Hey, hey, hey!

Dave and I are going through some things and trying to pinch pennies. One expense that was cut was Comcast! That means no cable or internet! Gasp! How ever will I live?

All of this to say that my posts and social networking visibility might be inconsistent for the next month. But I promise to make a good use of my lunch break and catch up with yinz and what is going on in your lives! You all are like family to me, you know that?!

Well, today I have another Barefoot Running story from Tom, who is a reader. When I put out the call for barefoot stories, Tom wasted no time in sending me his. I’m so thankful for this story because I think it’s very real and also extremely informative. If you’ve suffered a running injury and are contemplating barefoot or minimalist running, you have to read this! Take it away, Tom!!

Earlier in 2010 I suffered from a knee injury – at the time I was convinced that it was from poor running form and overuse.  I traditionally have run in Brooks and for the last year it has been the Adrenaline GTS 9.  As I went through my recovery, I suffered all sorts of emotions.  I was sidelined from running for approximately 1 month – I would drive down the road and see others out for their afternoon runs and I was jealous.  Envy would set it, and usually it was followed by depression.

During this down time, several things happened at once – I began reading "Born To Run"; I noticed these strange looking "shoes" that some people were wearing, and – I happened upon Abby Normally!  I think Abby had just received her VFF’s and was putting together a plan on how to start training.

I figured that since I was basically starting over (the doctor told me that I should literally go back to running for 60 seconds, walking for 60 seconds) I would give them a try.  This started the great VFF search – nobody had them, nobody had plans to get them and if they were going to get them, they weren’t interested in taking my name and calling me.  Here’s where the beauty of Facebook came into play – one of the local stores had a page that I happened to have "liked" – they posted one day that they had just received a shipment of various VFF’s – I ran over at lunch and picked up a pair of KSO’s in camoflauge – absolutely the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.

With all of my new found internet knowledge on barefoot/minimalist running, I set out to see what I could make of it.  I started slowly – maybe 100 yards at a time at the middle school track.  The first few attempts were no more than 1 mile and my body was not happy – I could hardly walk as my calves weren’t having any of this activity.  I stuck to the VFF’s exclusively for 1 month and built up to approximately a 5K distance non stop.

My initial reactions were that this was great – I wasn’t suffering from any knee pain, it felt very natural and once that initial calf pain was gone, I was feeling great.  Around this time I was about to run my first triathlon and was worried about transitioning to the VFF’s off of the bike.  With the KSO’s, it takes me a while to get into them.  I decided that I’d do the tri in my Brooks and went on to finish in a respectable time.

As early August came around, I was finding that the VFF’s were giving me some hot spots (mostly on the ball of the foot) from the heat of the roads and track.  Knowing that I was about to start marathon training (I’m doing my first marathon in December- Thunder Road here in Charlotte, NC), I had to make a decision – attempt to run my first marathon, only 4 months away, in VFF’s or go back to the Brooks.  I decided to go back to the Brooks, get through the marathon and then spend the winter cutting over permanently to the VFF’s.  I am running the Myrtle Beach half in February (delayed from my attempt last year when it was canceled due to snow) – my goal is to run that 13.1 minimalist and then make a final decision as to how to proceed.

I run now once per week in the VFF’s – usually my Tuesday run as it’s a recovery run from the weekend.  I do no less than 3 miles in them each time and it’s working well.  I almost feel as if it’s a good cross training event for the marathon, exercising some alternative muscle groups.

BTW – regarding the knee injury – many people will tell you that switching to barefoot or minimalist will stop you from getting injured.  I was one of these people – once I went to the VFF’s and the knee pain was gone, I was convinced.  Well, 1 month ago I started hitting the pool again – I want to do more tri’s next year and need to build up my swimming.  Shortly after starting up in the pool, I felt that same knee pain coming back.  It turns out that I am a horrible swimmer – I will freestyle for a short time, get lazy and start doing some crazy side-kick thing that I invented.  That side-kick motion is what killed my knee – not running in my Brooks.  As soon as I realized it, I stopped swimming and the pain immediately went away.  You readers should understand that barefoot/minimalist is not a magic pill for stopping injury – there are so many other things involved – sometimes you’ve got to do some self diagnostics and figure out what really is causing the pain.

Thanks so much, Tom!!! I can totally relate to switching between VFF’s and Brooks. Best of luck in your marathon this year! Please keep us posted! And I will be really anxious to hear about your half marathon in Febrary!!

If you have a barefoot/minimalist running story that you would like to share, feel free to send it to me at abby.normally.blog(at)gmail.com. I love hearing from you!

Do you, like Tom, ever have difficulty deciding what shoes to wear for races? I do! And have you ever had an injury and thought it was from running only to discover something else was the cause?

Did you miss Melyssa’s story? Check it out!

The Bare{foot} Essentials I
The Bare{foot} Essentials II
The Bare{foot} Essentials III
The Bare{foot} Essentials IV
The Bare{foot} Essentials V
The Bare{foot} Essentials VI
The Bare{foot} Essentials VII
The Bare{foot} Essentials IX
The Bare{foot} Essentials X
The Bare{foot} Essentials XI
The Bare{foot} Essentials XII
The Bare{foot} Essentials XIII

They accepted our offer!!!!

My older brother, Adam, has coined the family phrase “Praise Jesus Dance Moves”…which is what Dave and I have been doing all afternoon!!! Thank you to everyone who prayed for us and wished us luck and congratulated us when I announced it on Twitter. I love you all!

Here’s a sneak peak at our future homestead:

LOOK AT THOSE FRENCH DOORS!!

When I’m taking a break from my dance moves, I’ll be spending my time on Young House Love! So many great ideas there!

Soooo…What exactly are Praise Jesus Dance Moves? Well, they are any kind of movement that is made from the pure joy in the realization that God is SO good—even when times get tough.

What is touching about the Praise Jesus Dance Moves is that Adam began them when he was very sick with colitis. I remember hearing him singing the song “Blessed Be Your Name” even in the most trying times of his life.

God is so good to us all of the time. We have blessing upon blessing upon blessing. Unfortunately this morning I was feeling so discouraged and wasn’t rejoicing in the little, everyday things of life. Like breath, and health, and love, and salvation! My older brother is such a wonderful example of that. Even when he was so sick, he never complained or showed any kind of anger with God or his circumstance. He is a wonderful example and I am blessed to be his little sister!

So here’s another example from Adam—how to: Praise Jesus Dance Moves! He’s going to love me for linking this, I am sure! ( I couldn’t embed it here for some reason, though)

What blessings had you dancing today?!

Hey friends! Thanks for all your well wishes on my last post. We found out that someone else put an offer on the house too, so we’re playing the waiting game. This is nerve wracking! I am sure that the nightmares will continue if we don’t hear back tonight.

Anyhow, Dave and I calmed our nerves tonight with a 3 mile run. We didn’t realize that it was Trick-or-Treat night here! I think there were about a 1/2 dozen people asked us if we wanted candy….uhhhh maybe if the run was about 10 miles longer. But a Baby Ruth 1.5 miles in? No thanks.

It made me think about how I will handle Halloween with my kids. I’m pretty healthy person, although I do love candy (specifically candy corn), and I know all about raising healthy eaters and keeping your kids healthy. But what will I do with the one holiday that is centered around junk food?

My initial thought is to let them have their fun. I can manage their candy intake once the bags are pack in my possession, but for the night, why NOT let them go wild? It certainly won’t kill them, and the more negative attention I give it, the more their attention is drawn to it. At the same time, I don’t want them thinking that getting butt loads of candy is necessary for a fun holiday.

Moments like these make me glad I have no kids. It also makes me happy that I have YOU, dear healthy living readers, to give me your opinions.

What is your opinion of Trick-or-Treat? Should kids have one night to eat themselves sick, or should parents make an effort to make it as healthy as possible?

My friend Katie has great healthy tips, BTW!  Check them out!

And I’ll leave you with this awesome picture of my brothers on Trick-or-Treat night last year. What are they? No idea. But if I were wagering a guess, I would say that they are themselves.

Yes. Those are my brothers. See the resemblance?

Stress affects my sleep. That’s about it. When I get stressed I notice it because I’m tired and my shoulders are stiff and, mainly because my jaw is killing me. Why? Because I clench my jaw and grind my teeth when I am under stress. I also have restless nights and really weird dreams.

Under normal stressful situations I dream about my teeth falling out…which fits with the whole clenching/grinding issue. But apparently the stress of house hunting is not normal so my dreams have been taken to the next level.

Dream #1 Dave and I were living in a modern day Nazi Germany and were sentenced to the gas chamber. It was really sad to see all of the families and young children preparing to die. I think I woke up crying.

Dream #2 I was a princess in a castle and the enemies were storming the castle to capture and kill me. I had to dress in peasant’s clothing and run into hiding. However, I had to leave my smartphone behind because the GPS in it would allow them to easily track me.

Dream #3 Dave and I saw the PERFECT house online and decided to buy it without even visiting it. So as we were cleaning it up when we first moved in, I noticed a foul stench coming from the bathtub, plus the water was running. I made Dave check it out and he found a laundry basket with a decapitated head in it. Of course it turned out that our new neighbor was a serial killer and now he was after us because we were “on to him”.

Obviously, I want this house hunt to be over soon. I wake up every morning at 3 am and again at 5 am and then when my alarm goes off. And I wake up scared…which means that I wake Dave up, too…because I’m a big baby. We both are missing very valuable sleep.

So, in an effort to quickly return to normal sleeping habits, we placed an offer on THE HOUSE. We just love it. There’s other interest in it too, so we wanted to act quickly. We are praying that everything goes smoothly (and no more nightmares), but mainly that God’s Will is done…and it always is. Sometimes we just don’t figure it out until too late. So please say some prayers, cross some fingers, and if you know the other people who are interested in it, tell them that it’s infested with termites.

What’s the weirdest dream you have ever had?!

P.S. I’m currently drinking mint tea!

There are two kinds of people in this world:

Coffee drinkers and losers.

There’s is nothing like a piping hot mug of freshly brewed coffee on a chilly, overcast western Pennsylvanian morning. It’s like a miracle drug. Pre-setting my coffee maker to minutes before my alarm goes off insures that I arise to little fairies dancing in my senses saying, “the morning is going to be BEAUTIFUL once your lips grace that perfect mug of steamy, black (and strong) brew.”

That’s right, I’m a coffee drinker. Or at least I was.

It’s a sad tale, but I feel as though I have to explain…

Let’s start at the very beginning: summer of 2005. I was home for college and looking for a job. There was a cute coffee shop that opened around the corner from my parents’ house and needed help. Of course I wanted to work there. There’s something slightly poetic about working as a barista at a locally owned coffee pub. It’s like I was the little fairy, and instead of dancing on your senses, I manned the espresso machine down the street. No one’s day would begin on the right foot if they didn’t come see me. Eventually I would know everyone in the town and how they liked their coffee. I knew the differences between a latte and cappuccino, between a macchiato and an Americano. Skinny, double, red eye…you asked, I delivered.

The problem was that when I started that job, I didn’t like coffee. Not at all. In fact the closest thing to a coffee beverage that I ever had was a Cup-O-Cino from Sheetz—basically premixed hot chocolate with “cappuccino” flavoring (whatever the heck that is).

Well, you can imagine my boss’s dilemma trying to teach me how to make the perfect espresso shot when I really don’t know what a perfect espresso shot is. So—you guessed it—I had to drink every single shot that I made to differentiate between them. I was so wired by the end of the day—but even more dangerous, I was hooked. I fell in love with coffee, well espresso.

It was a slow relationship in the beginning. I started drinking vanilla lattes (which I made to my liking—lots of vanilla). I eventually dropped the vanilla, but stuck with plain lattes vowing I would never drink a pure cup of coffee.

Then I smelled it. It was like heaven was calling my name. The poison was called Highlander and it was from a little mom and pop coffee and tea shop in the Pittsburgh strip district, where my boss bought his coffee beans. It was amazing with it’s little hints of Irish cream and butterscotch.

I added cream at first with a packet of Sugar in the Raw, but shortly the sugar was too sweet and it masked it’s natural flavors.

Then I went back to college and coffee creamer was just too darn expensive because I was putting it in my drink every morning. So I stopped and I never looked back. Black coffee is like black magic—bewitching, intoxicating, and oddly enlightening.

For the next five years I had a cup of black coffee almost every single morning. I wouldn’t say that I was hooked, because I am convinced that I didn’t need it. I just wanted it.

But then the unthinkable happened. This summer, I realized that I was feeling sick around the same time every day. Like I wanted to puke. I’m not pregnant (trust me), but I couldn’t figure it out. Well, one morning I was in a rush and didn’t have time for coffee—funny, I didn’t get sick. The next morning, same thing. No time, no coffee, no nausea. The third day I poured myself just a tiny cup and around 3pm, BAM! Nausea. I haven’t had coffee since then. And that was in the middle of July.

Friends, it’s heartbreaking. Coffee has become the enemy. It’s like I have lost a friend. I can drink lattes, but not straight up coffee. I haven’t try adding creamer to my beloved Highlander, because I’m afraid it will adulterate the coffee. So I just don’t drink it! David has suggested tea, but tea is for losers. I am not only a coffee drinker, but I drink my coffee black. I’m as tough as they come. I ain’t drinking no stinkin’ girly water! In fact, I also claimed that tea was grass pee.

But now that it’s getting cooler, I’m seeking for the comfort of a warm friend. I’m ashamed to say it, but mint tea isn’t so bad. It has it’s own kind of fairies. They dance on my tongue and say, “we’re warm and refreshing!”

I like the morning coffee fairies more, but for now the mint grass-pee isn’t as bad as I thought.

But I’m still not a loser, ok?!

What category do you fall in? I will try not to judge you…