I'm on the radio! My first radio interview for the film heard here

Want to hear a serious Jersey girl passionately dishing about running, Ragnar and From Fat To Finish Line the film?

You're in luck!

Today, WUWM NPR radio in Milwaukee ran an interview about all three featuring my Ragnar Relay team captain, Rik Akey and yours truly!

You can click here to hear the whole interview :-) and then click the "player" thingy above the movie picture.

If you are looking for ways to support the team, here's where you should go:

FACEBOOK - we have a fun and supportive page, would love to have you join our community

KICKSTARTER - We are still miles away from goal and can use your supportive pledge to get to the finish line… Pledgers get cool stuff like DVD's, t-shirts, and other fun stuff for the help.

Have a great day all!

XO
Jen

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From Fat To Finish Line - the film - Update

From Fat The Finish Line the documentary is cooking!

We've met and filmed Katie, Rik, Jen S, Meredith, Ada, John, Linda and Mary.  With only a few more interviews to go - Andrea, Lealah, Allison and me.

The film is going to be awesome. It has laughter, tears, words of wisdom. The people in this thing really have enough motivation, personal stories, advice and inspiration to make change out there. We are so proud and lucky to be working on something that could potentially get others to figure out their own fitness goals.

However, like any marathon or race. We need support stations. We can't do it on our own

I'm sorry to get down on my hands and knees and grovel bother you with this again but we really need help right now. We are down to only 11 days in our fundraising left and we are only 13% funded.

You see, this Kickstarter fundraising is an ALL OR NOTHING thing. Meaning that it's very encouraging that 126 of you have supported us to get 13% of the way but if we don't reach our big goal of $50,000 we don't get one penny. :(

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We've traveled 6 states so far and have spent days and days away from home documenting these amazing stories. We are in the middle of making this great movie but if we don't get a wee bit of funding getting to the finish line will be difficult…

How can you help?

Well, in a bunch of ways.

First you can go here and make a pledge.

Can't make a pledge? No problem.

If you could tweet, email friends, Facebook share or send to a rich relative (joking - kind of) this link - that would be helpful. You never know who might be inspired to help

If you're a bloggy friend of mine, pls. consider a blog post - we'll be sure to shout out your support thru all of our social media! We can provide you with details on some of the amazing stories that are featured in the film to write about.

If you own a company - consider sponsoring us. We have great marketing packages available (starting at practically nothing going on up to title levels.) and would be thrilled to team up with you for branding opportunities. Contact me here for further information.

Finally, if you know how to raise money and we are missing something - tell me! I'm a story teller, mom, runner and blogger -- this financing part of things is (clearly) not my specialty ;-)

So thank you again. I'm super freakin' appreciative of every one who has donated, tweeted, FB shared or even just dropped a note saying "looking forward to this project." It all counts to me and the team.

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XO
Jen

Suck it cheerleaders

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Somedays you just have that "ah" moment. Not an "ah-ha" moment but an "ah" moment.

Today I had one of those.

I was running around my 'hood for a 3 mile run. Despite a slight hangover and despite sitting in a smokey cigar bar last night with hangover-inducing cocktail - I was cooking.

And then up ahead about a quarter of a mile, I saw them.

A group of 15 and 16 year old cheerleaders doing some kind of jogging and looking beat.

It. was. on.

I (surprising myself) not only caught up but cooked right past them. Even the two "fast" ones up a head. I imagined they were the cheerleaders i so wanted to be a part of but shunned me as a chubby pre-teen.

That chubby teen in me was gleefully cheering today though! I even slowed down so those huffing and puffing teens could kinda catch up and then smoked them again!

Nothing against cheerleaders - and I'm sure they were lovely girls but it really felt satisfying. The 12 year old me was definitely cartwheeling (I could never cartwheel or do a split -- was so upsetting at the time…) and giggling past.

Ah.

:-)

40 and fabulous indeed.

Have you ever had an 'ah' moment like that? Another ah moment for me was showing up at a HS reunion feeling confident and successful… while some of my classmates (including the meanest and most popular) hadn't fared so well. Ooops.

XO
Jen

PS: Pleeeeeeease support the From Fat To Finish Line Film if you can - your pledge will get you really cool stuff - you can score a DVD, training sessions, even some specially made bling! We are so far from the finish line if we don't raise our goal we get nothing, nada, zilch. Also check out the updated trailer while you are there. It's pretty cool.

If you can't afford to donate money - you can help just by helping us spread the word. Share on your FB page, tweet, blog about it… anything would be super appreciated. Takes a village to raise a running documentary! xo thank you.

Running your happy pace and showing off the bling

Ah.

Today I got to run. It's been 5 days or so and felt like forever. I picked up a freelance job this week playing being a wardrobe stylist for a television shoot. It's a challenging job and we worked long 13 and 14 hour days with early morning call times. It was tough but I've gotta pay the bills while building the empire ;-)

I have to say it absolutely sucks when I don't get to run. I get crabby easily and feel a little off. So I was very much looking forward to a solid run today.

It was glorious. Perfectly cool/no humidity/overcast skies allowed for a freeing 4 mile run.

I just felt good. My first mile I ran around 11 min. mile pace. On the slower side for me now-a-days (tho I remember times where I would've considered that fast!)

And I didn't care if it was 11 min mile or 13 min mile. It just felt good and right.

The rest of the run picked up and I averaged out at 10'18 min mile. It was my happy pace. And sometimes it feels nice to just run without worry of trying to run fast or anything.

And speaking of happy paces, check out this awesome medal rack that Running On The Wall sent me:

Nice rack, baby

They hand make these and I love how pretty it looks. I decided to hang it in my bedroom so I can see it all the time. It came in the nick of time because prior to getting it, I've just kind of had my recent medals in a shoe box looking like this:

I kept meaning to get something but just hadn't. Darling hubby did give me this cool thing for Christmas but lets face it, I plan on running a lot of races! I can't put all of my bling in shadow boxes!

I do have to say that every time I see it, I smile. 

If you've been thinking of getting your bling out of a shoe box and on to the wall - I would encourage you to check out Running On The Wall. They've got tons of cute styles and designs and even this nifty thing for your bibs:

Of course it taunts me with the NYC marathon bib…
One day I'll run my dream race!

You can find Running On The Wall on Facebook.

Do you have a medal rack? How do you show off your bling? Have you run this week? Do you get cranky when you skip a couple of run days?

XO

Jen

PS: Don't forget to check out the trailer (and possibly support) the documentary film I'm co-producing and directing that shares the same name as this blog: From Fat To Finish Line the film

PSS: Running on the Wall sent me this medal rack as a gift but I chose to blog about it because I love it, it's cute and I appreciate the good will.

Happy 40th birthday to me! So much to tell ya!

This past Sunday, August 12th - I started my birthday morning with a hangover and watching the Olympic Men's marathon :-) I was bummed about Ryan Hall but still enjoyed the sights from London.

My hubby carefully planned a 40th birthday bash with my sister's husband (I have an identical twin sister) for us to celebrate our 40th together in style. So my Saturday night we partied like it was 1999 and we said goodbye to our 30's. It was a great party.

I got some awesome gifts - lots of gift cards to my favorite running stores.

Cheryl on left me on right - yes we are both clutching our beers
must be a twin thing ;-)

My hubby thoughtfully made sure to have my favorite gluten-free beer on ice and in spite of a giant cake for all of the guests, made sure to find a bakery to make me six little gluten-dairy free cupcakes…

gluten free cupcakes - chocolate one was best!

And my business partner, Angela, even flew in from LA to come to the party!

I'm actually excited to be 40. I really believe this is going to be my decade. I'm far more confident now than I was in my 20's or 30's and I'm in far better shape.

Leading up to my birthday a few cool things happened:

1. Ragnar Miami teammate Linda from Frickin' Fabulous at 40 had this amazing article about her posted on-line at Huffington Po!

2. The From Fat To Finish Line Documentary website went live.

3. I received two cool running products in the mail to review (more about those in a later post)

4. We launched our From Fat To Finish Line Documentary Kickstarter fundraising page.

We are trying to raise money for the documentary. In case you don't know about the documentary you can read all about it here. My credit card, my partner's credit card and my husband's patient can't handle anymore debt and so we are turning to you for some assistance.

We desperately need to raise these funds or the dream of bringing this inspirational project to you might not happen. You can help. From as little as $1 and all the way up we'd appreciate anything you can do. And you'll get cool swag! For example, at the $25 level you'll get a DVD of the film that has all kinds of extras and behind the scenes footage.

So if you can, please help. If you have a blog and can't help financially we'd appreciate you sharing the link.   It really would be the best BDAY gift ever! ;-)

You can also check out a small sneak peek at the trailer here.

XO
Jen