Coach Jen B

Summer is just cruising by!  I start every summer thinking "how will I fill my time" and by now...I am believing "how in the world do I find time to work?"  Between gardening, chickens, track, marathon training, and my children - my day is full (and the house is an absolute mess).  FitFluential Push Up Challenge  The July challenge for FitFluential is 31 pushups/day.  I'm in.  I have completely slacked in the pushup department and my arms/core/back definitely look and feel like it.  Pushups are such a great workout and you don't need any equipment at all!   Are you in?   Friend Time As mentioned above, life is crazy and I've been super guilty of not taking time to sit back and relax with friends.  Yesterday that was changed.  Stacy and I got together at the local pond while our kids played in the pond.  It's been crazy humid and hot lately so this was absolutely perfect!  This needs to happen more!!!...

Last Sunday the Boudreau's and our friend, John, loaded up two cars and headed south for the Boston Marathon.  Once we got to Boston, our first stop was the Boston Marathon Expo. Our proud 2013 Boston Runners here - Ward and our friend, John.   And then I finally got to meet Lisa at Run Wiki !  She is just as beautiful in person as she is on her blog.  I wish we could have spent more time with her.  She was so incredibly sweet, ran a great race (BQ'ed again), and she and her husband made it home safely.   And our husbands, Mr. Run Wiki and Mr. Running With The Girls got to talk a bit too.  I think I need to always refer to Ward as Mr. Running With The Girls.  I know he loves it!   Then loaded up in the cars again, got a little lost but then made it safely to Ward and Wade's Aunt Judy and Uncle Pete's house.  By that point, Wade and I still had to run 16 miles, so we set out for our run.  After what seemed like...

I have a whole lot of running new to share with you.  First and foremost, yesterday was a big race day for me (and a lot of people I know).  Yesterday, at 7 am, the Beach to Beacon 10k registration opened, and then closed 4:58 later.  Not 4 hours and 58 minutes, 4 minutes and 58 seconds later.  Craziness.  How many people exactly registered for this race in record time?  4,000 people!  And I'm in!  Ward is too.  And many more of my friends got in too.  It was so much fun to watch facebook light up yesterday with many of my friends proclaiming their acceptance into this race! Now, why on earth is this race so exciting?  There are a multitude of reasons. For me, #1: the brains and organizer behind this race is Joan Benoit Samuelson.  My idol. #2: the race takes place in a beautiful coastal town in Southern Maine - Cape Elizabeth and ends at my mom's most favorite lighthouse.  It's always emotional for me to enter the g...

Last Saturday I participated in a special kind of 10k.  It wasn't the typical 10k where you have a timing mat, volunteers, and winners.  In this case, the winners are all of the participants, Operation Jack, and Train4Autism. We had a one person cheer squad/photographer, Patti, Jim's wife who braved the cold weather.  There were 8 runners and for the most part, we ran in two small groups.  In this case, I got to run with my running girl, Stacy (yay!), Michelle , Sarah, Donna and her friend (sorry, I don't know her name), Danielle (who is 20 weeks pregnant), and Jim.  This was my first time meeting Jim, my Daily Mile friend, and his wife.  I really hope we have more opportunities to meet again in the future.  The both of them are the nicest people ever. Pre Run Team Pic - courtesy of Patti, Jim's lovely wife We met up in the parking lot on the bike path in Brunswick at 8am, Saturday morning.  It was cold, 13F, and we had just gotten...

My friend Michelle at Average Girl Doing Average Things posted today about the Top 10 Things she learned in 2012.  I loved her 10 things and thought I'd try it out. 1.  Changing jobs this summer was the best thing I could have done.  Working 3 miles from my house has been fantastic.  Yes, I took a pay cut.  But it has been worth it.  This is the first time in a very long time I can honestly say that I really do enjoy my job.  Along with that, I now have the same school schedule as Tucker.  We'll have the same snow days, early release days, last day of school, etc. 2.   In my mind I'm still training for a marathon and burning tons of calories, but I'm not.  Yet I'm still eating like I'm burning those calories and my pants are getting tighter.  I need to either run more miles or eat less. 3.   When the stylist says "I can wax your brows while you're back here" - she's really saying "Holy crap, look at those crazy ass b...

It seems like lately I haven’t done a whole lot of running alone. In the past few days I had two new running “dates” with some awesome girls and one with an old friend.  Sorry, Jess- you are the "old" friend.  Friday morning, before school, I met a coworker in the school parking lot and we went for a quick 3.5 mile run around Brunswick. She has young kids as well and has a hard time finding a time to get out for a run. Fortunately for me, my in-laws live right down the street from my school, so I drove over to their place and showered before school. I have to note that there is a shower at HBS, but it’s in the school nurse’s office and the amount of puking and other bodily fluid episodes that happen in her office make me rather sick to my stomach, so I wanted to avoid showering in there. Gross! Saturday, Jess and I ran together. Nothing new there. It was nice running 4 miles with her rather than 26.2 miles.  We were done so quickly, it felt almost weird.  We ...

Saturday really seemed like a normal school day because I was getting up at the normal time (5:20) and I my destination was Brunswick.  The only difference was getting 2 extra people up and ready before heading out the door.  Okay, really 3 extra people because normally I just put a jacket on Izzy and strap her in her seat and drop her off at daycare.  Adding Ward and Tucker into the mix was crazy!  My goal was to be in the car, driving away by 6:30.   When I looked at my watch as we were driving away, it read 6:32.  Not bad. We didn’t have to worry about dropping the kids off anywhere for the race because the race times were staggered enough and we had my dad, and Ward’s parents coming to watch.  Thank goodness for that!  All four of us were registered to run races yesterday.  Tucker and Izzy (I only registered her because I didn’t know if Ward was going to have to run with her to encourage Tucker or not) were registered for the Ki...