AJollyHoliday with the Wine and Dine Half Marathon 2016~ PTR

[AJollyHoliday]

I promise I will do a post soon with some pictures and details about DH's birthday trip. We have finally settled down after DD's arm surgery. She is a trooper and is doing great!

In other news, I have been steadily plodding along with my half training. This past weekend and two weekends ago both called for 10 mile runs. I ended up doing solo runs because sometimes coordinating with wishy-washy people annoys me and I just rather do it on my own and not be disappointed when everyone back out. Sorry for the aside. Anyway, the first 10 miler on March 12th I did with an average pace of 9:30 min/mile. I felt great! Then this weekend's 10 miler I did with an average pace of 9:18 min/mile. These were both courses with rolling hills so I was very happy! This past weekend was chilly and very windy. I am hoping this is the last time that I have to run in my down jacket, hat, and mittens!

Tomorrow is early registration for those of us who are DVC/AP holders. I am super excited and can't wait to have that major hurdle cleared. We already have our reservations for our room and my BF Is also going to book at AKL-Kidani. Then we both are going to go on the waitlist for Polynesian and cross our fingers that it works out that we both get in. If it doesn't we will just stay at AKL which we love.

Oh, on our trip a couple weeks ago, DH decided that we need more points I love him! We have 200 points at AKL-Kidani and 200 at VGF. We have decided to get at least 150-200 more points at VGF. That probably won't happen until next year, but who cares! If DD didn't go to private school we could do it right away, but she loves it and we would never do that to her, even if it meant more Disney .

How is everyone doing with their training? Anything exciting coming up race wise?

Is anyone else dreaming of what Dooney they will have for the Wine and Dine race, if they do have one.

 

[AJollyHoliday]

I wanted to post about ways I am saving money for my Disney trips. This is pretty much how we do it for every trip and I like sharing because then I learn about new opportunities from others and others also benefit from what I do. So for our March trip, we had $900 in GCs that we earned for next to nothing. We had $350 leftover from a contest we won last year (the most amazing thing ever!). I wad able to earn $550 in Disney GCs and paid only $44.25 for them. Let me explain. I use Swagbucks and my DH and DD also have accounts. We run various apps on our phones and earn swagbucks for running those apps. We do it over the wifi so it is not a big deal. We then use the Swagbucks we earn to get Target GCs. I then go to Target and use those GCs to buy Disney GCs and I use my Target card so I get 5% off the Disney GC. I also run Perk TV on my iPads and phones. We use one account so usually each night we have 6 devices running Perk TV. Same as Swagbucks, I use it to get Target GCs and then buy Disney GCs with the $. My last little trick is I shop Target for their $5 GC with purchase deals. When we need toilet paper, I wait for a GC deal. Today I bought deodorant and face wipes and got 2-$5 GCs. I am trying to build my reserves up for Wine and Dine. Since we are DVC members, the room is covered. We have APs that we save up for so tickets are covered. Food and souvenirs are left and that is what we save the GCs for. There is such minimal effort required and it is a nice way to make "free" money for our trips.

If you are interested in signing up for Swagbucks, you can use this link: http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/JCurrey
If you are interested in signing up for Perk.TV, you can use this link: http://perk.com/perkstatic/home

There are threads with all sorts of tips on how to earn more and the little tricks. It has helped me a ton!

What ways do you save for your Disney trips? I would love to hear any trips you all have!

 

[TeeterTots]

Hello there! Glad to hear your DD is doing well! More points! Lucky you! We are going to buy more points next year as well! I hear you about private school! Boy, if that wasn't a factor...the possibilities! But my DD loves it too so we'll do what's best! The question is starting my DS next fall or wait a year! Ugh!

Training is going well for this newbie! I ran Sunday and Monday. I have been doing the walk/run training but decided to just do what feels ok. Sunday I ran 4.22 miles at a 10:25 pace! What's exciting for me is I ran 2 straight miles! Yesterday I ran 3.8 at a 10:19 pace but ran the entire thing! I'm very pumped considering I've only been running a month! I'll be relieved when tomorrow is over! I hope I get in. What happens if you don't? Do you register through a charity? Is there a difference?

I'm open to any advice on training! I'm enjoying it which is better than dreading it and I'm looking forward getting outside to run more.

 

[TeeterTots]

Oh my goodness! I'm going to sign up for swag bucks and perk tv! What great savings! Thanks for the helpful hints. I have Bank of America rewards and Disney chase but whoa.... I could use more!

 

[AJollyHoliday]

Jenn~ I love that you are fellow 2 "n" Jenn . That is completely awesome with your pace!!!! You are a speedster! What type of private school does your daughter go to? We didn't intend to send our DD to private school, we actually moved to our current house because of the school district. But then she did pre-k and k in a montessori school and we fell in love. Since we ended up having an only child, we decided to make the most of it and send her to the school she loves and travel with her as much as possible. I work at a college with a pretty awesome tuition benefit so we are banking on that in 9 years (wow, that was weird to type!!!). Where are you thinking of getting points?

In terms of training programs. When I marathon train, I follow Galloway. I just love doing that method for really really long races. I did my first marathon training with a "regular" plan and it was great and I ran almost the whole time for that marathon. The following year I did Galloway and cut nearly 10 mins off my time! I was sold right then and there. For my half training, I am following the "Another Mother Runner" training program for the half. Since I am coming back from cancer, I am following their "finish it" plan, but will re-evaluate after my spring halves are over and see what I want to do for the fall.

 

[AJollyHoliday]

I'll be relieved when tomorrow is over! I hope I get in. What happens if you don't? Do you register through a charity? Is there a difference?

I'm open to any advice on training! I'm enjoying it which is better than dreading it and I'm looking forward getting outside to run more.

If we don't get in tomorrow, which I think we will be ok if you have everything set up and ready to go before noon, I would try with the general public. Then if that doesn't work, I would do a charity. But we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

Oh my goodness! I'm going to sign up for swag bucks and perk tv! What great savings! Thanks for the helpful hints. I have Bank of America rewards and Disney chase but whoa.... I could use more!

It is totally worth it! I also use ShopKick. I can invite you to join if you want for that, here's the link: http://get.shopkick.com/diamond22254

With Shopkick you get points for walking into stores, scanning items, and if you register your credit card, you get points for using it at certain stores. It has grown since i started using it. I did it today and got a bunch of kicks for walking into Target, TJMaxx, Marshalls and for grocery shopping at Trader Joes. So worth it! DH has it on his phone too so when we go out together, we both run it so we can get points.

 

[TeeterTots]

Jenn~ I love that you are fellow 2 "n" Jenn . That is completely awesome with your pace!!!! You are a speedster! What type of private school does your daughter go to? We didn't intend to send our DD to private school, we actually moved to our current house because of the school district. But then she did pre-k and k in a montessori school and we fell in love. Since we ended up having an only child, we decided to make the most of it and send her to the school she loves and travel with her as much as possible. I work at a college with a pretty awesome tuition benefit so we are banking on that in 9 years (wow, that was weird to type!!!). Where are you thinking of getting points?

In terms of training programs. When I marathon train, I follow Galloway. I just love doing that method for really really long races. I did my first marathon training with a "regular" plan and it was great and I ran almost the whole time for that marathon. The following year I did Galloway and cut nearly 10 mins off my time! I was sold right then and there. For my half training, I am following the "Another Mother Runner" training program for the half. Since I am coming back from cancer, I am following their "finish it" plan, but will re-evaluate after my spring halves are over and see what I want to do for the fall.

Thanks for the encouragement! I was very excited. I'm staying the weekend with my mom and I think I was feeling motivated. My dad was a drill instructor and ran his cadets through all sorts of crazy weather with stage IV lung ca! I think he was running with me, because for whatever reason I was cadencing in my head and running along.

My DD is in Montessori preschool as well! We fell in love! She started there last year. Her teacher has hired an elementary teacher so she can stay through grade 4 so we're very happy. Working at a college is awesome! Wish we had that perk! My DH is an engineer and design athletic fields so I'm always telling him that he needs to "donate" his time to a good school so she can go for free! Lol! Wishful thinking

I'm following Galloway too. Prior to this weekend I have been doing walk/run and on long days I try to run as long as possible but no matter what I'm pacing 30 sec faster doing walk/run! I guess I should stick with it. I just was feeling good this weekend and wanted to see if I could do it. Hopefully I can work my way up to running a full a 10K but we'll see. I don't want to get injured and I want to finish! Lol

I think we'll either buy more AKV points or poly. We split stay AKL and poly last fall and really like poly. We are heading back April 16-24. My DH likes poly more and wants to sell AKL for poly,but I say why bother, we've had no trouble booking. We're booked at AKL for the week after the race in Nov but now DD wants to go for Halloween so next week I'll book 7 mo at poly for the entire week.

 

[TeeterTots]

I'm panicking! Am I suppose to see a sign up form on the member site? I don't! Will it appear right at noon?

 

[AJollyHoliday]

Are you on the member page of RunDisney? The link won't show up until registration opens.

 

[TeeterTots]

I'm in! Yay!

 

[AJollyHoliday]

Congrats! Me too, but my DH, BF, and her husband are all stuck at the moment. UGH!

 

[TeeterTots]

Oh no! Good for you, but bummer for the rest of your crew! Are you doing the challenge?

 

[AJollyHoliday]

I am doing the challenge. DH also wants to do the challenge so I have to register him next week. My BF wants the 10k and her husband was able to get into the 1/2. So we have 2 out of 4 of us registered. Hopefully it will get resolved next week.

What did you register for?

 

[TeeterTots]

I registered for the half. I would love to do the challenge, but may I'll wait until the next princess half

 

[AJollyHoliday]

Today was Fartlek day . No I didn't just describe GI distress, it is a speedwork workout. Apparently, it is a Swedish word for doing intense speed workouts. The one I typically do involves running all our for 1 min, then jogging for 1-2 mins to recover, and repeating 6-10 times. Today was a 1.5 mile warm up at a pace of around 9:40, then I did my sprints at an 8 min/mile pace 8 times and then finished at the 9:40 pace to reach 4.50 miles total. I can feel my old speed coming back each workout I do. DH and I have a 15k next weekend and I am hoping that some speed shows up during the race. It will be a nice test for my first post cancer half in May.

In other news, Swagbucks has been working really well for me. I just earned enough for a $25 GC and I just cashed out $20 from PerkTV. I hope to have enough for $100 Disney GC by the end of the month. If I can average about $100 a month in GCs that would be really awesome for November.

 

[momabaarjo]

Why did I not know you were doing a PTR!!!! LOL

 

[TeeterTots]

Today was Fartlek day . No I didn't just describe GI distress, it is a speedwork workout. Apparently, it is a Swedish word for doing intense speed workouts. The one I typically do involves running all our for 1 min, then jogging for 1-2 mins to recover, and repeating 6-10 times. Today was a 1.5 mile warm up at a pace of around 9:40, then I did my sprints at an 8 min/mile pace 8 times and then finished at the 9:40 pace to reach 4.50 miles total. I can feel my old speed coming back each workout I do. DH and I have a 15k next weekend and I am hoping that some speed shows up during the race. It will be a nice test for my first post cancer half in May.

In other news, Swagbucks has been working really well for me. I just earned enough for a $25 GC and I just cashed out $20 from PerkTV. I hope to have enough for $100 Disney GC by the end of the month. If I can average about $100 a month in GCs that would be really awesome for November.

Lol! It sounds like your training is going well!

I signed up for a 10K next weekend! I figure why not? It will be my first race and it just so happens that I'm to run 6.5 miles according to Galloways training so this will be a good test. I'm not sure if I should walk/run, try to run or just go with the flow. This is all new and such a learning curve.

I'm also loving shopkick! Looking forward to cashing in for some Disney GCs!

Oh, and all booked for our fall trip! We check in poly on Halloween for 4 nights and then to AKL 1BR for 3 nights! Things are really filling in considering it's a race weekend and if I remember from last year "jersey week?!"

 

[AJollyHoliday]

Phew.... I am glad that registration is over! Things went smoothly for me when I went to do DVC registration on March 22nd. I had the links opened and was logged into Active. I then was hitting refresh like a mad woman until it opened. I received my confirmation e-mail at 12:03. Meanwhile, my DH, BF, and her husband logged in about a minute after me and were all on hold. My BF's husband was able to get into the half which opened up briefly before selling out. However, my Dh and BF were not successful. Fast forward to Tuesday and I told DH that I would register for him. He is super busy at work and I am on sabbatical, so lets just say time is not a constraint for me (ah tenure!). I texted my BF that the links were up around 11:20ish. Even though I knew they wouldn't go live before 12, I kept refreshing like a mad woman. To help calm my nerves, I found DH's last half marathon time so I could have that information for POT. I wasn't going to enter the POT because I didn't want to get to checkout only to find out my spot was gone. This happened to some people during DVC/AP registration. Come 12 PM EST and I was on! I was trembling as I got a window saying I was in the queue and once I got a spot, I had 15 mins to complete registration. Quickly I got into the registration window, all the while texting my BF because she also had the window saying she was in the queue. I trembled as I entered DH's information, but all was done by 12:04 PM. PHEW! I was so relieved to have us all registered for the races we wanted.

During this time, we were also trying to figure out which resort and rooms we would do. We are DVC with homes at AKL and VGF. We used all our VGF points this year so we booked a studio Savanna view at AKL Kidani at the 11 month mark just to make sure we had a room. At that time, BF wasn't sure if they were going to do the race. Now that they were coming, we were trying to see what was most efficient point wise for rooms. Their home is SSR and they didn't have many points left. We thought lets do 2 studios at AKL and just request to be near each other so that BF could help watch our daughter while DH and I ran. Well suddenly all the studios at AKL booked up. Even OKW was booked up! So after talking, we decided to use our points to upgrade to a 2 Bedroom Savanna View at AKL. BF will then plan to use her points to book rooms for us for the Princess race weekend. We are excited to stay at AKl and thought about going to the waitlist for the BWV, but then I may end up losing 10 points (borrowed a few and BWV is cheaper point wise and well, blah blah blah that's a bunch of boring DVC details). How can you compete with this view?! Although I will admit that I love my VGF so much, that hotel is just so me!

Yesterday I booked our flights for Nov 3rd. We have direct flights through Southwest which is super nice. We have the SW credit card which has provided us countless free flights. This time we had enough points for DH and DD's tickets, but had to pay for mine which was only $145. Our return date isn't opened yet, but we will book as soon as that is opened. We have the first direct flight our and should be at MCO by 11 AM.

Ok... lets see... what's next to book. Well we can't book at ADRs yet, but that doesn't stop us from planning! DH and I are planners, we love it, it makes us happy to think about our trips. One thing I know for sure is we will do Via Napoli the night before the half (with probably half of those running the race).

The other big detail is costumes! I already know that DH and I will be Linguine and Remy, respectively, for the 1/2. My BF wants us to be the emotions from Inside Out for the 10k. I am more of the type to follow the theme of the race, but it is her first Disney race so I will let her choose. It is also DH's first Disney race, but he doesn't really care and he is a race veteran.

In other news, we just ordered a Peloton Bike (I will post pictures of me on it when it arrives). I have been doing spin classes since December and felt that it really helped me gain my speed and endurance back after my chemo. DH was looking for a better workout to do on non-running days. We also do CrossFit, but we count that as separate from our normal workouts. After discussion, we felt the Peloton was perfect for us. We use our workout equipment and so need something really good. We finally bit the bullet a few years ago and bought a commercial grade treadmill after having "killed" 3 treadmills in 10 years, the last one only lasting a year before calling it quits. I can't wait for it to arrive!

This weekend we are off to Philadelphia to run the Hot Chocolate 15k. I will definitely update you all when I get back. I know I haven't written up our March Disney trip, but that is because i have to find a more efficient way to load pictures than through Photobucket. Those seasoned PTR's who have any advice on that, please share!

Oh, one last thing. Today is the 1 year anniversary of when my cancer was discovered in a routine colonoscopy, my first mind you. My cancer was stage 3 and I had no symptoms. I was encouraged to get screened because my dad is a survivor. I say this to you today to encourage you to know your family history and take action! Trust me, cancer sucks WAY more than a colonoscopy. PSA now over . Happy running!

 

[AJollyHoliday]

Lol! It sounds like your training is going well!

I signed up for a 10K next weekend! I figure why not? It will be my first race and it just so happens that I'm to run 6.5 miles according to Galloways training so this will be a good test. I'm not sure if I should walk/run, try to run or just go with the flow. This is all new and such a learning curve.

I'm also loving shopkick! Looking forward to cashing in for some Disney GCs!

Oh, and all booked for our fall trip! We check in poly on Halloween for 4 nights and then to AKL 1BR for 3 nights! Things are really filling in considering it's a race weekend and if I remember from last year "jersey week?!"

Yay on your 10k! Why not is right! Here is my suggestion, start out Galloway for a bit, then if you are feeling really good, finish the race strong. Then after the race, assess how it went. My running friend did Galloway with me for 18 miles of a marathon, then took off and just ran. She hit 4 hrs for that marathon (I finished at 4:10). She felt bad for leaving me, but I told her that in the Galloway book that he said to run/walk in the beginning to help conserve, but if near the end you are feeling it, run!

I am glad you are loving Shopkick! I hope to go to Target tomorrow so will hopefully hit my $5 mark. PERK TV has been really good to us lately.

Poly then AKL, how awesome! I wish I could be down longer, but classes are in session and I can't take too much time off. My BF is also a college professor so it is tricky taking time during the term. Are you at Kidani? If so, we will have to meet up! Definitely ride the bus together!

 

[TeeterTots]

Yay on your 10k! Why not is right! Here is my suggestion, start out Galloway for a bit, then if you are feeling really good, finish the race strong. Then after the race, assess how it went. My running friend did Galloway with me for 18 miles of a marathon, then took off and just ran. She hit 4 hrs for that marathon (I finished at 4:10). She felt bad for leaving me, but I told her that in the Galloway book that he said to run/walk in the beginning to help conserve, but if near the end you are feeling it, run!

I am glad you are loving Shopkick! I hope to go to Target tomorrow so will hopefully hit my $5 mark. PERK TV has been really good to us lately.

Poly then AKL, how awesome! I wish I could be down longer, but classes are in session and I can't take too much time off. My BF is also a college professor so it is tricky taking time during the term. Are you at Kidani? If so, we will have to meet up! Definitely ride the bus together!

First....wow...only one year ago and stage 3 on a screening with no symptoms!!! Congrats to beating it and coming back strong! I can not imagine cancer....it scares me to death!

I trust your advice and will start Galloway and finish strong! Do you do this (run/walk) for all your races or just marathons?

I've been working out daily as well. I'm doing the 21 day fix and running 3-4x/wk. I'm definitely getting stronger.

We'll be at Jambo. I may wait list to stay a poly, but we've never stayed in a 1BR and a king size bed sounds really great before and after the race!

I'd love to meet up! How fun! I also can not wait for ADRs! Via Napoli is my favorite!!! Yum-o!