that show!" If it had been warmer we could have had the whole look going with elbow and knee pads and the classic khaki shorts, but we had to bundle up a bit cuz it was a smidge chilly. We successfully managed to make it to the finish and bonus, we weren't last!

The green monkeys survived the Screaming Pumpkin 10k! 

We managed to finish with a time of 2:01:40 which is pretty good considering we walked the whole thing. Even though we have blisters and are a bit sore from hiking up the giant hills in the cemetery and sometimes question our sanity half way through; we always come back for this very fun race. This is our third time doing the race in four years and it gets better and better each time. You get a t-shirt, medal, and post race food complete with hot chocolate, and on a night like tonight you definitely need it to warm the bones! 

Warrior Dash 2013- A Photo Montage

As promised here are some pictures from Warrior Dash 2013! There were way more obstacles than I have pictured here, mostly because I was saving energy some of them were a little brutal and required a moment or two to catch my breath. But here for your viewing pleasure is the photographic evidence that the Warrior Dash did occur! The obnoxiously bright color shirts were an effort to help the cheer squad/photographers/baggage handlers locate us in the muddy mix of humans crossing the finish line.

Our Cheer Squad/Photograhers/baggage handlers

A.Drama posing

Before

The first obstacle- go across a muddy creek

Tons-o-smelly mud to run walk through

The dreaded trenches- thought it would be smoother with the water, it was not, still scraped up my poor knees :(

NiBo (the blue one at the top) conquering an obstacle

First off, sorry this is blurry at this point my new waterproof camera had been through some muddy water. And while it is waterproof it doesn't have a self cleaning front lens, so that is mud spots, my apologies. This obstacle is metal chains that you have to climb up and back over. 

NiBo rocked the course finishing like 20 mins before A.Drama and I

Here is A.Drama crossing giving the warrior sign as she crosses, I'm just a smidge behind her

Here I am falling down just across the finish line

A.Drama in front of a pile of shoes to be donated

This is how muddy it was even after we were off the course! Very different from the drought conditions we had last year

Mud covered NiBo 

all muddy and done! 

In case anyone was wondering about my waterproof camera I used for the race it's a Nikon Coolpix S31. It's waterproof to 16.4ft and shockproof up to 3.9 ft. I don't plan to actually use it for underwater shooting I just got it to have a more rugged camera for messy races and times when I'm around the water and want a little more safety for my camera. If you click the picture it will take you to Target's website where it is currently on sale. They sell it in stores but only have white. Best Buy has it online only for a few dollars cheaper. The picture quality is good as long as you keep the front lens clean, and when you're covered in mud with no clean edge of your shirt it's a little hard to do ;)