Back in the middle of December, I received an email from a social media consultant for Spartan Race, asking if I wanted to talk about Spartan races on the blog and give out a free admission to any U.S. event.  I just couldn’t deal with any emails right after Tony died, and I seriously forgot all about it.  He contacted me again last week and said “just following up on my email I sent to you.”  I replied and told him that I was sorry I didn’t get back to him, that my husband had died recently, but I would love to give out a free entrance to this race – some of these races cost up to $140!

He replied back with condolences, and he ended up giving me a free entrance to a race too!   Well, the secret is that I signed up for a Spartan Race!

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That’s kind of what my body looks like – ha!  In any event, there are some Spartan races that are called sprint ones, and the one I chose to do is in Milwaukee the weekend of May 23.  It’s going to be at Miller’s Park, and since it’s at the stadium, Hannah and Jacob and whoever else can register for free to be a spectator to cheer me on – how cool is that?  I have 16 weeks to train – it’s 3 miles long with 15 obstacles.  It will give me something to work for, and my only goal is to finish it!  My step-son is doing an 8 MILE race in Texas!  We’ll just both be bad-asses!

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I’ve talked about baking up a bunch of potatoes on the weekend to use during the week.  Yesterday I ended up making a potato hash with egg beaters, baby spinach and bologna.  I love German bologna!  Of course, with Frank’s RedHot.

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I ended up dressing up for work – well, dressed up for me.  I recently bought a necklace from my friend Karli who is a consultant for Stella & Dot.  I had a gift card that I used to buy this necklace:

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It’s silver (I hate gold) and can be worn 4 different ways – I just did a smaller loop, a longer loop and kept the tassel on – check out my BOLD pants!  I bought this outfit at Goodwill on Saturday for $6.99!

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I didn’t realize how blurry the picture was, but you get the idea.  Of course my boss asked if I was interviewing!  And yes, that is horse wallpaper in the bathroom in my office – the first time I saw it, it freaked me out!

I went to the gym and ended up doing 15 minutes of arms for strength, then walked 2.5 miles.

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It was snowing really big flakes when I left the gym – check it out!  That is snow falling in front of my face – and Shelley, I didn’t wear a coat because it was only 30 degrees. Open-mouthed smile

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Guess what I made over the weekend? More lasagna soup!  This time with medium shells.

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I ended up doing another 5k after work – I walked around my office quite a bit, so I knew I’d hit my goal of between 18,000 and 20,000 steps for the day:

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Hannah LOVES Asian food.  She blames me because I craved it when I was pregnant with her, and hated the taste of red meat – and well, she’s not a fan of red meat now.  I ended up making veggie spring rolls for her with veggie fried rice and I added cooked chicken to mine and Jacob’s spring rolls.  That girl is picky about her chicken too!

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I ended up buying something called spring roll pastry sheets:

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Each one is 45 calories, and super thin.  My only problem was that they didn’t stick together like normal egg roll wrappers – usually I just wet my finger around the edge of the wonton wrappers and press and they stick.  Um, nope – that didn’t work at all.  So I went to youtube, and found a video of a woman who made a “paste” out of flour and water and that did the trick.  Now, I deep fry these, but since my deep fryer keeps the temperature right, they aren’t greasy at all – I add 1 teaspoon of oil to the recipe above for “absorption” but I doubt that much gets absorbed – each one came in at 104 calories, 1.6 fat, 13.8 carbs, 1.5 fiber and 9.2 protein.

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And check out my steps!

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I bought a bunch of t-shirts at Goodwill to wear to the gym.  I texted this picture to my step-son Joe and his wife and their friend Natalie:

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Love it!

Please leave a comment on the blog if you want to enter for the drawing to win a free entrance to a Spartan Race!  I’ll pick a winner on Friday.