{10} Lately…

20weeks

Lately I’ve been…

reading  May issues of Health Magazine and Marie Claire.  Got some yummy new recipes and a desire to return to Italy!

writing  Thank you notes for all of the kindness my family and friends have shown toward Little Monkey so far!  He is a lucky little boy!

listening  To the news.  I admit, I am not the best when it comes to keeping up with the news.  I usually get my updates from Facebook and Twitter (I know, that’s horrible, but true).  But events from the past week have kept me tuned in.

thinking  That I cannot believe I am halfway through my pregnancy!  20 weeks in, and 20 weeks left until I get to meet my Baby Boy!

smelling  Not much of anything.  I have been sick and stuffed up all week.

watching  The always entertaining Real Housewives of Orange County.  Never a dull dinner party.

wishing  For safe travels as we head down to Maryland this weekend.

hoping  That I can pack my bags in less than 2 hours.  For me this would be an accomplishment.

wearing   Today is a lazy day.  I blame it on being sick all week.  I’m literally in yoga pants, New Balance tennis shoes, layered tank, tshirt, and sweater.  On days like today, I’m so very lucky my office is low key.

loving   The fact that 215 people have signed up for the John Petrovick Memorial 5K this weekend!  I am so thankful to my friends who have put this event together.  This is a great turnout for the very first event, and John would be so happy and proud.  So excited to see you all in Baltimore!

laughing  At myself trying on bathing suits with my prego belly last night in preparation for our trip to warm-weather Arizona.  No really…it was quite comical.

wanting  To be outside playing in this sunshine today.  It’s gorgeous in NYC!

needing  To flush this sickness throughly out of my system as soon as possible.

feeling  Super excited for our trip to Arizona at the beginning of May.  Hanging out with my pen pal in her hometown for the first time, seeing family and friends, the Grand Canyon, Sedona, warm weather, Mexican food, our two year wedding anniversary, and our “baby moon” trip…so many reasons for this excitement!

craving  Everything and anything neon.  As seen on Monday’s post.

clicking  I took a million photos during our Boston trip last weekend of the wedding and the rest of our adventures.  Once again, I’m blaming my sickness for my delay in posting these, but I promise they should be up sometime next week!

*Sidenote:  I just got my Waveborn shades in the mail today, and I cannot wait to rock them oh so soon!

What have you been up to lately?

Happy Friday!

Love,

Gina

***I was inspired by Tina of Like Ordinary Life to create this post, and she was inspired by Lauren of siddathornton, who started The Sunday Currently.

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Thank You!

I just wanted to give a big thank you to all my family, friends, and supporters for your donations to Q’s Quest for the Johns Hopkins Departments of Neurology & Neurosurgery.  I surpassed my goal and raised over $5,200 dollars for the cause.  I couldn’t be happier, and you all have made a huge difference toward finding a cure for brain cancer.  I’m sure my friend John is smiling down from heaven right now.

I also want to thank my friends who ran the Rock ‘N Roll New York 10K with me in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.  Due to an injury, I was nervous that I may not be able to run the race, and thought I would have to walk it.  I hadn’t run in a month, and on race day, I decided to go for it.  I made it through 6.2 miles without being able to train properly, and I did it with 9 minute miles (I was originally hoping for 8:30s when I was able to train), so I am extremely happy with how everything went.  I have no idea how I was able to do it, but I appreciate my friends that ran with me, and I know I must have had an angel carrying me through.  🙂

Up for this week: trying to nurse my sore legs back into shape!  Hope you all have a great week!

XO,

Gina

Inside All of Us is Hope

In 2 days, I will be partaking in yet another adventure.  I will be running the Rock N Roll NY 10K in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.  Now, the fact that I am running this race is not so much the adventure.  I have done plenty of races in the past.  The adventure is more in the reason I am running this race.  I am running for my friend John Petrovick who you see pictured above.

John was a friend of mine for 14 years.  We met in high school in biology class and hung out after school on the soccer fields.  John was hilariously funny and while making everyone laugh, he is also the most amazing, inspiration person that I knew.  He battled through 4 years of brain cancer all while continuing to run marathons, finish law school, and remain the funny, friendly, caring person that he was.

We unfortunately lost John on April 28, 2012, but we did not lose the legacy and inspiration he left behind.  John played a huge role in his doctor’s (Dr. Q) quest to cure brain cancer.  He encouraged his doctor/surgeon to join him for the Baltimore Half Marathon, and they raised thousands of dollars to help Johns Hopkins departments of neurology and neurosurgery.  These past few months, I have tried to continue with John’s efforts to raise money for this cause, and so far I have raised over $3,600 in his memory.  My goal is to get to $5,000, so I still have a bit to go, and not much time left!  I’m at 72% of my goal, and I would really appreciate your help in achieving this for John.

To donate please click here:  http://www.active.com/donate/qquest/ginanotesforjohn

Also, for those of you who didn’t know John, this is how amazing he was: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=CDrEIYyyIds&NR=1

For those of you who did know John…you already know he was “superman.”  Please join me in the fight against brain cancer.  As John would say, “Inside all of us is HOPE.”

Thanks for your support, and I will update you after the race!

XO,

Gina

#73 Do a Tough Mudder Race

Saturday November 21, 2010

Picture this: New Jersey in November, a freezing cold lake, 12 miles of running, 10 foot walls, glops of mud, a raging fire, and let me reiterate…NEW JERSEY.  This just might have been one of the most challenging items completed on my bucket list!  To say it was tough is an understatement…it was grueling.  But it was totally freakin’ awesome, and I now qualify as a hardcore bad ass.  I guess I am my father’s daughter haha.

I must first thank a few people for allowing me the opportunity to participate in this event, thus checking the item off my list.  First, Mike Cerrone, for pressuring me multiple times to join the “Tough Mudder Tinkerbells” until I finally caved in.  Second, Allan Damkilde, for without your car, I would have had no transportation to Englishtown, NJ.

We embarked on our journey early Saturday morning, driving out to Dirty Jerz as a team.  To give a little backstory on Tough Mudder, it’s basically a 12 mile race filled with 18 different military/boot camp style obstacles and a ton of mud.  I have a lot of respect for those in the military, but I would never want to join myself.  However, I have always wanted to do the military obstacle courses, and figured this would be a great place to get a similar experience (minus all the red-faced screaming military officers harassing me).  The race was designed by the British army, and is not designed to be an every-man-for-himself-let’s-see-how-fast-I-can-go kinda race.  Instead it is supposed to be a team effort–you help people through and make sure that everyone crosses the finish line.  Upon arrival, it was exciting to drive up and see people already completing the course, and totally caked in mud!  They staggered the start times so people wouldn’t get too backed up at each obstacle.  We were surprised to find that not many other teams dressed up for this race, (I guess they were insistent about looking super tough) but the ones who did dress up were pretty funny.  There were tons of HUGE dudes standing around either already finished or about to start the race, and some bad ass chicks (including the three on our team) were sprinkled in as well.


Our adrenaline was pumping when we heard the horn at the starting line, and we took off to see what would await us!  While we had an idea of the course map beforehand, we really had no idea what to really expect out of this race.  The first part was the “Monster Chase” where we started off running after a monster truck to get warmed up.  The second obstacle was called the “Ball Shrinker” and our first foray into the water.  Basically, it was a tightrope to walk across with your feet, but you had a rope up top to hold onto with your hands.  The problem for me was that there were a bunch of huge guys weighing down the bottom rope, so while walking, all the sudden the rope disappeared from under my feet!  I ended up having to monkey my way across the top rope using only my arms!  After I successfully completed the obstacle, I thought “Damn, that was the first real thing we had to do, and already my arms are shot!”  But there was no time for crying, it was time to press on…

Obstacle 3 was “Walk the Plank”, which was the HARDEST part of the day.  Prior to the race, I was extremely nervous about the temperature of the water, and turns out I had every right to be!  Mom, you should stop reading and skip to the next paragraph now…Okay, for the rest of you, we jumped off a 15 foot plank into the freezing cold lake, and HOLY SHIT was it ever cold!  After plunging in, I swam to the top gasping for air.  It was so frigid that my heart was pounding a mile a minute, and I couldn’t seem to catch my breath.  Some might say my body went into shock.  My teammate, Paul W., jumped in after me, and he looked excited until he saw my gasping self.   His look then turned to horror!  I was immediately thankful that I decided to wear my swim cap, and I flipped over on my back to get my face and chest out of the water.  Paul thought I was drowning and grabbed me, and helped to pull me while I swam backwards toward the shore.  Luckily, it wasn’t that long of a swim to where I could stand, but we then came to Obstacle 4, which was the “Underwater Tunnels.”  Three times we bobbed up and down into the water until we were finally out.  My entire body was numb when I got out.  I was running, but couldn’t feel my feet, and just when I was starting to feel good again….we had to swim back across the lake.  NOOOO!!!!!  Luckily, I made it through this time with minimal shock.  I just swam on my back the whole way and was so happy to be finished with this part of the race!



I thought I would be shivering the rest of the race, but I was too numb to feel most things, and kept running happily along.  Although the race was extremely tough, I thought our team kept a really good pace, and we pretty much had smiles going the entire time.  The next few obstacles consisted of the “Mud Mile” of which we had to trudge through the muddiest and stickiest of water, “Cargo Nets” (which conveniently fell down right before we had to climb them–although I would have happily climbed them!), “Kiss of Mud” which was crawling on our bellies under the cargo nets through the mud, and a bunch of motorcross hills that had been sprayed with sprinklers for three days straight including a huge hill called, “Cliffhanger.”

We crawled through the “Boa Contrictor” which was a long skinny tube.  Being small actually worked to my advantage in this one!  The “Berlin Walls” were nice and high, so most of us used our team help to get over them.  Although I do remember my teammate Warren superhero-ing himself over a wall or two on his own.  I had done enough high knees in my soccer and basketball career throughout my entire life, so “Tired Yet” was actually pretty fun for me!  Tons of tires were laid out football style and we had to step through them to get to the end.  “Rubbernecking” was a little bit more difficult, because each person had to CARRY a tire around, and they were NOT light!!!  My teammate, Dave, unfortunately chose the tire that happened to be full of water, making his even heavier!  Whoops.

The “Fire Walker” was pretty intense, and Mom, you might want to skip this paragraph too!  I was definitely really nervous for this one, and I told Dave “I’m grabbing onto  you for this one!”  Smoke was everywhere, firefighters were on deck, and 4 foot flames surrounded the path we had to run through.  I covered my eyes/face, put my head down, and grabbed onto Dave while we ran through this mess.  It was so hot and hard to breathe.  At one point, I thought I might pass out from inhaling too much smoke, and it was at that point when we were through!  Whew!  Thank God!  The second hardest part was now behind me.

The “Log Bog” wasn’t too bad, jumping over a bunch of fallen trees, although we did take a big spill in the swampy muddy mess!  “Funky Monkey” was near impossible, as most of our hands were completely caked in mud at this point.  On top of that, some of the monkey bars were greased up with butter (plus leftover mud) to help us fall more quickly.  I did see a few tough guys make it across, but most people were falling after the second or third bar.  I on the other hand, couldn’t even reach the FIRST bar!!!  I stepped on the wooden bar, and reached up, realizing that I was too short to reach the first bar.  I figured “I guess I have to jump,” so I jumped once–slipped off.  Jumped twice–slipped off again.  I decided to jump ONE more time, and gave it all I had.  Third jump–BOOM!!!  Slipped off and came crashing down on my right butt cheek.  Holy cow.  At the time, it hurt, but my body was pretty numb, so I shook it off and kept going.  Later that  night though, I realized there was a bruise as black as night and the size a grapefruit on my bottom!  It stayed there for over a week, and it was so ridiculous that I just had to show it off to my friends and family so they could see how tough I am.

The last three obstacles were “Twinkle Toes”–walking across the wooden log that was on the water, the “Mystery” obstacle which ended up being that we had to run through live wire…yes electrically charged wire…and “Insane Bolt” which was a sprint to the finish line!!!

The entire event lasted about 2-2.5 hours, and the firefighters were there at the finish line to spray us down with a fire hose.  Once I stopped running, I started shivering, and don’t think I got warm until I got back to Manhattan!  Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay for the after party, as I had 35 Italiano family members waiting for me back in the city for dinner.  They had all come to town for Grandma Guaragna’s 80th Birthday!  So they got to see me in Zombie mode pretty much after this race haha.



Before Tough Mudder, the coolest thing I ever did was the St. Anthony’s Triathlon, but I definitely think Tough Mudder takes the cake on this one!  I am so proud to have completed this challenge, and I also congratulate my teammates, Paul Macknis, Paul Warner, Warner Hardwick Siebert, Mike Cerrone, Lori Dooley, Jim Yellion, Dave Ford, and Nadia Schwartz for taking on this endeavor!  Special thanks to my fiance, Zack Notes, for being an excellent photographer and camera man.  He must have ran about 2 miles tracking us down on the course!

I have taken the time to edit together some footage of our experience into a 2 minute video, so please take a look and let me know what you think!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO68efDnULg