Photo Contest and Other Random Things I was Thinking While Running
I'm sure you could guess, I had a million things running through my head whilst I run this past month. It's been so bad with writing that I feel bad, but, there is always room for improvement.
This past month started off pretty well. I was able to do something I had only dreamed of before, run a Ragnar. I ran the Del Sol course, which is a 200 mile-ish road race from Wickenberg Arizona to Mesa Arizona. It was a blast!!! This race has different teams made up of either 12 or 6 people who all run three legs of the race. The teams are divided into two groups or vans and they drive to each point that the members hand off to. I was leg 8. It was very intense for the first leg. I had not adaquetly prepared for the heat of the valley of the sun, since it was February. The temperature was abnormally hot and I don't usually run in that kind of weather. Hopefully, next year, I will be much more prepared for it. The second leg was much more my style. IN the dark, in the cold. I was in heaven. I flew and it felt good to have such a good run. For the last leg, I was able to run in the coolness of cloud cover despite running along the black top for over three miles. We as a team finished 168th in a time of 34 hours and some change. It was one of the best events I have tried yet and I am so stoked about doing it again.
The next week I was back home and doing my thing, and getting more miles regularly and then I was noticing a pain in my groin area and then coming down to the inner attachment of the muscle. It was not so good. So, there were a few forced days off that I didn't really like in any way. So I started out slowly walking and then a little more and then some running. At this point of the game, I am not so sure about what the total miles are but dam willing to be that they are better than a kick in the pants. I would venture to say that I will end the month around 60 miles if I'm lucky. Which I suppose will be ok. That just means that come the spring and the summer, I will have to move my ass to meet my goals. It's not unobtainable so I think I will be ok. I am aiming for more mile than what I need so here to hope :)
Today I was on Facebook and the was a post from MapMyRun that wanted to see our favorite running trails and share them. It's a contest so the winner gets a story about them featured in the MapMyRun Blog. So, tonight, as I went with the dog for a walk, she had stopped to sniff some leaves, shocker, and I turned around and saw the sun in such a beautiful manner... I am going to enter the contest with this one. Would be cool, worst they could say is I did not win, but, no success is achieved without risk. Why not.
I want to say it was Sunday, but, could have ben Saturday, saw that someone had said something to the effect of you can change your whole life in a hour, run. Or close to that. And I thought how perfectly accurate that was. My mind was a whirl of things that I have been able to solve in my life within the confines of an hour of my daily run. I can change anything with that run, but, I have to get out there to run for the hour for it to really happen. I thought about running has changed my life and I was tempted to write a tie bit about my running story, but, I can get kind of long winded and ramble. Shocking, I know.
So, I wanted to kind of tell it here today, right now.
When I was born, I had some problems with my hips; to this day I have one that is rotated in and forward. To get a proper massage, I have to have some lift under my right hip when lying face down. I had to wear special shoes when I was learning to walk so my other hip, the left one would come back to more centered point. When I sit for a long time, my foot still wants to turn inwards.
That being said, when I was growing up, I was unusually fast for my build. I wasn't a little kid, I was always stocky and short. I remember hearing I needed to loose weight but, I liked food more than I liked taking care of myself. I was faster than the rest of the boys in my class, I could out sprint anyone even with a large head start. When we moved to Pinetop, I didn't think anything of it until I was in 8th grade. We had to do 100 meter dashes in PE and I was paired with a friend and I smoked her. Our teacher then paired me with the girl who didn't like me at all, and when I beat her, she didn't like me even more. In fact, as I am pulling away from her, from all accounts, she sat down on the track and grabbed her knee and started to make noises. I joined the track team that year and ran the 100 dash and the 4x 200. What fun that was! I even earned the title Most Inspirational Team Member... it's because I knew how to laugh at myself as well as everyone else.
Once I got to high school, sports fell by the wayside in favor of things I liked better, until my second year when I did track with my younger sister. We were on the 4 x 100 team together, with the two sisters who lived next door to us, same age and grade as Lexi and I, and I did the 100 and she did the 400 and 300 hurdles. It was a lot of fun, I am glad I did that. I didn't run after that until it was required of me in boot camp and the four following years of being in the Navy. Just after my 35th birthday, I was having a really hard time with my body and my head. I thought I was losing it completely, going from super manic one day to suicide depressed the next day and back and forth and it was making me even more crazy than I have ever felt before. Much of this was hormonal related, I had gone off birth control about 6 months earlier after having an ablation done. My boyfriend, now husband celebrated our 5th year together and I thought about how wonderful life was and within a week I was in such a low place I couldn't see how to get out of it. I decided that I would start taking a thyroid supplement, since my mom was having such horrid problems with her thyroid and I started to walk, thinking moving never killed anyone, I could move. It really wouldn't hurt. Within three days I noticed a huge difference and in a fortnight, my lover turns to me and said he noticed that I was much more even keeled. I was starting to feel like a normal person again.
And then I thought that walking was a bit too slow. I started to run more and more and Vanessa was good enough to be there with me and ran with me for that first time I could run an entire mile. And then three miles, and then five miles. In June of 2015, Vanessa asked if I would do a race with her in October, called the Foam Glow race. So I said sure, and we started to get my training under way to run a 5k. I loved how I felt after running and then stretching. It is like a fire coming alive inside me in a way that moves my soul. Before our race together, I did a Color Run. That was done on the mountain here and I was in love with races. I am not the fastest or best runner, but, wow. It was fantastic! I loved doing that! We ran our race together with Lizzy as well and I had a great time. Getting home that night was probably not the best idea and I know that I now plan better for things like that. No racing and driving without a nap!!
The next year, Thomas and I got married and I remember thinking and saying that I wanted to tackle a half marathon the next year for the Rock N Roll series in the valley. I loved running and I wanted to do it a lot. Life changed a bit, new job, and with that meant that my running with my best friend would now be very different if we were able to get the chance to run together at all. I didn't think much about the half until around my birthday that year when my sister asked me about it and said she could get my registration for the race free. I like free, but I only had 75 days to get into shape for it. So I signed up for it. And when the year came out and I saw on MapMyRun the challenge You vs. The Year I signed right up... and then noticed they had a Facebook page. Since then I have gained my confidence and kindred spirits from all over the world. I have met some really amazing people and I can't wait to do this every day. I have to have rest days, I'm not the kind that can be running every day, my legs need a rest. But this year is a bit different. I have done my races, and I promised not to enter any more races for the year, and that is killing me right now. And I have set a goal of 1000 miles running, not just walking and running and my love will pay for my race and hotel for any race I want to do, anywhere I want to go. That makes me so excited!!!
That's it for me. Although I don't think either my husband or myself expected for me to stick with this as long as I have, I am so glad I have. It makes me feel like a normal person. I will continue to do this until my body won't allow me and then I will figure out a way to do it still.
Run Happy All~
This past month started off pretty well. I was able to do something I had only dreamed of before, run a Ragnar. I ran the Del Sol course, which is a 200 mile-ish road race from Wickenberg Arizona to Mesa Arizona. It was a blast!!! This race has different teams made up of either 12 or 6 people who all run three legs of the race. The teams are divided into two groups or vans and they drive to each point that the members hand off to. I was leg 8. It was very intense for the first leg. I had not adaquetly prepared for the heat of the valley of the sun, since it was February. The temperature was abnormally hot and I don't usually run in that kind of weather. Hopefully, next year, I will be much more prepared for it. The second leg was much more my style. IN the dark, in the cold. I was in heaven. I flew and it felt good to have such a good run. For the last leg, I was able to run in the coolness of cloud cover despite running along the black top for over three miles. We as a team finished 168th in a time of 34 hours and some change. It was one of the best events I have tried yet and I am so stoked about doing it again.
The next week I was back home and doing my thing, and getting more miles regularly and then I was noticing a pain in my groin area and then coming down to the inner attachment of the muscle. It was not so good. So, there were a few forced days off that I didn't really like in any way. So I started out slowly walking and then a little more and then some running. At this point of the game, I am not so sure about what the total miles are but dam willing to be that they are better than a kick in the pants. I would venture to say that I will end the month around 60 miles if I'm lucky. Which I suppose will be ok. That just means that come the spring and the summer, I will have to move my ass to meet my goals. It's not unobtainable so I think I will be ok. I am aiming for more mile than what I need so here to hope :)
Today I was on Facebook and the was a post from MapMyRun that wanted to see our favorite running trails and share them. It's a contest so the winner gets a story about them featured in the MapMyRun Blog. So, tonight, as I went with the dog for a walk, she had stopped to sniff some leaves, shocker, and I turned around and saw the sun in such a beautiful manner... I am going to enter the contest with this one. Would be cool, worst they could say is I did not win, but, no success is achieved without risk. Why not.
I want to say it was Sunday, but, could have ben Saturday, saw that someone had said something to the effect of you can change your whole life in a hour, run. Or close to that. And I thought how perfectly accurate that was. My mind was a whirl of things that I have been able to solve in my life within the confines of an hour of my daily run. I can change anything with that run, but, I have to get out there to run for the hour for it to really happen. I thought about running has changed my life and I was tempted to write a tie bit about my running story, but, I can get kind of long winded and ramble. Shocking, I know.
So, I wanted to kind of tell it here today, right now.
When I was born, I had some problems with my hips; to this day I have one that is rotated in and forward. To get a proper massage, I have to have some lift under my right hip when lying face down. I had to wear special shoes when I was learning to walk so my other hip, the left one would come back to more centered point. When I sit for a long time, my foot still wants to turn inwards.
That being said, when I was growing up, I was unusually fast for my build. I wasn't a little kid, I was always stocky and short. I remember hearing I needed to loose weight but, I liked food more than I liked taking care of myself. I was faster than the rest of the boys in my class, I could out sprint anyone even with a large head start. When we moved to Pinetop, I didn't think anything of it until I was in 8th grade. We had to do 100 meter dashes in PE and I was paired with a friend and I smoked her. Our teacher then paired me with the girl who didn't like me at all, and when I beat her, she didn't like me even more. In fact, as I am pulling away from her, from all accounts, she sat down on the track and grabbed her knee and started to make noises. I joined the track team that year and ran the 100 dash and the 4x 200. What fun that was! I even earned the title Most Inspirational Team Member... it's because I knew how to laugh at myself as well as everyone else.
Once I got to high school, sports fell by the wayside in favor of things I liked better, until my second year when I did track with my younger sister. We were on the 4 x 100 team together, with the two sisters who lived next door to us, same age and grade as Lexi and I, and I did the 100 and she did the 400 and 300 hurdles. It was a lot of fun, I am glad I did that. I didn't run after that until it was required of me in boot camp and the four following years of being in the Navy. Just after my 35th birthday, I was having a really hard time with my body and my head. I thought I was losing it completely, going from super manic one day to suicide depressed the next day and back and forth and it was making me even more crazy than I have ever felt before. Much of this was hormonal related, I had gone off birth control about 6 months earlier after having an ablation done. My boyfriend, now husband celebrated our 5th year together and I thought about how wonderful life was and within a week I was in such a low place I couldn't see how to get out of it. I decided that I would start taking a thyroid supplement, since my mom was having such horrid problems with her thyroid and I started to walk, thinking moving never killed anyone, I could move. It really wouldn't hurt. Within three days I noticed a huge difference and in a fortnight, my lover turns to me and said he noticed that I was much more even keeled. I was starting to feel like a normal person again.
And then I thought that walking was a bit too slow. I started to run more and more and Vanessa was good enough to be there with me and ran with me for that first time I could run an entire mile. And then three miles, and then five miles. In June of 2015, Vanessa asked if I would do a race with her in October, called the Foam Glow race. So I said sure, and we started to get my training under way to run a 5k. I loved how I felt after running and then stretching. It is like a fire coming alive inside me in a way that moves my soul. Before our race together, I did a Color Run. That was done on the mountain here and I was in love with races. I am not the fastest or best runner, but, wow. It was fantastic! I loved doing that! We ran our race together with Lizzy as well and I had a great time. Getting home that night was probably not the best idea and I know that I now plan better for things like that. No racing and driving without a nap!!
That's it for me. Although I don't think either my husband or myself expected for me to stick with this as long as I have, I am so glad I have. It makes me feel like a normal person. I will continue to do this until my body won't allow me and then I will figure out a way to do it still.
Run Happy All~
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