FIVE!

It's happened. I am the mother of a five year old.

It's crazy that Charlie is now five years old. I'm pretty sure that he was just 5.5 pounds a year or so ago.

This morning to celebrate we attempted a photo shoot. As you can see from the photo below, Charlie was not very on board with that and opted to start shredding the newspaper instead.

We attempted again during my lunch break after a long birthday walk.

Things went much better.

Until Charlie discovered that my "5" was made up of chewable cardboard.

The shoot quickly derailed.

 

 

Happy 5th Birthday Charlie! We are the luckiest people in the world to have such a wonderful pup.

Tigers in Denver

Dan and I spent the weekend in Denver a few weeks ago, so that we could fully enjoy the Tigers series. It's the first time that they've played here since we moved 6 years ago so we were really excited.

See... Dan gives Tigers weekend two thumbs up.

We bought tickets to the Friday night game and I was able  to get free tickets to Saturday's game through work.

Dan thought the guy in red behind us in that photo looked exactly like Lou Holtz.

We got to see the Tigers up close and had a ton of fun even thought they lost both games that we attended. I blame the altitude adjustment. Hopefully they will come back again soon. :)

Summer Cleaning

In preparation for our European vacation, Dan and I went through his clothes this past weekend to determine what he had that still fit and looked good, what needed to go to the tailor, what could be donated and what could just be retired to the trash.

Somehow the stars aligned and we were both fully gung-ho about going through his entire wardrobe! It's a good thing too, since I don't think we've done a major clean out in the entire 7+ years we've been together.

We took some breaks to really admire some treasures from Dan's college days:

But overall we stayed on course and ended up with a huge donation to the local Goodwill :)

Now we know exactly what he's got, and where we need to focus our efforts on the shopping front :)

Getting excited!

So many good things are coming up including 3 glorious days off of work!!! I heart government holidays. Especially this one, because it's the official kickoff to Summer!

Besides that, Dan and I have plans to catch the Hangover 2 in the next day or so. We're also going to head up to Boulder on Sunday so that bright and early Monday morning we can run the Bolder Boulder!

It's pretty munch the biggest race that I've ever participated in and I've wanted to run it for the past 2 years. It's a 10K and over 50,000 people are signed up to run it this year! It's the biggest 10K in the US.

Besides being in one of our favorite Colorado towns, we'll know a bunch of people running it this year, so it should be a great time!

Even though my training since the Colfax half has gone a bit down hill over the past few weeks, I am still hoping that I can PR in this race. I never was able to write a post on my first 10K back in April, but I'll try to get to that before this race happens. I also have a 5K to write about, so I'm a bit behind.

Basically though, in order to PR I have to run this puppy in less than 57:46 (a 9:19 pace). Dan is also going to run it, so I'll keep you posted on how he does :) I'm sure well, because his training has pretty much consisted of yoga classes, swimming and an occasional light quarter mile jog with the dog!

On the agenda today: Work, 5K treadmill run, BodyPUMP, then perhaps a movie date!

Also: Happy Last Day of School Dan!! (I'm just slightly jealous, but when you're on your 8th summer of this, it gets a bit easier) :)

Do you have any plans for the upcoming holiday weekend?

Half Marathon Q&A

My sister posted the following comment and I decided to make a post out of it, because I am bad at referring back to comments and I thought this would be good to remember:

Melissa Anne said...

ash this is awesome! did you get a runners high at all during the race? did you stop to pee? how do you feel today? i'm so intrigued!

MAY 16, 2011 11:46 AM 

I'm not sure that I got a runner's high, but I did feel like I kept myself in "the zone" for a lot of the race. I was really struggling through a lot of it to keep my speed around where it was, so that may be why I didn't hit it, but who knows.
I didn't stop to pee at all during the race and that was a huge concern of mine! I did hop into one of the hundreds of port-a-potties they had at the start area right before the race started. I think that this was really helpful. I also only went to about half of the water stations (I think 4 in total) that they had along the course. I felt really hydrated throughout the race and really just used them as a way to take a short walk break so that I could recharge and run faster.

I also took a Shot Blok around mile 6 but it made my stomach hurt so I didn't take any more. Usually they help me out, but I think since the race started so early in the morning, my body was just not very used to having something like that at the time.

On Monday I felt really sore... my legs and hips were really tight and I seriously considered working from home that day. One of my toenails also hurt. I was actually afraid to look at it after the race because I thought it was going to turn black and fall off like I have heard runner's talk about, but so far it has just been a bit painful and that's it! The good news is that each day my muscles feel a bit less sore than the day before. I've talked with friends who have done races this length and they say that it will take at least 5 days to fully recover.

Hopefully that's everything! When's your first half Melis?

My First Half!!!

I did it!

Here's my bib that I picked up on Friday at the expo. It's the first one I've gotten that has my name on it. I'm pretty sure that it means that I have entered into the big leagues of racing.

The race started at 6am and this is what the view looked liked from outside of my hotel room when I got up. Do you see that glare? That my friends, is rain. Not the best of circumstances if you are going to run your first half, but I just layered a lot and tried not to think about it.

Here are my friends Randi, Chrissy and Shannon at the start of the race.

The course was pretty flat overall and took us around the Denver area.

I'm not going to lie. It was hard and far! The longest run I had done in my training was 11 miles and I was hurting a lot at the end. The best part about the route was after mile 7 when we got to run through a fire station. It really helped motivate me to go faster. While I had a stretch goal of coming in under 2 hours, I knew that coming in under 2:05 was going to be hard for me, so throughout the race I pushed myself to run 9:40m/m or under. I was able to do that for all but four of the miles and I came in just under the 2:05 mark!!
Here we are at the end of the chute that leads out of the finish! I am so proud of us for running our first half!

Now for the results! I did end up running .09 miles more than I had too, but all in all, I am really happy with my numbers. My splits from my garmin looked like this:

Split    Time     Distance    Avg Pace
   1       09:32        1.00           09:32
   2       09:28        1.00           09:28
   3       08:57        1.00           08:57
   4       09:21        1.00           09:21
   5       09:01        1.00           09:01
   6       09:14        1.00           09:14
   7       09:44        1.00           09:44
   8       09:27        1.00           09:27
   9       09:47        1.00           09:47
   10     09:49        1.00           09:49
   11     09:18        1.00           09:18
   12     09:19        1.00           09:19
   13     09:49        1.00           09:49
   14     01:52        0.19           09:39
Sum  2:04:46      13.19          09:27

My official time was 2:04:42 and I had an average pace of 9:32!!
Overall: 1385/3779
20-29F Div: 227/774
Females: 650/2409

My muscles are so sore tonight and I am super exhausted because I didn't sleep very well last night. But I've taken it easy today and had my fair share of Advil today and hopefully tomorrow I'll feel closer to 100%. Now I'm off to bed :)

Scenes from my run

One of the things I've done to keep myself accountable is join a running club. I would say that all in all I am not a 'joiner' so I may not keep it up past the one season, but it has definitely allowed me to find new places to run and keeps me running at times that I haven't necessarily wanted to.

The club is currently training for the Garden of the Gods 10 Miler. So, we've been training there for the past few weeks. It is really, really hilly, but pretty much one of the prettiest runs ever.

I took photos of some of the views on my drive home the other day and thought I would share.

My camera phone pictures definitely don't do it justice.

if you've never been here, I highly recommend visiting this beautiful, free and open to the public park. It is one of the best places to visit in the Springs.

Hopefully you have a pretty run planned this week. Happy running :)

A Typical Dog Park Excursion

Charlie loves the dog park. If I happen to say d-o-g-p-a-r-k out loud, he will literally pace back and forth in front of me until we get into the car.

Normally, we find a ball and throw it around and loop around the park for a bit. And then it happens... we come to the area of the park where the stream is and I say, no water this time Charlie.

This is always what happens anyway :)

5K on St. Patty's Day

Dan and I rand our first 5K together a couple of week's ago! It was so much fun. As you can tell from all of the green, it was a St. Patrick's Day weekend race. Can you see us in the picture below?!

This was a really fun race downtown and it was actually a 5K, unlike my Turkey Trot experience, which made it even better :)

Besides actually being the length that the race said it was going to be, my run was so different from my first Turkey Trot. Mostly because I have been working really hard on running consistently lately. But also because I was able to use my Garmin throughout the race which really helped me to control my pace and not get caught up in what everyone else was doing. 

I went into the race wanting to run it in sub 29 minutes, but running with a lot of people can be pretty motivating, and I was able to blow past that time and finish in 27:38, which is a 8:54 avg pace!! I felt pretty exhausted at the end of it, but was really proud of myself overall for doing better than expected! I ended up placing 45 out of 222 in my age group and 222 out of 1,241 for all female competitors!

Even though I am not running races to place or have the fastest time, I do love seeing improvement in myself overall. Looking back at my Turkey Trot run, I remember having to walk at times and I finished with a 10:26 pace. It's awesome to know that all of my training is actually paying off in a tangible way :)

Dan also did well for not training at all. He finished in 28:14 which is a 9:06 average page, coming in 506 out of 937 male competitors and 69 out of 111 in his age group. For not training one bit, that is pretty awesome. Even though he did well, it has taken a bit of work to get him to agree to sign up for another race. But I think I'm pretty close to getting him to sign up to run the Bolder Boulder 10K with my over Memorial Day weekend. I'll keep you posted :)

While Charlie didn't attend, he did stay in the St. Patrick's Day spirit.

I was on such a roll!

I can't believe I haven't posted on here since January 24th! I was doing so well for the year up until then, but now I am back! Whenever I stop blogging for a while I always find that I miss it. It helps me to keep tabs on what is going on in my life and it's even more fun to look back on older posts to see how things have changed.

Plus, what else am I supposed to do with the bajillion photos that I take each year? :)

I'm blaming this hiatus on my new running hobby. Or more specifically, my 1/2 marathon training plan that kicked off at the end of January. I'm pretty new to this whole running thing, so it was a huge awakening to see all of the hard work that it actually takes to get into running shape.

Besides my training, I got promoted at work, went to Breck, ran a 5K with Dan, joined a running club, went on Spring Break to San Diego with D, and generally just started to get way more into health and fitness. Also Dan started doing yoga and loves it now! It is pretty much one of my favorite things to do with him at the moment.

It has been a busy two months, but I hope to start posting more regularly now that I am a bit more used to this whole health and fitness no matter what else is going on mentality :)

The view from my front step when I woke up this morning...

Sure it's not the best mountain view money can buy but it's still so pretty. Also, note the moon! I think that means that I was up early, which for me is quite a feat!

Happy Friday!