Weekly Training Recap

Monday morning I was up at 5:30am to observe an ashtanga yoga class for my yoga teacher training.  From there I went and assisted my first gentle vinyasa class. I was terrified to assist, but it went great! One down, 9 to go!

Tuesday morning I was up bright and early for a power vinyasa class. It was hard, and I still had a lot of residual soreness from an intense last weekend of teacher training.

Tuesday night I hit the barre for a class. I REALLY did NOT want to work out twice on Tuesday. Like, at all, but I get a reimbursement from work on my yoga membership if I attend the studio a certain amount of times each month, and with all the observations I did instead of taking classes the last two weeks, I was coming up one short! Phew, work out down, and some money back in my pocket!

 

Wednesday morning, I was again up at insane o'clock to observe my final yoga class for teacher training requirements. Whoop! I only had to work 3 hours since I was scheduled to work on Sunday, so I was able to get in a power vinyasa class at 5:45pm that I've never taken before. It was a similar flow to Tuesday morning's, and my body was finally feeling better, so I could actually give some decent effort.

 

I was a sweaty mess, so I went home and showered before the pinnacle yoga class of my week: restorative with essential oils and reiki. Don't you feel healed just by reading the class title? It was magical and heavenly and when it was done, I wanted someone to just roll me to my apartment and put me to bed.

 

 Thursday morning was spent doing another power vinyasa yoga class at 5:30am. I rarely get to take classes from the studio owner, because her classes never align with my work schedule, so it was a treat to get my sweaty butt handed to me early in the morning. :)

 

Friday I had the day off so I went to a new yoga studio for a morning vinyasa class. It was part yin part vin, and exactly what my body was needing.

I had big plans to do 6-8 miles after yoga, but I felt really off and cut it to two miles. Considering I spent the majority of the weekend on excessive amounts of allergy meds and sleeping, my body was prepping to take me down with a sinus infection for the holiday weekend.

Fishing Weekend

A couple of weekends ago, after my Saturday library shift, I headed up north to spend the weekend with Kyle fishing. Kyle was already up at his camper, so he swung back by his parents' cabin to get me. Ollie and I enjoyed some relaxation by the lake until one of the lake dogs attacked her. I wish I had been wearing my garmin to see how fast I sprinted to break up the dog fight. It was terrifying, and both Ollie and I were shaking for quite awhile after, but luckily she's okay.

When Kyle arrived, she had to get some extra dad snuggles to feel better.

Then it was off to the camper! Ollie snuggled in for the trip.

Ollie has spent more time in the camper than I have. When Kyle was fixing it up last fall, Ollie would come with him and "supervise" his work from her perch at the table. Guess right where she hopped up to as soon as we got there.

We stayed up way too late for this gal, so when it was time to go fishing the next morning, I wanted to sleep. So we ended up getting on the water late, and boy did it get hot. We caught fish left and right for the first 45 minutes, and then it slowed down and I got pretty miserable. It was the most calm, still day on the lake, which is great, but that meant the thick hot air just stuck to you and the bugs feasted on my delicious blood.

Ollie offered to drive us to the fish, so we let her.

I think she needs some of those little kid goggle sunglasses that strap in the back, don't you? She has a fairly bad permanent film/scarring on her eye lens, so she's almost blind when it's really sunny out. It was pretty obvious on the lake that she couldn't see either of us; we'd talk to her and she'd stare toward our voice, but wouldn't be looking at us. Poor peanut.

Ollie was obsessed with the live well. As soon as we started pushing the fish we caught in the well, she wanted to jump inside and play with the fish (or possibly eat them, who knows). She decided she'd perch on top to keep them safe for awhile.

After we were done fishing, I treated myself to some Purple Cow ice cream, and it's just as good as I remembered from many years past. Mmmm.

We made a late lunch, cleaned up the camper and made our way back home. This photo was take maybe 3 minutes into the drive. Zzzzz.

And then when she felt like she was missing out on fun by sleeping, she sat in between us and toggled between sleep and wakefulness, all while sitting up. That pug is sure talented.

 

What a fun weekend with the fam!

Train for ALL THE THINGS

Now that yoga teacher training has wrapped up, I'm excited to jump into a training program. Which is great, because the Sioux Falls Half Marathon is just around the corner (I start my 10 week training schedule on Monday!) and I've been running minimally. Eeps!

I have been carefully plotting out my runs for each week, and putting them on my calendar along with my yoga and barre classes (along with the classes I still need to assist to finish my yoga teacher training certification hours) and I swear I'm breaking into a sweat just by typing all of that into my iCal. So who knows how I'm going to actually complete the workouts.

As I was plotting my long runs on my weekends, I was excited to see that my cutback week fell on a weekend that I had intended on doing a 60 mile bike ride. I've done a half century before, but that was a few years ago, and I have yet to take my bike out this season for a ride. It took approximately 45 seconds of excitement to realize that if I'm going to do a 60 mile ride in one month, I will need to be doing some 30 mile rides weekly to get my booty used to sitting in the saddle. And then I looked at my already jam packed schedule and said good bye to the ride. There's always next year, right?

And the good news is that a running friend is planning a for fun 5k the morning of the 60 mile ride, so all is not lost. I can still do something fun with my cutback week. :)

Running Hat Help

I need some serious help. I am in desperate need of a new running hat. I hate wearing a hot (I sweat to death, why add more clothes!?!?) but I have some sun spots on my face from too many summers of running without one, so now it's all hat, all the time. Unfortunately for me, I look doofy in my hats!

So I need a hat-ervention, or something.

Let me have it, what running hats do you love? I need something light, preferably green (but I'll give some wiggle room on this one), that won't make me look doofy.

DOES THIS HAT EXIST?!? HAAAAAAAAALP.

Doofy Hat #1

Doofy Hat #2

Weekly Reads: Nimona

I can't remember where I first heard about the graphic novel, Nimona, but when it came in on hold for me, it looked exactly like the type of graphic novel I'd be drawn to--excellent illustrations, bad ass female lead character, and stellar witty writing. I'm not a huge fan of graphic novels, but I do try to read the really excellent ones that are out, so I'm better able to recommend those to my kiddos at the library.

Nimona did not disappoint. I read this graphic novel in two sittings and it was truly excellent. Worth the read regardless if you like graphic novels or not!

My rating: 5 stars.

Summary from goodreads:

The graphic novel debut from rising star Noelle Stevenson, based on her beloved and critically acclaimed web comic, which Slate awarded its Cartoonist Studio Prize, calling it "a deadpan epic."

Nemeses! Dragons! Science! Symbolism! All these and more await in this brilliantly subversive, sharply irreverent epic from Noelle Stevenson. Featuring an exclusive epilogue not seen in the web comic, along with bonus conceptual sketches and revised pages throughout, this gorgeous full-color graphic novel is perfect for the legions of fans of the web comic and is sure to win Noelle many new ones.

Nimona is an impulsive young shapeshifter with a knack for villainy. Lord Ballister Blackheart is a villain with a vendetta. As sidekick and supervillain, Nimona and Lord Blackheart are about to wreak some serious havoc. Their mission: prove to the kingdom that Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin and his buddies at the Institution of Law Enforcement and Heroics aren't the heroes everyone thinks they are.

But as small acts of mischief escalate into a vicious battle, Lord Blackheart realizes that Nimona's powers are as murky and mysterious as her past. And her unpredictable wild side might be more dangerous than he is willing to admit.

Weekly Training Recap

I really started working on my additional observation requirements for yoga teacher training so I spent a LOT of time in the yoga studio, but not practicing.

Wednesday I got in a run at our group run. A hillyish 2.2 miles.

Followed by a fun and challenging flow at the store.

Saturday yoga goddess MC Sweet was her for our last weekend of training and she killed us in a 90 minute flow. I was sick on Thursday and Friday so it was especially hard. But so so great.

We ended the day with an hour long yin class. Magical.

Sunday we kicked off with a two hour power class. I have never worked so hard in a class in my life. We had only our body heat in the room and we fogged the mirrors up completely. Yoga puddle.

Race Report: Harrisburg 5k

Two weeks ago, I ran my first race of 2015, the Harrisburg 5k. I've ran the 10k a couple of times, and opted for the 5k this go around to see where my "speed" was at as I knew I didn't have any speed+endurance, making the 10k sound like hell.

I had plans to go out around 8:50 pace, in hopes that I could maybe sustain an 8:45 for the duration of the race. Most of the super fasties did the 10k, so I lined up toward the front, and then we were off! I tried to go out comfortably, but clearly I haven't raced in awhile, because somehow comfortable was significantly sub-8. Including some sub-7 moments. Uh... nope.

I finally settled in-ish but had my watch set on lap pace, so I had a hard time judging what pace I was actually running at since I had gone out so fast. I kept track of the ladies that were passing me as I was putting on the brakes, knowing it'd be good motivation for my competitive side once it was time to kick it in to gear! 

Mile 1 8:20

 

I was pretty tired and wasn't sure if I was physically tired, or if I mentally felt like I should be tired after running an 8:20 first mile. Turns out I was pretty tired, as the next mile was in 9:05. Around the half way mark, I knew I could be under 27 minutes, and thought I could maybe be close to 26:30 if I didn't fade too badly, so that became my new goal.

Mile 2 9:05 oops.

There was not a single whisp of a breeze at this point, and I would've paid handsomely for someone to fan me with a giant leaf as I ran by. I'm not familiar with the town the race was in, despite having run it before, and the route wove all around, so I had a hard time judging where we were in relation to the finish line. So I just kept running. As you do.

I picked it up every so slightly in the final mile, although I'm pretty sure I was giving it all I had at that point.

Mile 3 8:53

I kicked in the last .5 of the race, and caught up to some folks in the process, and then steps before the finish line, one of the gals I passed came WAILING through to pass me. Of course she was in my age group. :P

.1 7:19 pace

Final time 26:33

Overall I'm pretty pleased with my efforts and was excited to see I ran the race a minute faster than my last 5k in November. I've still been running minimally, with the focus being on yoga teacher training, so I'm excited to be able to commit myself to a program and see some more progress.

Race Result

Overall 35 / 109 (32.1%)

Ages 30 - 39  5 / 35 (14.3%)

Gender 12 / 72 (16.7%)