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The Great Milwaukee Race

February 24, 2011 By 1 Comment

Last year I joined three friends in running The Great Milwaukee Race, an urban scavenger hunt across the city. This year, with my bigger role with FitMKE, I’m helping plan the race! In fact, I just designed the race website. Check it out!

So, what’s The Great Milwaukee Race? It’s an adventure for everyone. Teams of 2-4 people will get clues to seek locations throughout the city. They will travel on foot and perform fun tasks at each location then move on to the next. This is a team race that is part foot race, part trivia and part challenges. Teams of 2-4 players must solve clues to find checkpoints throughout the downtown area. Once the checkpoints are reached, the teams must complete the challenge before moving on. Each team must determine their own route to the checkpoints. Depending on the route chosen, the total course mileage should be 6-8 miles.

Registration opens March 1st at 9 a.m., so get your team together today!

Filed Under: Fit Milwaukee, Races Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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My first 5k!

April 24, 2010 By 4 Comments

Today I completed my very first 5k race! It was not without some hiccups along the way, but I feel such a sense of accomplishment! Here’s how it all went down.

Last night, I went to the Brewers game and tailgated heavily prior to the game. Got to bed super late, woke up with gutrot. Tried to eat some oatmeal but I was all sorts of nervous so it didn’t go over well. Got to the race in Brown Deer and received my race bib, timing chip and tshirt. Look!!! My first race bib!

I met up with some DailyMile and FitMilwaukee peeps before the race, but to be honest with you I don’t know what we talked about. I was so freaking nervous. My stomach was all over the place. I was praying I wouldn’t fall down, pass out or throw up. And you know what? I didn’t!

My goal was to finish in less than 55 min, with the super goal being to do it in 50 minutes or less (based on my current pace). And I DID IT!!! Of course, my knees hate me and my lungs were burning by the end, but I’m so happy with how this turned out. I was lucky enough to have the help of Rachel M as my “running” buddy. We’re both in a similar place weight and fitness-wise so we hoped our paces would mesh, which they did. It was nice to have the extra push. We ran the first 4 or 5 blocks then walked, ran a bit in the middle, and the ran the last 3 blocks or so. If you were only at the start/finish line, you would have thought we ran the whole thing, which was part of my secret plan. ;) I was also happy to see more people behind us (even if they were doing the 10k)… because being the last person to finish would have been a bit difficult for me.

As it were, I was the second-to-last woman to finish the race. And you know what? I don’t care. I finished. I didn’t give up when it was tough. I didn’t say “oh this is too tough, I’m gonna sneak into this person’s house and hide til the race is over.” I finished with a consistent pace and couldn’t be more proud.

Here’s my official stats from the race results site:

I am so blessed to have you twitter/dailymile/facebook peeps. Anne and Rochelle came out along with Mike (who I just met today) to cheer us on. I held back tears as I was hitting the finish line because there were people CHEERING for ME! It’s so amazing to experience that. Thank you guys. Seriously, that meant the WORLD to me. #lovefest The only thing missing was my family and I know they’ll be there to cheer me on at many races to come. And, well, I may or may not have forgotten to ask them to come. LOL.

Stats according to my Garmin: 15:40, 16:54, 15:46 and the last .14 miles – 14:11.

Here are a few photos, courtesy Michael, Anne and Meghan:

PS – if you have a chance, congratulate my friend Tracey. She finished 2nd female overall and won her age bracket with a time of 22:52 finish. That means Tracey did the 5k in 27:08 minutes faster than me! Of course, to be fair, she’s been running for awhile and she’s the cutest li’l thing.

Filed Under: Fit Milwaukee, Races Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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Gym humiliation: I’ll have what she’s having

March 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment

We’ve all had them. A slip. A fall. A trip. A drop. An inopportune fart. A wardrobe malfunction. But when you’re at the gym, these embarrassing moments can be amplified in severity because you are surrounded by people you don’t know.

Check out my latest post over at FitMilwaukee.com. I promise you will laugh. If you don’t, well, you suck.

You have to visit FitMilwaukee to see my favorite story (titled I’ll have what she’s having)… but the one below is a close second:

Is that a roll of quarters in your pocket?

I was working out commando because it was laundry day. I wore cheap shorts that slide around a lot. I decided to do crunches on a balance ball. As I was sitting on it, I started to slip off the ball because of the slippery nylon shorts.
Because I was in the middle of my sets, I didn’t want to stop.
I failed to realize as I was sliding down the ball, the leg of my shorts was sliding up. Way up. Like ALL THE WAY up.
“Is it locker room cold in here or is it just me?”

~J.

Filed Under: Fit Milwaukee, Funny Tagged With: , , ,
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Embarrassing gym moments

February 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I’ve been asking my Twitter, Facebook and Dailymile friends to share their most embarrassing gym/working out moments for an upcoming article at FitMilwaukee.com. Do you have a funny story to share? Please let me know! If you’d like to be a part of this article but want to remain anonymous, that’s fine with me… just let me know.

And just because I can’t ask you to share without sharing myself… I’ll point you in the direction of two recent blog posts, dealing with farting at the gym and a wardrobe malfunction.

Feel free to use the Contact form or shoot me an e-mail (me-at-losingitwithoutlosingme.com).

Filed Under: exercise, Fit Milwaukee, Funny Tagged With: , , , , ,
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FitMke: Get into the groove with #fitmkemix

February 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Here’s a li’l taste of my latest post at FitMilwaukee. Head on over to read the entire article.

In case you haven’t noticed, Fit Milwaukee has become a huge movement in Milwaukee (have you seen the Facebook page? We have more than 550 members). Now, #fitmke has its own podcast!

The #fitmkemix is a collection of motivating, energizing (and sometimes relaxing) independent music from across the globe, all put together in a podcast to listen to while you work your bootay off. Think of the podcast as a radio show that you can download to your computer, iPod or other MP3 device.

The host and creator of #fitmkemix, Tracy Apps, is a Milwaukee graphic designer, web developer, photographer, drummer and social media addict who loves music. Apps says she started #fitmkemix to keep herself motivated by working out to good music. “I need a distraction to keep me going on that treadmill or elliptical.”

She is a fan of independent musicians, so Apps thought it seemed like a good fit to have a podcast with upbeat music highlighting lesser-known artists.

Because Apps is a drummer, she likes workout music with a good beat and chooses songs with a faster tempo. “I subconsciously will workout to the beat of a song,” says Apps.

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