13.1 miles of magic...

I've written before about my desire to run.  I want to be a runner.  I mean, I AM a runner, but I want to be a  REAL runner.  Signing up for my first half-marathon, I thought, well this is just what I need to get me into training mode.  WRONG.  Just a little word of advice, don't change jobs, buy a house, renovate, move into an unfinished house, etc. before a race.  Life got in the way. 

Training, what training?!  Still, I felt with some determination that I could finish...and that was my only goal after all.  So on January 5, 2012, Chad and I headed to the most magical place on earth to partake in the Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend.  We ran the 5k fun run and 1/2 marathon.  We were registered to complete the 5k on Friday morning and the half on Saturday morning.  The full marathon was held on Sunday.

The 5k fun run was themed with Los Tres Caballeros (or The Three Caballeros).  Los Tres Caballeros is one of my favorite Disney cartoons.  Don't ask me why, it just is.  Earning my fifth Disney medal was awesome.  The vibe of the race was a bit more competitive though.  I chalked this up to it being the Marathon weekend.  A lot of serious runners were there and ran the 5k as an easy run.  They were a bit more rude and not as into the fun of it all, but I didn't let that bring my spirits down.

The weather that weekend was pretty cold, well for Florida.  I didn't remove my gloves or jacket once during the entire 5k.  But the weather was great for running.  I'd rather be a little too cold than too hot any day.

WARNING: I don't recommend doing a half-marathon with little training.  It is really stupid to do so.  I think people don't realize how long 13.1 miles actually is.  I've sat at home on countless occasions watching the contestants on The Biggest Loser complete half and full marathons.  So logically one thinks, if they can do it, I CAN DEFINITELY do it!  Yes, you can...but train!  I highly recommend Jeff Galloway's run-walk-run method.  We did our own variation of this throughout the 5k and Half races and it worked really well for us.  We used landmarks instead of time for our intervals, but it worked great for us.

Saturday morning, the weather was a tad warmer, but not by much.  Despite the cold, I was determined to finish this race.  I learned a lot about myself that day.  I learned that with some dedication and mind over matter will power, I could complete something that I never would have dreamt to be possible.  And it felt amazing.  Crossing the finish line with my husband was indescribable.  Sure, we had our struggles along the way, but somehow we overcame them.  Instead of worrying about finishing the race, I set mini-goals for each mile marker.  I envisioned myself passing each mile marker and then the next, etc.  Getting to Cinderella's Castle in Magic Kingdom was pretty awesome!  We had to stop for a pic, albeit a heinous one.  It was a big feat.

I'll never get tired of running through Cinderella's Castle. And it's even better when you can do it with someone you love, like The Hubs.

Before I knew it, we were on mile 11.  Mile 11 is where I had to quit during my first half-marathon attempt because of an injury.  But once we got there, I knew we could make it.  Despite the ridiculously steep ramp at Mile 11, I kept going even though I wanted to die!  (I can't look at an interstate ramp in quite the same way anymore.)  And sure enough, during mile 12, I got an amazing rush of adrenaline and ran most of that last mile.  We could hear the cheers and finally we saw the finish line!  Since we weren't worried about time, just finishing and getting that sweet medal, we stopped to snap a pic with Donald and Mickey.

After finishing the WDW 1/2, I couldn't wait to train for the Princess 1/2 at the end of February.  I felt a little sore the day after, but overall I felt surprisingly great.  I was so excited that I decided that Chad, Mom, and I would dress up.  At the Disney races, a lot of people come in costume.  Sometimes they just don't tutus, but some go all out.  I ordered pageant sashes and tutus for Mom and myself.  But life again got in the way.  Bronchitis and house renovations, anything not to train and then the race was upon us.

It's dumb to not train for one half-marathon and even dumber not to train for two.  I was worried, but had better hopes because I knew what I could do.  It was equally as fun.  We completed the Tangled 5K which was a great easy run and a nice way to start a Saturday and the weekend.  The Tangled 5k medal is my seventh RunDisney medal. :)

Oh how I love a step and repeat!





The Princess Half was a lot of fun.  I did sprain an ankle thanks to an unpleasant runner who nudged me out of the way.  Seriously.  I even have the bruise to show it.

Despite all that, the race is over...no photo finishes though...bad weather.  And it's shown me again that I can do anything I set my mind to do.  I am going to train...and write about all the training here, to keep me honest...and next time, I will shave time off.  We'll set goals that are realistic and move on from there.  But for now, I'll enjoy being a Princess and the eight race medals that I earned from RunDisney this year.

HUD House Hunters

A little more than a year ago, I discovered the joy that is HGTV.  My favorite HGTV show is House Hunters.  It seems kind of crazy to think that one could learn so much just by watching TV, but I really became knowledgeable in all things houses AND the house hunting process, thanks to shows like HH. 

I loved watching all of these people purchase their homes.  The best part is seeing what they'd done with their new homes and how they made it "theirs". But owning a home seemed like a distant dream for The Hubs and me.  A couple of years ago I started working on cleaning up my credit and paying off my bills.  A couple of times The Hubs and I flirted with the idea of applying for a mortgage loan pre-approval, but vetoed the idea due to a lack of savings, credit scores, tighter qualifications, etc.  And so it was decided that we would continue to be renters.  We wished to move out of our cramped apartment and into a rental home. 

We checked the newspaper, craigslist, Rent.com, Trulia.com, and drove around town looking for "For Rent" signs. One afternoon, as we drove around looking for rentals in our dream neighborhood, we spotted our diamond in the rough. My husband noticed a sign in the front yard that said HUD. We did a loop around and came back to the house to further investigate the sign.  And sure enough, the home was a HUD-owned property.

The discovery of this house gave us hope.  We visited www.hudhomestore.com to verse ourselves in everything HUD.  Now prior to discovering this home, if you were to ask what I knew about HUD home buying programs and houses? I would have said that they were in poor, typically "bad" neighborhoods, and that the houses needed A LOT of work.  But after researching HUD properties, I discovered that  my beliefs just weren't true.  The Hubs and I contacted a realtor with HUD experience to view the property.  Unfortunately, there were only four realtors in our area with HUD experience and we were unable to get in touch with any of them.  If you decide to go the HUD route, make sure that your realtor has dealt with HUD, it'll save you a ton of headaches.   We were matched up with a realtor who specialized in short-sales and who assured us that she would be able to work closely with the HUD-experienced realtor.

Inside, not surprisingly, the house needed a lot of work.  We had seen the pictures posted online but the amount of work needed didn't seem daunting.  Immediately I could envision The Hubs and I living there.  I could see what the home could be.  Sure, it desperately needed new carpet.  I don't think the carpet had been changed since the home was built in 1998, but it wasn't a deal-breaker.  The home had never been updated, but it wasn't your typical bank-owned/HUD property.  No giant holes in the walls, no foul odors.  With a little paint and new flooring, it definitely had potential.

The property was insurable and eligible for the FHA 203K Renovation Loan (more about this in another blog).  We hoped to get it for a steal, but didn't want to get our hopes up without going through a mortgage pre-approval.  We made an appointment with a broker and, to our surprise, we were approved! We didn't qualify for much, but after discussion and seeing one other non-HUD home, we decided to throw all caution to the wind and bid on "our" home.  If we could get this home at an amazing deal, then we'd be able to do the necessary renos and still have considerable equity in the home.  It would be our chance to financially secure future.

But how low could we go? You hear all the time about people getting amazing deals in the post-bubble market, but would it happen to us? The home was originally listed at $166,000, which was also the "as-is" value of the home.  After one price reduction, it was listed at $149,900.  Even at the "as-is" price the house was an amazing deal.  Comprable homes in the neighborhood start around $200,000.  Unfortunately, at that list price, the home was out of our range considering the amount of renovations that were needed.  Faling back on my English teacher ways, I researched bidding strategies for HUD owned homes and found out that the bidding process was quite different from that of traditional sales, short sales, and foreclosures.

To begin, HUD does not negotiate price.  Your bid must be made through www.hudhomestore.com by a realtor. When a home is initially listed, it must go through a ten-day window. During this time, bids can be made, but none are opened until the window expires.  If none of the bids are deemed acceptable, than the sale is extended and bids are opened daily. If you submit a bid that HUD deems too low, your bid will automatically be rejected.  HUD sets a "secret" minimum acceptable bid  and any bids below that number are rejected automatically. It's up to the buyer to guesstimate what the acceptable minimum price is.  But, there are also other factors involved with getting accepted. Owner-occupiers have top priorty over second home buyers and/or investors.  After digging around the internet, we found that others had been accepted with bids ranging from 50% of asking price to bidding over asking.  83% of the asking price seemed to be the magic number.  Discouragingly for us, 83% of the list price would still be too much after factoring in renovations.

Ultimately we decided to submit a lowball bid.  We offered $105,000.  For the next 24 hours, or what seemed like an eternity, we crossed our fingers, held our breaths, and barely slept a wink.  Finally our realtor called and informed us that our bid had been rejected.  Disappointed but not out, we decided to try again and increased our bid to $115,000.  That was our best offer, we couldn't go one penny over $115,000 though because we needed to budget for the renovations.  Again it was rejected.  Feeling defeated and disappointed, we took a break from the process, went on with our summer vacation plans, but kept an eye on the listing  For the next few weeks that house stayed on the market listed at $149,900 with no changes.  Each day I would wake up fearing to see the house missing from the website (which means that a bid has been accepted).  Yet each day I was relieved when I found that our little house still listed on the website.

The night we returned from our summer vacation, we discovered that the list price had decreased to $134,400!  Without giving it a second thought, we decided that we had to take another shot.  We debated the number.  We went back and forth, and in the end we settled at $105,000.  We wanted to get a deal, but we didn't want to lose it to someone else because we had put in an offer that was too low.  24 hours later, we found out that our bid was accepted!  We were beyond ecstatic.  They  accepted our the price of our original bid and we couldn't have been happier.  If we only knew the trouble that lay ahead for us, we wouldn't have been so quick to celebrate.

If you think that buying a HUD property will be easy, think again.  Unless you are a cash buyer, it is a difficult process.  Throw in another government backed program like the FHA 203k Rehab loan and you have a nightmare.  Our bid was accepted on August 4, 2011 and we didn't close until December 2, 2011.  Yes, you read that correctly---we were in limbo for four months on a bank-owned vacant property.  I have friends who bid on short sales, closed, and moved in before we even knew our closing date.

My advice:  unless you have a lot of patience, pass on the HUD/203K loan combo, it is a nightmare.  The entire process of buying a home is stressful enough without compounding it with HUD, 203k Rehab loans, not to mention being first-time home buyers.  But...if you have the patience and are getting the deal of a lifetime (like we did), you have to go for it and keep the end result in mind.  If it weren't for the instant equity that we had in our home, we would've walked away at least ten times during the process.  Now that we are here, things have yet to settle, but that story I must save for another blog.

New Year...and my resolutions are...

Dear 2012, I resolve to write in this blog!  I have so much to share since I last wrote.  I've been a bad, bad blogger but I am going to be better.  Perhaps if I am held accountable to myself and my blog, even if it lacks readers, than I will keep it up and that will be my motivator in other areas of life too.  :)

I have so much to share, but that'll have to wait because it's awfully late and I have to work tomorrow. 

What's to come in my 2011 recap posts: new house, new job, laziness...stay tuned!

Deuces!

The Expedition Everest Challenge

RunDisney races are the best!  They have the usual Disney-vibe, you know, fun, family, and beloved Disney characters!  I have never felt intimidated at a Disney race.  Okay, so I've only participated in one race that wasn't a Disney race, and to be fair, it wasn't intimidating, but now that I've participated in the RunDisney races, I am hooked!  What I love most about RunDisney races is the Medal that I earn at the end.  You'd think that I'd just received the Olympic Gold medal the way that having that medal put around my neck makes me feel.  The rush...the feeling of accomplishment...there's hardly words to describe it.

It's petty, right?  You should run for yourself.  Do it because it makes you feel good.  Run faster than you did during the last race.  Run to set a personal record. Just enjoy seeing what your body can do.  But nope, I run for the race jewelry.  And I am starting a rather nice collection.

I was rather disappointed to have to sit out of the Disney Princess Half this past February, but was proud of  my mom for completing it. She walked it, but she trained for that walk.  She was so scared of being taken by the course "sweepers", that at one point around Mile 10, someone told her that she was 20 seconds behind and would be swept off course if she didn't catch up. My mom, who has never ran a day in her life, started to run, because the fear of her goal going unfulfilled scared her...and then she got the gold!  Her gold Disney Princess Half-Marathon Finisher's medal.  And she was hooked!  She wore that thing all day Sunday and I'm pretty sure that she wore it to work on Monday...she may even wear it sometimes at home when no one is looking.  :)  But even though I couldn't complete the Princess Half, I did run the Beauty and the Beast Royal Family 5K.  The medal wasn't as cool as the Princess Half medal. My meager little rubber medal paled in comparison to my Mom's shiny gold medal, but it was mine and I wore it proudly.

The next race was the Dick's Sporting Goods Champion 5K at ESPN's The Weekend.  That was fun and it was nice to have an official time.  It was my first experience with the D-chip and my first REAL medal!  Nice and big and heavy!  Loved it!

The Expedition Everest Challenge, my third RunDisney race was probably the most fun that I've had at ANY race to date.  We arrived in Orlando around 2:30, picked up our race packets from the ESPN Wide World of Sports Ppavilion, and headed over to our hotel to check-in.  We didn't have much time to rest before we were off for a bite before heading over to Animal Kingdom for the race.

The Expedition Everest Challenge is a 5K race and obstacle course and scavenger hunt.  Chad and I completed the challenge as a team.  We ran together, had an official time together, and completed the obstacle course and scavenger hunt together.  We even held hands as we crossed the finish line together! 

Upon our arrival, Chad, My Mom (our only fan), and I headed to the area where everyone was waiting for the races to begin.  There was good music, wacky costumes, and just a feeling of positivity and excitement. We tried to get into the spirit by taking our own pre-race photos.  You know the ones, when your hair still looks good, face isn't flushed and sweaty, and you still look "fresh". 

Around 8:00, we began to line up by waves.  Chad and I were assigned to Wave 4.  The people around us were having a great time.  Everyone was friendly.  We all sang and dance as we eagerly waited for our wave's countdown. You could see the desire to take off on our path, find our pacing, complete our obstacles, do the scavenger hunt, cross the finish line, earn our medals, and enjoy the post-race party.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, ONE! Wave 1 takes off.  All of the waves are scheduled to take off five minutes in between one another.  Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, ONE! Wave 2 takes off.  Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, ONE!  Wave 3 takes off.  And soon it was going to be our turn.  I looked around at the people in my wave.  I saw a few people who looked like "runners".  But mostly, I saw a bunch of runners who looked like me.  They weren't long and lean.  They didn't have the lithe bodies that most of us imagine runners to have.  They came in all sizes, shapes, weights, heights, and ages.  And that is comforting to me.  You don't have to look like a runner to BE a runner.  I tried to clear my mind.  I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths.  I tried to envision my race.  Tried to see the medal going around my neck.  And then I heard it...

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, ONE!  The fireworks burst and we were off.  Chad and I set out and quickly found an easy pace.  I am going to thank one of my students here for giving me a tip that I found to be most valuable.  He told me that I should focus on one person in front of me with whom I felt I could catch up.  He said that once you catch up with that person, find another, and another, etc.  And I used that technique at the Dick's 5K and am pretty sure that I shaved off a little bit of time. 

I searched and easily found my target.  I called him YellowHat.  YellowHat was tall enough to be visible over the crowd, his yellow hat was easy to spot, and he had a pretty good pace.  I cannot be sure, but I think that Chad and I ran most of the first mile without stopping.  I don't remember too much when I run because I try to keep my mind free and focused.  If we walked at all, it was briefly.  YellowHat helped us reach our fastest time for the first mile.  We don't know the exact time, but we know it was around 10 minutes.  Our previous record was at the Dick's 5K and that was somewhere around 11 to 12 minutes. 

I was grateful to YellowHat for being such a good target.  But as I started trying to increase my speed to catch up, I found myself wheezing.  I wasn't wheezing from running too fast, but I was wheezing because my allergies were kicked into overdrive.  As beautiful as Animal Kingdom was to run through, it brought on itchy eyes, hoarse breathing, and lots of coughing.  YellowHat became more and more out of my reach.  It was disappointing sure, but just as YellowHat dropped out of view, my husband started doing something unexpected.  He started coaching me! 

For those of you that don't know.  Chad ran in high school.  He coached cross-country when he taught in Indiana.  And I've given him a lot of flack because he hasn't really given me a lot of help in the past.  After our last race, I told him that I am not at the point yet of being a strong, capable runner and that I wished instead of looking like I was holding him up, that he would be more positive and help me.  Maybe that conversation rang through his ears.  Maybe it was the atmosphere before the race.  Maybe his adrenaline was pumping because we had set a new PR for mile one.  Whatever it was, it helped me push through my allergies. 

We jogged.  We ran.  We walked when I needed to walk.  We jumped haystacks, weaved our way through an obstacle of tires, and finally reached the last obstacle which was a net climb (like military boot camp style).  We decided to go around the last obstacle because the line was long to crawl under or go over and we wanted to finish.  And when we did, we were fairly confident that we had done well, but weren't sure how well. 

As soon as we finished, we had to head off to a destination inside of the park to start the scavenger hunt.  Clue One was easy-Mile.  Clue Two was ridiculously hard-Ocean.  I still don't know how we figured it out, except that we had a lot of guidance from the "experts" on the course.  And Clues Three-Undeveloped and Four-Nuts, were easy, too. 

Clue Five read:

Take your password (the solution to each clue).

If you're letter-perfect and orderly, you'll know what to do.

First things, first!  Remember that and then.

Put what you've got together and finish with the number 10!

We were stumped and stood looking at the clue.  Another team (a mom and her son) asked if we could help them so we looked at each other's clues, which were different, so I wasn't sure.  But then...I saw it.  Chad was holding all of the clues first to last and I saw "first things first"=the first letter to each password M-O-U-N and finish with ten=MOUNTAIN!  Duh, Everest is a mountain!  I told the other team and Chad and I took off like bats out of hell.  We showed our final clue and were relieved to find that we were correct. 

We received our medal and headed to the Dino-land area of Animal Kingdom to party.  And we danced.  Rode Everest.  Took pics with Safari Minnie and Mickey, and just acted silly.  It was the perfect end to a really fun race.  I was glad that my mom was there to see me race.  She still cannot believe that this is my fourth race, and sometimes neither can I.  But I am happy to report that Chad and I set a new PR.  We shaved off close to two minutes from the Dick's time, and beat our original PR from the Jingle Run in downtown Bradenton (our only non-Disney race) by about 15-20 seconds.

So we may not be the fastest, but we are still doing it!  Our medals don't look any different than those who ran faster than us, and we certainly were far from being last. And for now, I am okay with that.

It's official...I am a runner, or I will be one very soon.

I've been flirting with the sport of running for about the last year.  I get into a groove and then something happens---life, work, a car accident, etc.  But now that I am finally cleared to return to regular activities (since the car accident), I am excited to hit the proverbial pavement.  I am registered for my first half-marathon on October 1.  That gives me a little over five months to get cracking.  It's a tall order.  I hope to be able to finish the entire thing in less than 3 hours, although my real goal is 2 1/2 hours.  I am okay if I have to do the run walk run method, although I would like to run the entire thing while keeping about a ten minute pace.

Can I do it?  We'll see, but at least I can say that I tried and did it.  It's amazing what you can do when you push yourself. I've never been one to work out.  I mean, I love dancing.  Yoga is awesome.  But working out?  Hitting the gym where you are judged by the stereotypical muscle meat heads who do nothing but gawk at half-naked girls and look at themselves admiringly in the mirror, yea, that's not my scene.  But once I started running, I decided to try Krav Maga and that lead to boot camp, and voila, I was doing things that I never dreamt I could do in a million years.  I have missed working out so voraciously the last four months or so, but am that much more excited to get to it.

I have taken up spinning, as many of you know, and that is pure heaven!  I love pushing myself.  I love it even more when Chad is on one side, and Jenny and Aki are on the other.  It's so sweet!

So we're going to get back into the groove and to help me push myself, I've ordered Shaun T's Insanity workout!  Cannot wait.

Stay tuned...

I cannot believe I am one of "THEM"...

As I write this, I am officially ashamed to admit that I have become one of "THEM". 

You know who they are, the crazy die hard, hard core, fanboys/girls who live for their book series'.  The Twi-hards.  The Quidditch playing fools. And no, if I ever go there---down the dark road that leads me to answer the question Team Edward or Team Jacob? That leads me to wear a Hogwarts uniform and perfectly round spectacles, then I have gone too far and I deserve all of the mocking and ridicule you can give.  The series to which I am referring though is The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. 

I read the series in November and I was completely addicted.  I wondered how I had never heard of this series sooner?  In fact, I had actually just obtained a set of book for my classroom library when I heard about them at NCTE.  I decided to go home and read them.  And read them I did.  I stayed in bed reading, all day and all night!  I delayed preparing Thanksgiving dinner because I couldn't put them down. 

I have never been one to read sci-fi/fantasy novels but this one, this one is amazing.  I don't know, maybe it's the kick-ass heroine Katniss, or her partner in crime, the oh-so-tough Gale, or the sweetest.boy.ever. Peeta, but these characters had me entranced.  The novel is so disturbing on so many accounts.  The entire premise of children fighting to the death on reality TV so that the citizens of Panem never forget who is in charge.  How messed up is that?  Yet the parallels to reality tv, hollywood glamour, plastic surgery, and "Big Brother" are even more unsettling.  The allusions to Greek mythology lend the book literary merit.  And that is why The Hunger Games could never be compared with Twilight.  Suzanne Collins is a hundred times more talented than Stephenie Meyer.  And THG has mass appeal.  Boys love it. Girls love it.  Teens love it.  Adults love it.  Even my Mom loves it.  How many books can say that?  Twilight most definitely can't.

Today, Lionsgate announced that Jennifer Lawrence, the critically acclaimed star of Winter's Bone, would play the part of Katniss Everdeen in the film version of the books.  The first film is set to come out on March 23, 2012.  I am not so dorky as to count down the days, but I am so dorky as to have been reading blogs and fanpages for the last FOUR HOURS! 

Yes, you read that right.  I have been reading this stuff for the last FOUR HOURS.  Fans complaining that JL (their nickname for Jennifer Lawrence) could never be Katniss. Their disappointment over the fact that their top choices weren't cast. They are already vowing protests and boycotts of the yet-to-be-filmed flick.  And yet I couldn't stop reading.  It was like a drug.  I couldn't stop myself and before I knew it... I broke down...and...I...COMMENTED ON THE POSTS!  I know!  I know!  I am sitting here with my head hanging low.  How could I get all worked up and caught up in the frenzy? Why was I typing feverishly about the actress set to play Katniss?  Why do I even care?  I am a grown woman, soon to turn 34, and I am writing about THG with THEM?  It's all too embarassing for words.

Katniss is...well, she's an inspiration.  She triumphs in the face of evil.  She's a scrawny nobody who goes on to be the symbol of freedom for an entire people.  She is humble and she's a survivor.  And I guess those are awe-inspiring qualities no matter where they come from.  I'd like to imagine myself to have a few Katniss qualities of my own.  Maybe the Fightergirl in me relates to the fightergirl in Katniss.  She's the kind of girl that every girl aspires to be in a lot of ways.

Would JL have been my first choice?  Most certainly not, but do I think that she will be amazing? I most certainly do.  For all intents and purposes, she has already played the role of Katniss.  Her character in Winter's Bone lived in the Appalachians, hunted, and skinned dead animals---that's Katniss.  But does she have the physique to play Katniss?  She currently does not.  In fact, she is refreshingly curvaceous in a town filled with twigs.  But I am certain that she will transform her body just like all the greats before her have done on so many occasions.  Think Tom Hanks in Castaway, Christian Bale in The Machinest, Charlize Theron in Monster, Natalie Portman in The Black Swan.  With so much at stake, I am certain she will transform into Katniss and win over many of the fans.  She's already won me over.

But if you see me spouting about Team Gale or Team Peeta, then run for your life, because I'll have truly lost my mind and there'd be no saving me.

May the odds be ever in your favor.  ~B