Quick training update and Margaritas

So the weather has gotten bitter and has chased me indoors. I am trying to stay focused on training for the Monster 5k but I've been allowing myself to slip from time to time. This past weekend Mark and I ended up getting a TON of little projects done around our two houses and didn't get in any running. But I was completely ok with it because I think we were both very happy to make progress on our houses since they have been neglected all year.

My hopes for training the next few days is to get in some sprints on the treadmill tonight and try to get in an easy run tomorrow and then a pace run on Friday. My goal is still to try and shoot for a 7:30 pace but we'll see, confidence isn't up right now for that. The weather is supposed to be much better this weekend and our schedules are pretty relaxed again so hopefully we'll get in a longer easy run as well. For me an hour would be plenty. Mark is doing the Monster 1/2 marathon so he needs a little more distance than me. I still feel really bad that he had to resort to this race and can't go to NYC this year. He was really looking forward to it but luckily he still has a guaranteed entry to go next year and since we will be spending much of the late season next year training for running only, I think it will fit in really well for him. I might try for the lottery for NYC next year too, we'll see.

This weekend we are looking forward to a MnGCA event in Afton. I haven't been to one yet so I'm pretty excited to check it out and get us another state park in the Safari Challenge. For those of you that have NO clue what I'm talking about, see how I'm earning my nerd points here.


A little life update:
I'm looking to hopefully complete my refinancing on my townhome within the next few weeks. I am very thankful that my loan officer is getting my a great deal that I can actually afford when it comes to the closing and this will actually bring my mortgage payments down just a touch per month. I'm anxious to get this taken care of so Kevin and I can finally begin untangling our money since currently we still have bank accounts together. This is mostly due to the fact that I can't get a credit card until we both have our loans closed off and I'm off of his. Once I get my credit card I can have some room to take over all my monthly payments. Unfortunately I'm still going to go slightly into the red on a monthly basis but doing my best to try and remedy that. I've got another income prospect I've started on so hopefully that will ease the pain a little here and there and keep my bills paid.

I've also gotten to be quite the coupon clipper along with taking every survey I find that I can win stuff. Currently my fingers are crossed for the $5000 at Home Depot, $1000 at Target or $100 at Caribou Coffee :) Oh how I miss going shopping....


A quick picture since I can't seem to go a post without one....
Fromt left to right, Deb (my sister), myself in the middle and Joni (our good friend) try to get together for a Girls Night dinner every few months since it's so hard to get together with our schedules. Thanks to a free burger coupon I had, my dinner only cost me $8 for a margarita. We decided we are renaming our get togethers as "Margaritas and Chocolate night" since we always splurge to split a dessert too :)