A Pink Pixie Princess - Complete!

[purplekicks]

Sorry to hear about your back. Sending plenty of happy healing vibes!

Have a great Christmas in Disneyland!

 

[Ariel484]

Sorry to hear about your back. Sending plenty of happy healing vibes!

Have a great Christmas in Disneyland!

Thank you! It's definitely feeling better by not good enough to attempt a run yet. Soon, I hope!

 

[Ariel484]

Checking In

The San Francisco leg of our trip is over. The weather was awful - rainy, windy and cold the entire time. We managed to fit in some good stuff, though.

Had to see the Golden Gate Bridge...


...and the Walt Disney Family Museum! I LOVED this. We spent a good 4 hours here, and while it was tough on my back (really a low point of the trip with my back on this day), it was fabulous. I highly recommend a visit for any Disney fan. I have better pictures, but they're too big to upload via phone...so this will have to suffice for now.


Today we left San Francisco and drove and drove and drove...went along Highway 1, stopped to see some redwoods...


We drove 6-7 hours today and now we're at a hotel about 2.5 hours north of Disneyland. Mr. A pointed out that if we arrive early enough tomorrow, we could add a day to his ticket. No arguments here!

TOMORROW!! EEEEEEEK


BACK UPDATE: definitely better but still not 100%. Don't want to try to run yet (and let's be honest, I'll be way less interested in running once we get to Disneyland ).

Continued in Next Post

 

[Dis5150]

Oh you're making me miss Cali! I'm from just north of San Francisco. Glad your back is feeling better and that you're having fun! I'm definitely going back to Disneyland this year!

 

[rteetz]

Well at least you're having a good time despite the weather and your back. The Walt Disney Family museum is on my list of things to do.

 

[SarahDisney]

Yay Walt Disney Family Museum! I've heard it's really great. We missed it on our SF trip, but my parents went and I've seen all of their pictures.

I'm glad your back is getting better - hopefully it'll be back to 100% soon!

 

[ZellyB]

LOVE that shot of you two in front of the Golden Gate. Just fantastic. Hope you are having a wonderful trip!!

 

[dancingtodisney]

Hey!! I'm really sorry to hear about your back issues

EXCITING that you might be at WDW in January though!

I hope you had a lovely Christmas and a fantastic time in Disneyland

 

[baxter24]

Just found your training plan. I loved reading your trip reports. I have always been a "lurker" on the dis boards and am new to posting. I am doing the GSC this Feburary and starting to get excited but nervous. Hope your back is feeling better!

 

[wellesleyprincess]

Joining in to follow along. I'm planning on doing coast to coast in 2017 as a pre-turning 30 bucket list thing.

 

[emilyindisney]

Happy New Year, Shannon (and everyone else reading along!)

The holidays and my work schedule totally derailed me these last two weeks but I'm taking the new year/new month as a good opportunity to get back on track. I'm glad to hear that you've stuck with it and are taking good care of your back! It's unfortunate that the weather in SF wasn't great but I'm glad you got in some good sites and made in to DL. Hope you have a good rest of your trip!

 

[Ariel484]

Oh you're making me miss Cali! I'm from just north of San Francisco. Glad your back is feeling better and that you're having fun! I'm definitely going back to Disneyland this year!

Definitely get there...just don't go over Christmas!

Well at least you're having a good time despite the weather and your back. The Walt Disney Family museum is on my list of things to do.

Knowing what I know about you (I see your posts on the News/Rumors forum and on WDWMagic), you would love the museum. It was so cool! And hey, good luck this weekend!

Yay Walt Disney Family Museum! I've heard it's really great. We missed it on our SF trip, but my parents went and I've seen all of their pictures.

It was definitely a highlight of the trip! I highly recommend it.

I'm glad your back is getting better - hopefully it'll be back to 100% soon!

Thanks. Still not quite 100% yet, but it's getting there.

Hope you and Beth have so much fun this weekend! Good luck!

LOVE that shot of you two in front of the Golden Gate. Just fantastic. Hope you are having a wonderful trip!!

Thanks! My dad said it looks like it's photoshopped...I guess I'd have to agree, but I still like it!

Hey!! I'm really sorry to hear about your back issues

Thanks Karen.

EXCITING that you might be at WDW in January though!

Looks like that is falling through, sadly. I'll have to settle for Princess Weekend, I guess.

I hope you had a lovely Christmas and a fantastic time in Disneyland

Thank you! I hope you had a good Christmas too. Good luck this weekend!!

Just found your training plan. I loved reading your trip reports. I have always been a "lurker" on the dis boards and am new to posting. I am doing the GSC this Feburary and starting to get excited but nervous. Hope your back is feeling better!

Welcome, and thanks! Back isn't 10% yet, but almost there! I'm hoping we see some pics of the medals tomorrow, assuming they are out at the WDW Marathon Weekend expo!

Joining in to follow along. I'm planning on doing coast to coast in 2017 as a pre-turning 30 bucket list thing.

Yay! Welcome! Definitely go Coast-to-Coast, the medal is amazing!

Happy New Year, Shannon (and everyone else reading along!)

Happy New Year, Emily!

The holidays and my work schedule totally derailed me these last two weeks but I'm taking the new year/new month as a good opportunity to get back on track. I'm glad to hear that you've stuck with it and are taking good care of your back! It's unfortunate that the weather in SF wasn't great but I'm glad you got in some good sites and made in to DL. Hope you have a good rest of your trip!

Yeah, this trip didn't turn out exactly the way we'd hoped but we made the best of it. We're still recovering from it!

 

[IrishMel21]

Goodbye Money! Garmin Forerunner 230 and Brooks Adrenalines GTS 16

Last week I mentioned scoring a deal on the Garmin vivoactive, and then promptly returning it. Despite the fact that the vivoactive didn't work out for me, the seed had been planted for me to look into upgrading my trusty Forerunner 220.

Here's what I was looking for in a new watch...

1. Had to be a stand-alone GPS watch (not like the Apple Watch, where you need to take your phone with you on a run)
2. Had to have step tracking that was compatible with my employer's Employee Wellness program (if I track 100,000 steps per month - stupidly easy for a runner to do - I save a good chunk of change on my health insurance premium)

These were the two must-haves. The vivoactive checked those boxes, so I bought it. It also had smartwatch features (notifications pushed from my phone), which wasn't something I had really been looking for in a watch - just a bonus, I guess. I unexpectedly ended up really liking the notifications, though - at work we sit in cubes, so I keep my ringer off all day. This way I still don't miss calls or messages while still being able to keep the ringer off.

I had the vivoactive for a little less than a week before returning it. There were some small issues that I could look past (dim screen - which I knew about from reading reviews, not easy to see time of day while running, plus some other things I'm forgetting), but the biggest deal breaker (and really the only thing that annoys me about my Forerunner 220, besides it lacking step tracking capabilities) was how long it took to find GPS satellites - it was no better than my FR220. And beyond that, I couldn't easily tell when satellites were found (something the 220 is really good at).

I thought about it and realized that I'm pretty happy with my 220 - if it could find GPS quicker and track steps that could sync at work, it would be perfect (I was using a FitBit Charge to track steps, which I liked - but didn't like wearing both it AND my FR220 on runs). Smart notifications would be a bonus. And then I figured out that this watch (220 + activity tracking + smart watch features) actually DOES exist in the form of the Garmin Forerunner 230, the upgrade to the 220.

It looks almost exactly like my 220.

I did some research (there are limited reviews out since it's new) and realized that if I wanted this watch, I'd need to pay full price for it since it had just been released. But then I remembered getting an email from a local running store with their Black Friday deals - one of them was receiving a bonus $20 gift card for each $100 gift card purchased, and the deal was good through the end of December.

I headed to the running store and bought a few gift cards...then turned around and used them for my purchase right there on the spot. I had to pay tax, obviously (which I wouldn't have if I'd bought the watch online) but I still saved overall, since this watch isn't really on sale for a discount anywhere - I think I could have maybe gotten it for 10% off? So still a little more than what I ended up paying.

I'm really liking it so far. I downloaded the above watch face (for free) which changes with the time of day (sun and clouds during the day, stars at night), so that's kind of fun. No Mickey watch faces available, unfortunately, but there are a decent number of Star Wars offerings.

The smart notifications have been working well and are easy to read (and are making me realize that I need to get off of some email lists - I get so much junk mail!)...I actually think they show up a little better on the 230 than they did on the vivoactive.

LivingSocial is one of the worst junk mail offenders for me...I get 3 emails from them per day. Unnecessary.

And I found that I didn't really like the touchscreen function on the vivoactive, so I'm glad to have the buttons and NO touchscreen on the 230. I think I'll especially appreciate that when it starts getting REALLY cold out and I don't have to remove gloves to use the touchscreen (which I also found didn't work super well when I was sweaty).

I was fooling around customizing the running portion of the watch (there are screens where you can pick what data fields to display) the day I got it - the GPS beeped to let me know it found satellites within 30 seconds, and there was an indicator saying as much on the main screen, so obviously that's a big bonus for me.

See those little bars in the top left of the screen?! You couldn’t have given me those, vivoactive?!

Another big bonus of this watch that I found in my research (and by "research" I mean "reading DCRainmaker's website") is that you can customize the data screens while running with 4 fields! This must be proof of my gigantic running nerd-ness because I was pretty excited to have this feature back - this is something I haven't had on a watch since my Garmin 305 (my first-ever GPS running watch - that thing was a tank. It's what I’m wearing in my 2011 Princess Half Marathon trip report). I customized my first screen with Overall Distance, Overall Time, Overall Average Pace and Time of Day (!!):

And my second screen has Lap Distance, Lap Time, Lap Pace and Overall Average Cadence (which I am supposed to be working on, so this is super helpful - assuming it's accurate):

Mr. A is impressed and basically was just like, "I guess you get what you pay for." Don't get me wrong, I still think the vivoactive is a great watch, but the FR230 is better FOR ME in almost every way - the only thing I'm missing on the vivoactive is how thin it was. That's literally it - everything else is better, in my opinion, on the FR230. I've found 2 quirks so far...

1. How it shows how full the battery is - I had to download a widget (free, like the watch face) to show me what percentage of the battery is left (I don't like just relying on the picture). Now that I have that, I have it set up so that I just scroll up once from my home watch screen to see the battery percentage. Sort of weird that I had to download that (maybe it's an included feature that I just haven't found yet?), but whatever. I'll be curious to see how the battery performs with regular use
2. I haven't figured out how to tell the watch when I want it to find GPS. Whenever I use it just as a regular watch/step tracker, it doesn't search for GPS...which is good because the battery doesn't drain as quickly that way. Then I'm supposed to press the top right button to tell it I want to run, and for the two runs I have done with this watch, pressing that button doesn't seem to make it understand that it's time to find GPS. I've gotten around that by turning the watch off and back on, but I feel like there's something I'm missing. Seems like it shouldn't need to be powered on/off?

The activity tracker screen (big reason why I wanted to upgrade my watch)...if I don't move for an hour it'll yell at me (in the form of a vibration). I thought this would annoy me, but since I sit at a desk all day for my job I guess being reminded to get up and walk around once in awhile isn't the worst thing in the world. The vivoactive did buzz at me once in a meeting (which actually WAS annoying), but I recently figured out that Garmin has some sort of "do not disturb" feature one can use to turn the vibrations off (which explains a lot since this thing also tracks sleep - something I’m not sure I'll ever use it for - but I have wondered what people do when they sleep - sleep through the watch buzzing at them?!). I assume the vivoactive has this feature as well, but I hadn't found it in the few days that I owned mine.

Right now the FR230 is calculating daily goals for me, but there is an option to just set 1 constant daily goal (i.e. 10,000 steps per day) so I need to decide if I want to change that.

And like I mentioned above, I've run with the watch twice. The accuracy seems similar to my FR220, and the first time I used the watch (after turning it off and back on), it found GPS satellites in just over a minute. Today it was more like 15 seconds - crazy fast.

The battery has been good so far. It was at 100% the day I bought it (Sunday) and after wearing it as a normal watch all week and doing 2 runs with it (90ish minutes of running) my widget is telling me the battery still has 54% left yet. Not bad.

Overall, very pleased with the switch...and I plan on listing my FR220 (goodbye, old friend) and my FitBit Charge on eBay after we get back from vacation. Hopefully I can put a dent in the FR230 cost by selling those things.

My other running gear purchase was a new pair of shoes - the Brooks Adrenalines GTS16. I'd wanted to grab a pair of the 15s on sale, but they get awful reviews - across the board people have said they run a half size too small (seriously, Brooks? Whyyyyy). I didn't have a store locally that had the 15s for me to try on a half size up, and I was too nervous to risk buying them online, so I just bit the bullet and bought a new pair (using the aforementioned giftcard deal, so at least I saved some money):

Hey, they match my watch!

I talked to the employee about my concerns with the 15s and she said that they 16s run more true-to-size. They did feel better when I tried them on. I was starting to feel some aches that made me think it was time to retire the neon pink 14s I've been wearing since January, so it was crunch time. I did my first run in the 16s today and they felt soooo much better. I'm considering heading back to the running store to get another giftcard deal and grab another pair...we'll see if I remember to do it before the deal runs out.

Happy Saturday!

Continued in Next Post

Ooooh the new watch looks like a lot of fun! I'm going to pretend it doesn't have all those bells & whistles that I've been looking for (I have the FR220 as well). So pretty!!

 

[IrishMel21]

I hope you had a magical trip to DL & I hope your back is starting to feel better!

 

[Ariel484]

Ooooh the new watch looks like a lot of fun! I'm going to pretend it doesn't have all those bells & whistles that I've been looking for (I have the FR220 as well). So pretty!!

Haha, I know what you mean! I put my FR220 up on eBay and it has 1 bid so far (a whopping $49.99). But I really like the FR230 a lot!

I hope you had a magical trip to DL & I hope your back is starting to feel better!

Thanks! I have had a couple of setbacks and am hoping to start up again on Monday...so that'll be 3 weeks of no running. But they just released the medals so that's some motivation for me!

 

[Ariel484]

I like shiny things

As I just mentioned to Mel, due to the back injury and some other issues (which I'll post about eventually), I haven't run since December 16. ACK!! I'm hoping to get things started back up on Monday (possibly yoga on Friday if I'm up to it?) but in the meantime...runDisney has FINALLY released the Princess Half medals!

They're pretty much exactly what I expected, but still...this is my motivation to get back to it once my body gives me the okay!

So cute! Would have loved an Ursula medallion but I'll let it slide...

This one is my favorite! Disney is always spot-on with the ribbons!

Predictable (like the 10K and GSC), but I still love it.

Kind of loving the green background with the purple ribbon here!

Continued in Next Post

 

[princessluna14]

I can't say I'm totally crazy about the yellow for the half medal, but I'll get over it and love it once I finish. Obviously they can't please everyone but this will probably be my only princess half and I would have loved to have something in a color I didn't hate haha

 

[princessluna14]

Also, now that I'm really thinking about it, the half medal reminds me of Belle more than anything. Nothing about it says "little mermaid" to me at all.

 

[rteetz]

Even though I'm a guy I really like the princess medals. I'm currently sitting at the airport ready to get to Orlando for marathon weekend.

 

[BigEeyore]

I read along way more than I post, but wanted to come out of the lurking shadows to wish you a speedy recovery and hope that you will be back at it soon! I am headed to WDW today for my first Dopey challenge, and I have to tell you that I have read your 2015 Dopey report twice and it has given me so much inspiration and motivation! So thank you for your great reports. I love those princess medals and the Ariel theming - I can't recall if other Princess races have had a particular princess they were themed around?