You ran a marathon? Oh that's cute.

I didn't run a marathon, I wish.

My very special running coach and friend did something amazing last weekend. I've spent the last week thinking about this blog post and what exactly to say. Mary says she's a writer so I'm nervous that I might let her down!!

Well like I said Mary did something crazy last weekend. SHE RAN 100 MILES. AT ONE TIME!!!!! I told her via Twitter that I was trying to come up with something inspirational but all I could come up with is that she's crazy. And it's true. But I love her.

So this woman, ran 100 miles. And it wasn't like it was just her, 55 people had signed up for this. Apparently there are things called "ultra marathons." They sound painful to me. But they're popular and for a special kind of person.

As a testament to how amazing of a woman Mary is she had lots of friends out there on that 11.1 mile loop with her during her 26ish hour journey. I even ventured out to watch the crazy. I decided to take the 2 a.m. shift because what else did I have to do at 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning. I pulled in the parking lot around 1:30 a.m. and sat waiting for Mary and crew to arrive. I got to watch one man cross the finish line around hour 17. That's insane and I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around it.

When Mary came through she looked amaze-balls. She was around mile 77ish of her journey. It was cold and she was killing it. Walking up hills and jogging the rest of the course. I had planned to ride my bike with her for five or six miles; when I got there I realized I hadn't been on a bike in 99 years. Mary wasn't running her usually 100 mph so I decided just to suck it up and run with her. So I ventured off.... for an entire 11.1 mile loop. I have no idea how she did that loop plus eight more. It was a bit chilly and I want to complain about it but Mary did more and I haven't heard her complain at all so it's really hard to complain, especially in public.

It's hard to even put into words how proud of Mary I am. She's a trooper. And just awesome. And crazy. And insane. It was fun watching all the other runners out there too. They were looking kind of loopy around 6 a.m. when I left but they'd been walking/running for 22ish hours so I don't blame them. I wish I had that kind of whatever it takes. Maybe just a love for running.

At one point Mary said, "look at that man, he's swaying." Only to be responded with, "that's what people out at 3 a.m. are supposed to look like."

I mainly want everyone to know how amazing Mary is. And that if you want to run 100 miles let me know and I'll tell you how amazing you are too.

Let's do this!

Let's do this... aka get caught up since I apparently have been too busy to blog in 2 months.

November was a interesting month. I was counting down the days until my 24th birthday and freaking out that I may be having a quarter life crisis. So when Chris told me I could go pick out a kitten the weekend before my birthday my crisis stopped and I was freaking excited. We went to Young Williams Animal Shelter because they were having a cat sale and I adopted an adorable black kitten for $50! He was neutered, had all his shots and a perfect fit for me. HE EVEN LICKED MY FACE!!! I was super excited about taking my dog-cat home. I named him Nauts (like boating stuff) and he's my newest best friend. Except when he farts, which is a lot. He's sitting on my chest right now and just farted, it's disgusting. I didn't know cats actually farted, I thought they were clean and smelled good. Also, his liter box stinks and is kind of gross. But, he's totally worth it. He has my personality and loves hanging out with me, which is exactly what I wanted in a kitty.

I had a fun little birthday weekend; Chris and I went to the last UT game and went out with my parents and some of their friends.

I went to work on Tuesday and found out that my boss was no longer going to be my boss. That was a shock. I had become very close to her and was super upset that I wouldn't be able to work with her any more. Then on Wednesday I found out that I was no longer going to be employed.  Ummm, COMPLETE SHOCK! Due to restructuring I had been laid off. It was a shock and not something that I ever thought that I'd actually have to go through. So, since then I've filled for unemployment, worked a 2nd job at Pandora for the holidays (which was supposed to just be an extra job for extra Christmas cash) and tried to hold myself together.

I feel like I've held it all together pretty well. I obviously cried the day I got laid off but since then I think I've only cried maybe once. Until today. I lost it. I'm not sure why I'm even sharing this. Loosing your job sucks. I finally moved out on my own and thought that I could be an adult and hold it all together without my parents help. NEWS FLASH I CAN'T!! Well, I cried a lot this morning and couldn't figure out all this unemployment stuff. But I'm better now. I applied for 4 jobs today, maybe one will work out.

Mom says, "when one door opens another closes" I'm praying she's right. She usually is. So, if you're a praying person pray that I'll find a job and can pull my life together, again. BUT, there are a lot of people going through a lot worse than me. So I'm going to be grateful for the things I have and the opportunities that I can make for myself. Please keep positive thoughts for those people too!!

Christmas fun! I love this holiday; there is so much love and joy how can you not like it!!

But Christmas and the New Year have passed and I get to do something really fun this weekend, help my running coach run 100 miles! And by help I mean ride my bike beside her because she's too fast and chat with her. I've got some hot pink pants to wear and I'm wearing my puffy vest to channel my inner Mary. I'm super excited about taking the 2 a.m. shift. Think of us at 2 a.m. Mary will be running from 8 a.m. on Saturday until around 6 a.m. on Sunday. She's an animal and I love her for it!

I think I'm done updating you all. Since I guess I won't have a job for a few more weeks (hopefully not too long) I will make an effort to blog more.

Here's to a happy, healthy 2014 full of fun blog posts!

I ran a half marathon

This weekend I ran a half marathon. That's 13.1 miles. I think that point 1 miles was my favorite. I've been trying to compile my thoughts on this adventure and it's proven to be a very hard task. I'll just start from the beginning......

When I was 17 I had major knee surgery. It pretty much halted most of my dancing and the doctor assured me that running wasn't going to be something I would be able to do.

Flash forward two-ish years and I start having horrible hip/back pain. I had all kinds of test ran and pretty much they thought I was crazy, it didn't really look like anything was wrong. But, they gave me lots of steroid injections to ease the pain for the next few years.

And now we're in August of 2012. I kept driving by a CrossFit gym and thought, "hey, I should try that." I became hooked and learned all kinds of things about keeping my body from getting injured. I learned that lots of knee pain starts in the hip and that working my I.T. band would alleviate that pain. I started doing things that would've had me in tears a few years before with knee pain and I was pain free, most of the time.

In December my dad got hurt and saw a chiropractor, he swore he was a miracle worker. So I started going to the same chiropractor and he started really working with my hips and getting them stretched out so my knee wouldn't hurt. By doing this, my hip and back pain disappeared. I was doing box jumps, wall balls and running with zero pain and I was happy.

In June CrossFit offered a running clinic to help with your running and endurance, I jumped at the chance thinking running may eventually be fun for me. I learned so much about running and I wasn't hating it any more. So I decided it was finally time to run that 1/2 marathon I had been wanting to do since 2011.

I started working with a CrossFit Endurance coach, and all around great person. I ran 3 times a week, usually a sprint work out on Thursday, a speed work out on Saturdays and then a pacing run on Sundays. I was also doing CrossFit WODs on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. I never accumulated more than 6 miles on my runs, including my warm ups/cool downs. I had so many people tell me I wasn't running enough miles, there was no way I was actually going to be able to run the entire thing and that I just plain couldn't do it. And I'm not going to lie, some times I started to believe them. Luckily, Coach Mary is a great person, like I already mentioned, and just kept telling me that she believed in me and I could.

Training wasn't easy, it wasn't always fun and there was one run that I had a panic attack and cried during the middle of. But I finished training and was going to that start line on Sunday.

I may be a little dramatic and a bit of a mess. And that was definitely shown on Saturday night. I surprised myself when I figured out how to do everything on my own. Mary is a saint for putting up with me. I may have gotten to our meeting place 30 minutes early on Sunday morning with a text message sent saying, "I know I'm early, but I'm lost." I was so nervous. I can't even pick a number on a scale because no scale goes high enough.

At 6:55 a.m. Mary left me in line (she's much faster than I am so she had to be at the front), I put my head phones on, found my satellites and we were off. This was my first race besides two 5ks that were attended by less than 200 people. There were a lot of bodies down there.

We started running, the first song that came on was Roar and I was ready. We set off and I was feeling good. I had to be careful not to take off too fast so I was keeping my sweet little 11:24 pace and running along. Miles 1-4 were overwhelming because there were so many people but I'd ran that distance a lot so I knew I could do it. I knew there was a hill in mile 4 so I was ready for it. And it was easy.

Miles 5 & 6 were a little tough, 6 miles was the most I'd ran but I knew I could make it so getting my head in the right place was hard. Living inside my head is hard in general, I try to do positive self talk but mostly I get, "Come on you can do this...You're just telling yourself that because you know you can't." But I worked around it. There was one hill in this stretch that I wasn't aware of and it was surprising and not fun. But I figured since Mary said there was only one hill at mile 4 that I should just suck it up and get up it.

Mile 7 was a lot of, "if you get through this you're over half way there" and "oh hey, maybe I can actually do this, I haven't stopped running and I don't feel that bad, except for that blister I can feel on my left foot."

And then we got to this horrible stretch where we were running on a highway, cars were still allowed to drive it so they were flying by us and I could see the greenway that I knew I was going to have to run on get back to the finish line. Miles 8 & 9 were what I believe hell might be like. Every step sucked. I on multiple occasions thought to myself "why would anyone do this for fun, or more than once." But, I'd heard that is the hardest part of a run and that once you get over that hump it's easier. So I would remind myself of that and keep moving my feet. And I got to take a stinger (these honey things that give you energy and taste really bad) at mile 9 to give me some more energy. So here I was trucking along and thinking now that I had missed the split for the 1/2 and was on the full route. I'd made a plan that if I was on the full route I'd just stop at 13.1 show my Garmin to the race director and make someone come and get me. And then I saw the split and the greenway and knew I was on the home stretch, I thought these last 4 miles were going to be easy, I can run 4 miles any day.

And I was telling myself a lie. Those last 4 miles were miserable. I hated them. I could see the boat and I knew the finish line was there but it just didn't seem like I could get to it. Miles 9-11 were not my favorite. I didn't get "runners high" and I didn't feel like I was over the hump. I just kept telling myself, "if you stop now you're never going to make it to the finish line." And that was the only thing that kept my legs moving. I also felt like my legs were turning into cement.

Then I hit mile 24. It was the half's mile 12 but saying mile 24 made be feel better. And then all I could hear in my head was my CrossFit coach Johnny saying "you have 20 minutes left, you can do anything for 20 minutes." And guess what, I ran for 20 more minutes. On mile 13 there were about 5 short but steep hills that I had NO idea were coming and they were probably the most difficult part of the course but my friend Scott told me the weekend before, "people make mistakes on hills and take long strides, just take short choppy steps and it's so much easier." I took short, choppy, slow steps and made it up those freaking hills. And I saw my 4th bridge and I knew I was coming down the home stretch.

Mile 13 was fun, kind of. I just ran for 12 miles and over 2 hours so I was really over it so I was all, "just finish this stinking race." And I ran across that bridge, rounded the corner to see my sweet daddy standing there clapping for me and then I was down the home stretch. Whoever decided to end that race running down hill deserves a serious award. That was the best part. I crossed the finish line, got a medal, had mom in my face taking pictures, got to see my best friend Natalie waiting at the end for me and then I finally got to breathe after running for 02:34:36.

After the 13.1 miles I felt so much better than I thought I would. I knew I had a  blister on my foot that hurt like no other but that was it. It was weird and I just ran a half marathon, wooohooo go me!!!

After Mary crossed the finish line she said, "and those people who told you you couldn't, screw them." And that's really what I wanted to shout!!! I was very proud of myself and so confused as to why people would put themselves through the misery of running twice what I just did.

But, 4 days later it kind of makes sense. You feel a sense of accomplishment and can say "I ran 13.1 miles, if it was easy everyone would do it but it's not and I did it." I am officially signing up for the Knoxville half at the end of March. I'm sure I'll be kicking myself the entire month of March preparing for it and running a million, trillion hill sprints but I know the end result will be worth it.

I'm so thankful that I have a CrossFit family that cheered me on and supported me and trained me along the way. I couldn't have done it without them.

Here are some photos of the day!

Crossing the finish line!

This is my "I ran a half marathon" face!

Some pretty swell guys from Crossfit Knoxville who ran the half too!

Natalie was waiting for me a the finish line!!! 

Here we are with Mary (our coach) after she finished her full marathon!

And finally my sweet parents who came to watch me finish. And the best daddy who dropped me off at 6 a.m.!

So here's to 13.1 more miles in March..... Hopefully I'll survive them too!

Hi!

Well hello there. It has been far to long since I have last blogged. BUT, I have been a little busy. Okay that's a lie, I've been a lot busy.

With work, a trip to Miami to see Jay Z & JT, a few football games and training for a half marathon I haven't had much free time.

Oh, and I FINALLY MOVED OUT! I officially pay for my own living expenses. I'm not sure if this was such a good idea. But I did it and I have an almost complete apartment. I'll wait for the last few finishing touches before I blog about it all together.

The end of summer has proven to be very busy and fun. Let's hope fall keeps it up!

hey old friend - part 2

Today I got to eat lunch with Mia. I've loved Mia ever since I set my eyes on her 5 years ago in Keely's dorm room. And by love I mean we became best friends.

Mia was randomly matched up with my bff from high school, Keely. We then joined the same sorority and it only started from there. Today we were reminiscing that it's been 5 years since we were freshmen, 3 years since crazy boy friends, 3 years since I turned 21 and the fact that we now both make our own living and our parents aren't paying for us. It's a scary time, for everyone.

We also chatted about how we feel like everyone around us is getting engaged and married and how we have the tiniest ping of envy and feel like we're being left behind. (Our friends aren't getting married, thank goodness, just all those other crazies out there).  It's just weird thinking that we're doing being "kids" and we're adults, for the rest of our lives. I think I said, "how did all these people make it out without going crazy."

And just by chance I came across an article about being a 20-something and not knowing what's going on. This is my favorite piece of advice they give....

Answering the question, "What do I want to do with my life" is more often a process of elimination rather than a lighting bolt of inspiration.

I think everyone within the 2 year range of graduating or those within the 2 year range after graduating feel like this question gets asked, oh every .2 seconds. And guess what, WE DON'T HAVE TO HAVE THE ANSWER!!! I wish someone would've told me that so I didn't feel as stupid saying, "I don't really know." 

Check out the rest of the advice for 20-somethings. 

I'm blank canvas and would love all the advice in the world. 

hey old friend!

That no sugar thing, last a whole 3 days. Michigan was miserably fun... And I ate everything I wanted. And then we came back to Knoxville and I was being such a good little girl working out and running and then we left for the beach.

And it was magical. We rented this that 70s show beach house. My parents, my bf, my cousin, his wife and their 2 kids all pilled in on Saturday. We wasted no time running to the beach! It was a beautiful, but shelly, little private beach. And by private I mean mainly it was only people living/renting in Sandbridge. It. Was. Awesome. We ate a lot of food. And I mean a lot. At least 2 dozen eggs, every morning, and 4 loaves of bread were consumed. And like 9 bags of potato chips. And 3+ handles of liquor. Needless to say, it was a much needed, well deserved, break from reality.

And now we're back to reality. And I have a cold. Who gets a cold in July? Ashley, that's who.

I regularly read +Caroline Pekarsky's blog, of course because she's my friend and I love her. But, today it made me cry. I'm not really sure why...but I did. She is one of the few people who I can honestly say we're like almost exactly the same person. Why weren't we friends from the beginning of college? I don't really know, and I don't really care because I know she's there for me now. I'd bet $9 million if I called her tonight and told her I needed her in Knoxville, she'd come. And that's something that becomes more rare as you get older, or so I'm noticing.

I'm not really sure what the point of the blog is.... although I've realized 2 things just writing it

1) I love sugar

2) I love Caroline Pekarsky. 

Happy Wendesday Y'all!

no sugar = death

I use to believe that no sugar = death. I actually still kind of believe that, but my mind is slowly changing. I've been working real hard to get myself to a place that I'm happy with. It hasn't been easy. And it's taken time.

July was rolling around and I knew I needed a monthly goal to keep up the good work. I decided since I'm going to the beach on the 20th of this month that I would do a 20 day sugar detox. This means NO SUGAR. I love sugar. I also love pizza. I'm not eating any of this. I'm on day 3. I've missed my afternoon chocolate. I haven't missed fruit as much as I thought I would, mainly just the 2 pieces of Dove Dark Chocolate I let myself eat every day. BUT, it's day 3 and I'm feeling good. My workout this morning was a good one, and I feel like I killed it. We did some 400m intervals last night in our Crossfit Endurance run and I felt good about it. I shaved off 5 seconds from my second interval to my last. That was a great accomplishment for me. I actually think I'm starting to enjoy running.

I kind of got away from my sugar topic. I'll get back on. We're going to visit family in Michigan this weekend and I'm stressed out about this sugar thing. It's hard to tell people what to fix you and how do I know that I'll have something to eat?!? Especially when my family thinks I'm crazy for doing all this stuff in the first place. Well, I've decided to do some prep. I will be taking carrots and broccoli with me for snaking in the car as well as some kale chips I'm going to make. I'm allowing myself 3 Granny Smith apples a week, so I'll take 2 of those too. I've got my box of salad ready to go so I can eat it if a meal doesn't meet my requirements, and I've got a pound of bacon to cook tonight as well. I'm hoping this gets me through. Because I really don't want to mess this up. I'll let you know how it goes, but only if it goes well!!