Run Like Hell 5k: Oakland Cemetery

Saturday was the first 5k running by myself.  I ran the Peachtree in 2011 by myself, but that's a 10k.  I probably should have started the other way around...

The Run Like Hell 5k starts and ends in Oakland Cemetery.  The race route takes you out of the cemetery, into Grant Park and then back to the cemetery for the home stretch.  Stephen and I love the cemetery and it's such an important part of Atlanta history and our neighborhood history, it was an easy choice when I saw that all benefits support the cemetery itself.

When I run with Stephen, we run through our neighborhood, makes sense.  And because I'm familiar with the neighborhood, I knew this route would have a lot of hills.  However, I was NOT prepared for the intensity of the last half of this race.  It was all uphill.  I'm not joking.  There may have been 50 yards here or there that went downhill, but then it would go right back up with more of an incline.

Here is the official route for 2012.  At the bottom of that map you can click "view elevation profile" to see the ups and downs of the course.  It was my slowest 5k time yet.  Now, part of that is because of how sllloooowww the race started.  There wasn't an announcement that the race was starting, people just started running.  While the race started, it was like rush hour traffic if you were more than 10 people back from the starting line.  It took about a minute for me to get from where I was lined up to the actual start point and THEN it was a walk until we were out of the cemetery.  So technically, I could give myself two minutes back - seems fair.  My official time was 38:40 so let's say if I had started at a run, I would have finished at 36:40.  While the start was a mess, the finish line was even worse.  I finished in the middle of the pack, so I'm sure it's when most of the women were finishing and it caused another traffic jam.  All women had to funnel down one teeny, tiny little section of the already small road.  I couldn't even cross the finish line because of the backup of ladies backed up as they were waiting to get a time card.  I'm not even sure why we needed a time card.  After the hardest course I've ever run, having to wait in a tiny line like cattle was pretty lame.  I was rather frustrated by the time I was done and could call Stephen to come meet me.

Now, I've made it sound like I didn't have fun - that's not true.  The best part of the race is that costumes are encouraged.  That's right, costumes.  Of course I dressed up.  The morning of the race it was about 50 degrees, so I wanted to wear pants and I remembered we had some zebra print leggings and that was the beginning of my 80s costume.  I had the zebra pants, a bright pink t-shirt that I cut to hang off my shoulder, pink and black scunchie socks, jelly bracelets, a side ponytail with a big scrunchie, a fishnet glove and pink sunglasses.  It was pretty awesome.  I was proud of myself.  I'll never again wear zebra print leggings.  So not only was I dressed like a crazy person I was running alone.  But I loved it.

Watch the video above if you want to see me run past Stephen.  I look like #1 a Giant and #2 super slow.  Happy Halloween!  

Grant Park Farmer's Market

Stephen and I love buying local and organic food.  I've posted about the DeKalb Farmers Market that we try to go to at least once a month and we're always looking for healthy substitutes to our diet.  The park in our neighborhood, Grant Park, has a farmer's market every Sunday from 9:30am - 1:00pm in the warm months (April 29 - December 16).  Click here for the market's website.

source: grantparkmarket.org

Surprisingly, this week was the first time we went over to check it out.  It was pretty nice!  There were a large variety of vendors and there were tons of families out and about.  They even have a cooking demos by a local chef each week.  We caught the very end of the cooking lesson this week by Nick Melvin.  The chef demo on August 12 is on Quinoa Cuisine.  We're huge quinoa fans so I'm going to try to make it to that one.

The area where they host the cooking demos was gorgeous.  We plan to take some wedding pictures in Grant Park and this area is going to be 100% perfect.  I emailed the picture above to our wedding photographer right away.  Don't you love how the light comes through the giant trees to the stone arch. I'm pretty sure it used to be a fountain, now it's perfect for some wedding pictures.

We ended up buying some produce and some jam Sunday morning.  All of the produce that we needed for the week wasn't available at the market, so Stephen and I dropped off what we bought and headed to the DeKalb Farmer's Market to finish off our shopping list.  Great Sunday morning.

Over the weekend we also discovered our new favorite park not too far from our house - the South Bend Dog Park.  Yep, we found a legit dog park by our house.  I noticed the sign for the park a few months ago when we drove past on our way to a Dave Matthews Band Concert at Lakewood Amphitheater.  Now that Goose is old enough and fully recovered from his neutering surgery with all his shots we decided to take the pups out to see how they like it.  Obviously we knew Mabel would be in Heaven as long as we brought a ball, which we did.  Goose was pretty excited about his freedom off the leash.  He didn't quite understand fetch (he can do it in the house, but in wide open spaces he had no clue what to do) but he'd run with Mabel as she went after the ball.  The park is huge and they had tons of space to run.  We were lucky to be the only ones there on Saturday morning.  There are a lot of hills in the park so after 4 or 5 throws of the ball both pups were tired and we headed home.  We met another family on Sunday who come to the park all the time and they said work day evenings are packed.  We'll try to avoid those times because Mabel doesnt' always get along with other lady dogs.  The best part of the park - how tired they are when we get home.

Save our School: How APS is harming children & our neighborhood

Our neighborhood isn't the one you picture when you think of upperclass, suburban neighborhoods.  That's because we aren't.  You won't see home after home with white fences and BMWs in the driveway. We are a diverse neighborhood with working class families.  Many of our homes are single parent homes working hard to make ends meet.  Our homes aren't cookie cutter duplicates of the one next to it - we have character.  And the neighborhood is changing.  The crime is seeing significant drops, houses are being sold and young, married couples are moving in.  They city just spend millions of dollars to build a new park just a few blocks away.  It just opened in March.

Atlanta is in an education crisis.  It seems everywhere we look the city is trying to cut costs and close the most important aspects of the community.  Just yesterday MARTA released that they will have to make some significant cuts in the upcoming year, eliminating a lot of coverage and service.  What major metropolitan city can survive without public transportation?  Atlanta is also planning to close 10 public schools.  Atlanta Public Schools (APS) has been planning to close schools for months, the initial plan was announced in May 2011.  These schools were identified as having low enrollment therefore they aren't able to get the funding that larger schools receive and they are draining resources that could go to other schools.  They claim that each closed school will save $500k that will then be used to support the schools that remain open.

Since last Spring, neighborhoods of the schools that have been identified as ones that will be closed have been rallying together to convince APS to keep the schools open and to identify ways to keep them open and reduce costs.  There are some great plans out there - making schools more green, adding pre-K classes to schools to increase the numbers of students in attendance, and so many other plans.  The final decision to close the schools will be made on April 10, only a few days away.

The shocking thing, is that on April 1, the elementary school in my neighborhood was added to the "cut" list.  Never once had it been identified as an at-risk school.  Never once had parents of children in our neighborhood been given a reason to be concerned.  Never mentioned on a single list, the neighborhoods of Peoplestown, Summerhill and Grant Park didn't have to worry about DH Stanton Elementary School.  Until April 1, a Sunday, during Spring Break.  That's 10 days before the final vote.

APS is doing our neighborhood a disservice and acting unethically.  They say that the decision is based on economics.  This can't be the case - it wasn't the case for the past 10 months there couldn't have been a new development in a negative direction overnight.  If the schools closing were based on purely financial analysis, there is no way a school could be added at the 11th hour.

I had a Realtor friend of mine pull some numbers for the area zoned to attend DH Stanton.  In the past 24 months, 108 homes have been sold.  In the past 12 months, 54 homes have been sold and 16 homes are currently under contract or pending.  The neighborhood is growing, not declining, which means there is no way the financial situation in our neighborhood is declining.  Additionally, the 2012 census shows over 500 4-year olds in our zip code.  500!  Those are all upcoming Kindergardeners.  Our house doesn't have children yet but we'd love to send our kids to the school 2 blocks away.  I'm sure we're not the only household in this situation.  In fact I know we aren't, I met other couples like us last night at the rally to save our school.

I plan to stand up and raise my voice to try to save our elementary school.  This isn't a black or white issue, it's about classes.  Of the school closures, most of them are on the south side of town, the lower income areas.  These schools around me will be closed to help fund the schools further north, the upper income areas.

I plan to stand up against APS' plan to close DH Stanton Elementary School.  As a single, affluent, childless woman,  I want my future children to have the opportunity to walk to school.  I want them to be able to know the kids in houses around them; driving down the street any afternoon will show you that there are plenty of kids.  I want my neighborhood to be thriving in 5 years, it's definitely on it's way now, why stop it.  We have a new, state of the art park in the neighborhood where students of DH Stanton can play.  We don't have school bus traffic up and down our streets each morning because kids can walk to school.  Just last month we had a representative from the Governors office come to the Peoplestown Neighborhood Association meeting to talk about their plans for the neighborhood.

I hope that the board and Superintendent of APS hears our voices.  I hope they see the support the school has from the parents and neighbors in the area.  We are willing to support the school, please don't take it away from us.  Let's give our kids the chance to grow up knowing and loving their neighborhood.  The only way they will grow up to understand the importance of community is to show them what a community is.

Save D.H. Stanton Elementary School.

UPDATE:  I forgot to mention above that APS does not have a single plan in place for what they will do with our school once it's closed.  The very last thing we need in our area is a large, vacant building to be a home for illegal activity.  If the school is going to be maintained yet vacant, I don't see how that is saving money.  It will still need security, maintenance and utilities to run the maintenance.  If the school is closed and shut down completely, it will cost even more to get it up and running again.  Yet another example of the poor decision making of APS.

Forcing myself to get back in shape

I have two forces working against me.  We just got through the holidays and I didn't hold back on my eating.  If it was in front of me and looked good, I ate it.  I'm also in a very happy relationship.  I'm comfortable and when I'm comfortable, I like to eat a little bit more than when I was single.  Cooking is easier when cooking for 2 AND it's not always me who has to do the cooking.  We love to cook and enjoy good food.  I'd rather have a good meal at home or at a restaurant than go to a movie.

I will say, I try not to completely indulge in bad foods.  I watch how much I eat and I eat a lot of salad for lunch.  We don't have boxes of cookies or baked good sitting around the house and we don't drink sugary drinks.  We rarely order desserts when when we go out to dinner.  I think we're smart eaters, but we eat a lot.

I was doing so great with staying fit when I was training for the Peachtree Road Race, that's all gone away now.  I'm not sure I could run 6 miles today if I had to.  This weekend was the first step to getting back into shape.  We are going to run the Peachtree together this July, and I'm seriously considering signing up for a half marathon.

Sunday morning the weather wasn't bad (the only nice part of the weekend) and we hit the road with Mabel and we took a 90 minute walk around the neighborhood and around Grand Park.  I loved it.  It was time that Stephen and I had together Mabel had the best day of her life (since she really only remembers a day at a time) and we exercised.  We're going to slowly build from walking to running almost everyday.

Being from Florida, running outside in the cold is really hard for me.  My ears and lungs burn after breathing the cold air for 10 minutes and I'm miserable.  I'm trying to find a gym that's convenient to me so I can still work out when it's too cold to run outside.

I don't have a weight loss goal.  I don't have clothes that I'm not fitting.  I just want to feel better about myself and confident when it comes time to start shopping for a bathing suit again.  Operation get fit has begun.

This picture has nothing to do with working out - but I wanted to share.  Saturday morning we woke up to a pretty serious thunder storm and this is what the rain did to our street.  We are lucky and we're up on a hill so we didn't have any standing water anywhere around our house or cars.  I've always loved falling asleep to rain and thunder, waking up to it was new, and awesome.  The storm was pretty bad and obviously dropped a lot of water pretty quickly.  We got a lot of hail, too, so we were a little worried about a tornado.  No tornado and the rain let up after the picture was taken and we were able to enjoy a delicious breakfast together.