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Thursday, April 25, 2013

Thursday thoughts on why I run...

Doesn't look like much, huh?


Today I went out for a run.  And I realized something...

I loved it.  I loved every single moment.

It wasn't that it was a super easy run, but I let my thoughts take control.

Let me set it up for you...

It was my typical Thursday run.  Trying to fit it in before lunch with the hubby but after grocery shopping, and definitely before afternoon study time.  I set out for 2-3 miles since I'm still pretty sore from the other day doing weights.  But then something happened.  I got lost in my thoughts.  I totally let them take the wheel, and I passed my 1.50 mile turn around point.  I ran until I came to around 2 miles.  I've never had this happen.  I remember thinking to myself, "I'll see how I feel at 1 mile, and I'll turn around no longer than 1.5".  I totally missed that turn around, and didn't even realize it until 2 miles.  Not that it mattered much.

What was I thinking about?

How fortunate I am for the life I live.  Although it isn't always perfect, or fun, or easy for that matter, but it's my life, and I am capable of so many things.  I have the best friends anyone could ask for, I have a wonderful family that loves me unconditionally and supports me in everything.  Isn't that all that matters in the end, friends and family?  Yep, I thought so.  If I didn't have those things in my life, I'd feel empty.

I often think on my runs about life, but it's usually about school, or what I need to do this week or next week.  I never get to think about why I have the life I have.  I'm a pretty lucky chick.  I used to run to be healthier and leaner, but now I run because it clears my mind.  I often run before I take an exam at school, and when I do, I usually ace the exam.  It helps clear my mind of all the junk.  I've never had a running partner (other than Oscar (dog) and occasionally my husband will accompany me on his bike), and I'm not sure I need one.  I feel like maybe that will take away why I run.  I've run for so long alone, I don't know what it'd be like to run with someone else all the time.  Of course that being said, I'm certainly open to it!!  (Maybe just not every run)

I just felt like running...
I totally had a Forrest Gump moment today....and I LOVE Forrest Gump y'all!!!!!!!!!

Have you ever had runs like this?

What are you thankful for?

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

WARNING: Pic overload! Colorado trip part 2

Wow, I've really neglected to put this up...I've been super busy, and I still am, but I need a break.  School is almost over for the spring semester, so I've been studying for finals for what feels like weeks...oh wait...it HAS been weeks....

That's the thing about nursing school I suppose.  You don't pass, you fail.  Out of the program.  So yeah, I've been busy...

ANYWAY!

After our stay in Boulder, we traveled to Colorado Springs to visit one of my bestys and her family.  My besty there is actually my husbands cousin.  She used to hate me.  Can you believe that?  I've known my husband for so long (19 years), I've known her too.  I used to be super quiet and shy, so I came off as a bitch most of the time to her (and other family members).  Anyway, we are very good friends now.  Like the best.  (of course I have two other best friends)  Is that weird?  (okay, maybe in another blog...)

SO!!

Colorado Springs is nice.  A little more desert like though.  And it's larger than I thought it was going to be  (<-----  HA!  That's what she said!!!!).  I just assumed that is was going to be small like Boulder.  Not sure why.

So we arrived in Colorado Springs on Friday afternoon.  We did lots of catching up, went to eat then hit the bowling alley.  My son and her youngest daughter are the same age.  We were pregnant at the same time, and actually had the same due date.  Weird, right?  Well her kid came 2 weeks early, and mine came 1 week late.  Hence, they are 3 weeks apart.  They could almost be twins!  Cutest kids, and they are so funny.  My besty and her husband have basically the same parenting skills (if that's what you want to call them) as my husband and I, so the kids are alike in so many ways.  They had us rolling all weekend.

Cheryl and I, it's a bad pic, but the first one of the weekend!



Brylee and J, cousins that could pass for twins.



Saturday the plan was to go snowboarding.  We traveled up to Monarch Mountain, which was about a 2 hour drive from where they live.  Not too bad.  This was my second attempt at skiing/snowboarding.  I tried skiing in 2009 in Oregon.  Lets just say it was not the best experience of my life, okay?

Anyway, so I decided I was really going to try this snowboarding thing.  Like for realz.  At first it was so hard, like OMG hard!  Like, I for real wanted to quit.  But I didn't.  I fell a bazzilon times that day, sometimes really hard.  I swear the snow had it out for me.  But by the end of the day I made it down the bunny hill with only 2 falls, and at the end of the hill I was still standing.  I'd say that was quite an accomplishment.  Yeah.  I'm awesome.  I was on the bunny hill for the entire day.


Me getting off the caterpillar lift
About to wipe out!

Steady, steady


YES!  Finished standing up!




Sunday I woke up and was super sore!  I decided to go for a run to loosen things up a bit.  The besty has an awesome dirt/light gravel/rock trail behind her house.  Like literally BEHIND her house!!!  It goes on and on.  I'd be in heaven with that behind my house!!!  The trail had some pretty freaking awesome views!!  I ran 4 miles that morning.

Seriously awesome trail!



After my run the hubby wanted to hike up the Manitou Incline (check out the website here) in the town over.  We saw it our first day and knew we totally wanted to do it.  It's a mile hike up a mountain, with a 2,000 feet gain in altitude.  Yeah, we rock like that.  Not your typical trail though.  It was a workout for sure.  After you make it to the top you have to go down a different way mostly because it's too dangerous to go down the same way you came up.  Of course we saw plenty of idiots doing that.





Seriously could take a leg off!

This was eye level!

We look so happy to have finished!


After the hike up, we had to hike down on trails.  These trails were a lot more friendly than going up, although it was 2.50 miles down.  We ran most of the way down, it was so fun!  So yeah, it was a total of 3.5 miles on top of the 4 I ran that morning!!  Whew.  We were so tired after, and hungry, so off to Taco Bell for some grub!


A for real chipmunk!!!  I've never seen one this close!

Trail down the incline



The next day we left to come home.  It was perfect timing since it snowed later that night and flights were cancelled due to the weather.

I ended up running 21 miles while on vacation.  I didn't do anything but run and snowboard, but it was awesome to run in new places!

Colorado was amazing.  If I can find a way to move there, I will.  I've been researching things out there, so maybe within the next few years we can make it happen.  If I can't live in Boulder though, I'm not going to move.  Boulder is my kind of city.  By far my favorite!

Have you ever visited somewhere and decided to move to the place you were visiting?


Thursday, April 11, 2013

Boulder will be my future home....

I'll have to break the Colorado trip up into a few different posts.  I have so much to write about, and so many pictures to share!  I can't possibly fit them into one post!!

So Boulder Colorado...is my most favorite place in America (so far anyway, I've seen lots of cities, so this is my fav...in America anyway...)

This city has so much to offer!  It's a college town, so it's busy with college kids.  We live in a college town now, and absolutely love it.  Boulder reminded us a lot of the city we currently live in, of course without all of that elevation....

Our first day we just drove around and found a local running store.  I thought I had died and went to heaven.  It was a REAL running store!  HUGE!  I was seriously in heaven.  The hubby stayed for a minute, then walked across the street to a bike store (that's his idea of heaven...)  I bought some shirts from the store, but one of them I had to accomplish something first...

Awesome-est running store EVER!

This is the coolest shirt I own!

I had to run at elevation before I could wear that!

Speaking of elevation......I ran for the first time in my life at high elevation.  Where I currently live, I do have some elevation, but no where near 5,391 feet!  I ran 4 miles on Thursday.  It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.  I mean, it wasn't just really easy either.  I found that on all of my runs, I started out good, but by about 30 minutes in, I'd feel exhausted!  I ran the first day close to the hotel we were staying, and tried to stay somewhere I thought I'd be familiar with.  I downloaded Glympse (an app I learned about from Kim's post here), and had the hubby download the app, just in case I got lost, or if he didn't hear from me.  It's a great app, you should totally check it out!

Boulder's Downtown Mall

Awesome view while waiting on the light to turn 


After my run, the boys and I decided hike some local trails.  They call one of them "Flatirons" in Boulder.  Yeah, well, we took a wrong turn up the mountain and didn't see the "Flatirons", but we did have an amazing view, and it was totally worth the 2 mile hike up!  When we got almost to the top, these two older ladies, when I say older, they could've been my grandma, asked us if they could help.  We told them we were looking for Flatirons, and they told us we made a wrong turn somewhere, but there was an awesome trail just ahead of us.  We took their advice and hiked on up.  They were right. It was awesome.  They gave us a bit of history...a long time ago, people used to hike up this mountain and camp out.  They made these chairs and all kinds of things out of the rocks.  So when we got up there, we sat down on these "chairs" and relaxed a little.  Who knows if the story is true, but I did enjoy the chair!

The mountain we walked up

See the trail?  How awesome is that?

Me and my hot hubby

Just taking a rest after a 2 mile hike up!

This freaked me out a bit....


Me and my boys!


The third day in Boulder was our last.  I ran 5 miles that morning on local trails made for runners and cyclists.  These "trails" were amazing!  They were huge!  They went all over the city and didn't cross any main roads, they all had underpasses, so you didn't have to wait on traffic!  How cool is that?  The trails were even marked to tell you how far something is from that spot.  I had no idea where I was, so that didn't really matter much to me.  I did see lots of cyclists going to work on those trails.  I'm sure it's much faster to use them than the roads.  Although, the roads here have HUGE bike lanes!!

HUGE!  I could not believe how wide it was!

This is the underpass for runner/cyclists

Another awesome view while running!


After my run, I showered, ate breakfast, then we drove up to Nederland.  Nederland is not a big city at all, but the drive there was awesome.  We saw "Boulder Canyon Drive" on Google Earth and had to check it out before we made the drive down to Colorado Springs.

The mountains on both sides!

Snow on the mountain!

Spectacular view!

Barker Reservoir while on the way to Nederland

I had never in my life seen a lake frozen in real life!  I was excited!

So that is the first few days in Colorado.  I'm hoping to get other posts on here soon!



Have you ever ran at elevation?  If so, how was it for you?  Did you do okay, but feel tired about mid run?  I did!

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Stay Tuned!!!



Hiking/Trail running, I likey!!!!


I just returned from our spring break vacay in Colorado.

I will update will pics and lots of cool stuff we did later this week.

I need to catch up on school, and as much as I'd LOVE to write every single thing we did, I HAVE to do school work first!

So when I get caught up, and I catch up on what's been happening in your life, I catch you up to mine!

Let me say this...

Colorado is amazing.  I want to move there.  Like last week.  I could've just taken what was in my suitcase and made it work.  It's a beautiful state with so much outdoor life!  My kind of state!!

Okay enough!

Stay tuned!  I'll be back!

Monday, April 1, 2013

March Measurements and Training

So today I'm posting my training and measurement.  I usually do measurements on the 7th of the month, BUT since I will be on vacation, no measurements.....

This is the breakdown of the month...

Training:

Running:  41.5 miles     Down 21.3 miles since February

Biking:  63.6 miles        Up 19.3 miles

Rowing:  33,474.4 meters  20.8 miles       Up 7.5 miles


There is no excuse for my lack of running miles.  It doesn't feel like spring, but it's March.  We've had two significant snow falls this month, and I'm just not into running in the freezing cold anymore.

I WANT SPRING!!!!!!!

So my running slacked a bit, so what, my bike and rowing miles went up.  It's not like I completely quit working out!!  Killer (rowing machine) and I have grown to love one another.  Well kinda.  I still think he likes me more than I like him.  I feel stronger on the rower, but I still don't enjoy it.....

Measurements:

Thighs:  -1/2 inch
Hips:  -3/4
Waist:  -3/4
Arms:  -1/2
Stomach:  -1.25
Weight:  -1.2 lbs!!!!!!
Percent Body Fat:  -1.2%

All negatives!!!!!!!!!!!!

3.75 total inches lost!!!!!!!!!

I KILLED it this month!!!!!  Even with the decrease in running miles, I still knocked off LOTS of inches!!!  Even actual pounds!  (well really 1.2, but still!)

Even with the low (training) numbers this month, I've turned up the intensity of my workouts.  I bought a GymBoss and have been using it for all of my interval training on the bike and weights.  It's super easy to use, the hubby even used it today for this bike!

I've put a lot of cross fit workouts into my routine as well, and I'm only doing weights 2-3 times a week.  I have also been doing lots of speed work this month.  LOTS!  I ran 6 miles Saturday and felt amazing!!  I set a PR for the distance!  Here are my splits:

Mile 1    8:55
Mile 2    8:50
Mile 3    8:42
Mile 4    8:43
Mile 5    8:33
Mile 6    8:27

I did not wear my "speedy outfit" yesterday.  However, I did wear the same color combo....Maybe blue and black are my secret speedy colors?

I must confess, I did weigh myself three times this month.  I'm thinking that weighing myself once a week is enough.  With my actual measurements going down, I cannot complain about the number on the scale only moving 1.2 pounds.  I mean for real, I lost 3.75 inches this month!!!  Inches are way more awesome than pounds!!!!!

Do you have a "spring break" vacation planned?

We typically go somewhere when the kiddo is out of school for spring break.  This year we are headed to Colorado!  Is it weird I'm excited to run at elevation?  My husband thinks I'm insane.  I'm just giddy thinking about it!  The scenery is going to be amazing, even if I can't breathe!  Can't. Freaking. Wait.  I don't even care if I run super slow or if I'm even able to run at all (since my lungs will feel as though I have a vice on them...).  Running in new places makes me so excited!!!