Half-Marathon Training- Week 10

The USAFIT website is kindly reminding me that the half-marathon is only 105 days away.

And yesterday, was a 5-mile route along the "scenic" frontage road of 1604.

As my friend Erica was passing me by, we waved and then a crazy driver tried to take us out. Not really, but it felt like that. Obviously, when I told my husband the story he was even more excited about the fact that we'll be on a greenway next week.

I don't know how precise Map My Run always is, but it says I did 5.56 in 1:25:11. So that's an average jogrun of 3.9 mph. I hope it's those hills slowing me down.

Here's the route we did:

The best/worst part about completing the Saturday morning route is coming home, cleaning up and getting the rest of a good night of sleep. It's amazing sleep.

Foolproof baked bacon

So baking bacon is supposed to be the foolproof way to cook it.

Key word is "supposed."

My first batch didn't turn out so well.

Yeah, so bad you can't even tell what it is.

Maybe the bacon was too thin, I left it in the convection oven too long or the temp was too high.

I successfully completed a second attempt and by that time we were ready to eat so I don't have a picture of the perfectly cooked bacon.

It took 24 minutes to get there. I could've been almost done running two miles by then.

The lesson: Keep an eye on your pork. Even if the cooking method is "supposed" to be foolproof.

And I ran so far away

Ok, maybe I didn't run that far. More like a good combination of my patented jogrun and some walking to achieve my 5-mile goal this morning in approximately 1 hour and 14 minutes.

This is part of the road to completing the San Antonio Rock 'N Roll 1/2 Marathon this November.

Yeah, so when I signed up for the training, I eventually signed up for the 1/2 marathon too. And after this morning, I know that if I continue to train and build up my mileage, I am going to get there.

I did the 5 miles this morning because I won't be at the training on Saturday. And it was actually only supposed to be 4 miles, but I got antsy and wanted to see what I could do by myself.

When I thought about posting the Flock of Seagulls song came into my head and now it can be stuck in yours.  Thank me later.

Cinemagram- Chema

Chema

Created with cinemagr.am

First post in who knows how long and this isn't even my puppy. this is my friend Elizabeth's puppy.  I need to get some action shots of Wookie! doing something cute with his head.

Cinemagr.am is a fun and free app that I just downloaded to my iPhone yesterday. It is pretty cool. It will obviously take me some time to perfect it's use.

Intimidation Factor

Did I just register for training to jogrun (maybe even run by November) a half marathon?

I just did that. Who I can blame? Oh I know who I can blame. Or do I give them credit? Maybe it will be credit after the "race," but when I'm up and running at a hour that's too early for a Saturday in Mid-May, it will be blame.

I do have 30 days to change my mind. But NO REFUNDS after 30 days. Is getting a refund on something like this sort of like getting a refund on life?

I registered with the USA Fit group here in San Antonio.

In the meantime (before May 19th) I need to see about getting new running shoes. And thanks to a handy dandy Google Search that doesn't seem intimidating at all.

Only 140 millions results returned in less than a second.

Not intimidating at all.

Aha! Moment- RAISE Your Facebook Influence

I don't have them often. Aha! moments. It's really quite rare.

Today while working on a social media recommendation for a client I had one.

That rare moment when you wonder why your genius doesn't shine through all the time. Not that this is Einstein level genius. But no-duh genius.

There are a million and one ways to recommend people work on increasing their influence on Facebook. I just came up with an acronym to make it easier.  This was an organic process that actually evolved into what you will see below. Brand new and and thought up by yours truly.

If you want to RAISE^TM your brand's influence on Facebook you can start by doing the following:

Reply- to posts and recommendations from fans and other brands, at least like them!
Ask (for engagement)- On Facebook it's one of the few places where it's acceptable to Ask people to like something you do or comment on something you posted.
Inform- use your posts to Inform fans about topics related to your page, or anything that you think they'll like!
Share- make sure to share posts by other brands and tag them so they see you doing it. It should relate to what you do and never conflict with your goals- both online and offline.
Entertain- people are more likely to like something you post if it is Entertains them. A comic, or a funny cat video. Whatever makes someone giggle is more to get shared with their friends too.

There you go. Five seemingly easy steps to RAISE^TM your influence on Facebook. You can book me (Ariana Barbour) for speaking engagements. I'm actually quite entertaining despite the recent barrenness of my blog.

The groundhog saw his shadow!

Phil, up in Punxsutawney, saw his shadow.  This means it's already February. Holy cow.

It's been a busy year already and I was hoping to have posted more by now. I had big plans for that today and went to get some pictures off my iPhone when my lovely little Macbook told me that I didn't have much space left on my computer for many images. So, I'm gonna hold off on exciting posts about my failed spaghetti squash adventure and the successful quinoa "mac" and cheese.

A few firsts for the year though (with pics to come later):

• I gave blood and it was easy and fast and I'm looking forward to doing it again!
• I 've already jogrun two 5ks. One was this morning- Superbowl Sunday!
• I've checked into a gym on 4square 8 days in a row (partially cause the race this morning started at a Spectrum, but I worked out so it counts)

I think this is going to an awesome year, full of fun times with friends and I still can't believe it's already February!