Well Hello There Mullet Man + Foto Friday

I woke up to the alarm this morning after having the craziest dream. Thanks Heather for blogging about your dream, so I would feel like such a loser for sharing mine. :p Anyway, in my dream, Taylor and I were being tracked down by Voldemort, and we had to separate for a couple of years to keep him from catching us. The dream was really long, and involved me running through a shopping mall and a bridal store (???) [don't read into that Tay] and eventually we ended up snuggling up to each other in bed after Tay had defeated him.

When I told Tay about the dream, he said, "I'd do my magic shit on Voldemort and kill him!" So at least I know I'd be protected if this dream were to actually happen. Why oh why do I have Voldemort on the brain?? Random..fo sho.
Anyway, I had an easy 5 on the schedule today. Shortly after starting the run, I readjusted it to 4 miles. I have an 11 mile long run in the morning, and that is much more important than me hitting 30+ miles for the week. I like to have FRESH legs for my long runs. Plus, the headwind was less than fun.

I thought I was running crazy slow when my one mile beeped at me. However, after making the out and back in 4.08, I realized that the first mile was probably closer to 1.08 miles. Not sure why my Garmin HATES me, but oh well. :p

I did 4.16 miles in 39:59 for a pace of 9:37.
1.08 10:31 (9:45 pace)
2. 9:48
3. 9:23
4. 9:39
.08 39 (8:22 pace)

P.S. I saw the most AWESOME mullet on my run today. I wish I would've had a camera with me. He also had skin tight running gear on, including long biker shorts, with short shorts over the top of them. Amazing sauce.

In other news, my feet are seriously jacked up! I had put ~100 miles on my new running shoes prior to the Wild West Relay, so I thought they were sufficiently broken in. Well, yes and no. Yes, they are broken in to run on asphalt/sidewalk/cement, but not so much on loose gravel. Oy! After my second leg of the relay, my. feet. hurt. They just weren't used to jostling around that much in my shoes. After the third leg, I had a blister the size of my face on my big toe. I keep popping it, and it keeps healing and refilling. Sickness. Plus I have many baby blisters on my toes to accompany it. But the worst, I think I will lose a couple of toe nails. :( I am monkey toed, so my second toes are longer than my big toes. Thus, when I did have some downhill stretches, those little toes were bearing the brunt of my weight. Ouchie, sorry toes! The nails are actually lose/have come up off the nail bed, and I keep catching them on the blanket at night when I'm trying to sleep. Ugh. Hopefully they'll hold on until winter time when no one has to see my feet. Although, I'm totally for painting the nail bed to camouflage the missing nail until it comes back. ;) I had to do it for prom my senior year. Classy. :)

For Foto Friday, I want to share some old school pics of one of my besties who FINALLY brought her booty back from Norway and is going to be in town this weekend celebrating her BACHELORETTE party. We had some crazy times in college, and I missed her dearly while she was away. Hopefully she doesn't make me remove any of the pics. Although she should be happy I didn't put up "THE" photo reenactment from st. pattys day. Because I was super tempted to do so. :p

Rocking some sweet hats.
Sharing a birthday cupcake/ice cream cone.

Trying to decide what to wear.

Loving life (for the moment) on St. Patty's Day 06....

A holiday that will live in infamy..... :p

Love you Special K, gonna be a great weekend!! <3

Wild West Relay Report: Cheer Time + Down Time + Leg 2

Alright kids, when I last left you, I was a sweaty/salty mess from conquering an insane hill (mountain). After a quick meeting with 7-8 handy wipes, I had de-sweated (kinda), stretched, and was back to cheer on our final runner of Leg 1, Julie. :)



See look I barely even look sweaty anymore. It's MAGIC.



Then it was time for some more road kill tallies. Julie had a couple.



And Amanda had a few more to add. It was at this point that the tallies started to look (unintentionally of course) like dripping blood. Dramatic effect? Apparently we were the talk of the relay for this. Whoops!



It was on our way to the rest area that we ran by our first runner of the second van, Cynthia!! We drove by as she dumped her water bottle on her head, and I was worried that she would die without water. I got to practice my official water station girl skillz. It was a pretty swift hand off of the handheld. :)



Then it was finally time to eat and replace the ~700 calories I had burned off on my morning "jog." They had a special on wraps, so I dug in. They were pretty tasty but definitely not filling enough. The seasoned fries I had with them were AMAZING. Nom nom.





Then it was naptime. Except for the stupid kid playing the recorder. I swear if I would've had more energy, I would've beat him up. But alas, gotta save the legs. :)





Me, Shannon, and Julie take a break from waiting for our team's second van to come through to take a pic. And then it was our turn again!



While waiting for Melissa to come through on her second leg that, (and I quote) "Effing sucks!" we found this sweet rock to pose on. I had planned on squirting Melissa with the sweet squirt gun, but instead shot the sky Calamity Jane style. This is the wild west, after all.





And again taking some photos. Taking pictures is way easier than running up mountains.



While waiting for Bobbi to finish up her insane 9 mile uphill run, Melissa and I decided to take a pic.



Before Amanda's night time (second leg) we huddled to keep her warm while we waited for Shannon to come barreling through.

After Amanda was my turn. I started running around 10:30pm. It was dark. And there were numerous cattle guards on the route. I got to wear a sweet handlamp, flashing LED light, and reflective vest. On top of running tights, a long sleeved shirt, and track jacket. It was COLD! Quite a difference from my 80ish run from earlier that day. A



At first I started out running with a girl (or a girl quickly caught up to me) and we ran together for about a mile which was awesome. Then she said her pace was around 8:00, so we quickly said buh bye, as I knew I wouldn't be running close to that. :p The first 5 miles were pretty great, but I did notice that it was more difficult to breathe, even with the decline that I got to enjoy.



After mile 5 things started to get a bit brutal. I just felt like I couldn't catch my breath. Plus, my stomach was pretty upset. BUT I did get to run in Wyoming during this part, which was awesome. The van drove up to me at this point, hoping to get a pick of me and a Wyoming sign, but for some reason there wasn't one. (???) All of a sudden we started seeing Wyoming 10 Highway mile markers, so we knew we were in Wyo. but wtf? Where's my grand entrance!??! :p



1. 9:27

2. 9:28

3. 9:43

4. 9:43

5. 10:11

6. 11:59

7. 10:28

.2 1:00



I ended up having to walk once or twice during the 6th mile, but was pretty happy with my time otherwise. I did the 7.2 miles in 1:12:00 for a 10:00 pace. Whoo! 10:00 pace goal still in tact. :D




I don't really remember Julie's leg, (sorry Julie!) but I do remember STARVING. When we got to the next van exchange there was a little restaurant doing an all you can eat spaghetti dinner for $10. Let me tell you that was the most amazing midnight dinner I've ever eaten! Smart me brought white sweat pants to an adventure race. Ha. Luckily my normally klutzy self didn't show through. We ate while traveling to the next van exchange where we were told we could sleep in an elementary school. Which was great because it was pitch black out, cold, and no one wanted to put a tent.

I walked into the room and people were sleeping head to tail to dirty running shoe. The chorus of snores prompted me to immediately turn back around and head for the van. I'm the lightest sleeper ever and knew I would not be "lulled" to sleep by the snores, no matter how exhausted I was. I fell asleep shortly after my head hit the beach towel (my impromptu pillow for the weekend), and was awoken about one hour later to the sounds of our walkie talkie. I kept freaking out that our team would somehow come in earlier than planned and that we would miss them, so I stayed up until our team was ready to go.

Stay tuned for Leg 3!!

Wild West Relay Report: Day 1 Continued + Leg 1

After our first 4 runners were finished, it was my turn. As each team member would hand off, I would get just a wee bit more nervous. I think I used the portapotties 27 times in preparation. I even resorted to stretching to calm my nerves. I remember starting to stretch at least an hour and half before my races in high school (yes, I stretched that long for a race that last less than 13 seconds, and around 27 seconds!) I was also pretty jealous that there were freezy pops at this exchange. Probably not the greatest pre-run snack. :(

Stretching on the gravel feels awesome.

Look at me. I'm bendy. Hah. (I think I actually said that as the photo was taken :p)

And I was off! Buh bye portapoopers, I got 7.3 miles to conquer.

Here's the elevation according to my Garmin. The first part is just a subtle uphill, but it didn't feel very subtle. Everyone who had ran before me said it took the first mile to get used to breathing the air, so I was thankful for the slow incline to get me acclimated. The worst part about this race: no iPods/headphones. Although, many others didn't follow the rules, tsk tsk, I did and I'll tell ya...it sucks listening to yourself breathe! It totally messes with your head hearing how labored your breathing is. I didn't feel tired/winded, but I sure as heck sounded like it. Ay ay ay.

The team drove ahead a couple of miles to park and morph into the sweetest cheering section EVER! Seriously, it was great getting to see them every couple of miles. They would crank up some sweet tunes (on the awesome playlist created by yours truly), bust out some sweet cheers/yells, and snap a gazillion awesome photos in the process.
This is probably my new fave running photo. Thanks Amanda. It makes me look like I'm flying. Uh...I mean, I WAS flying, and she managed to capture the photo as proof. :p

Someone else managed to snag my best angle. Thanks again team. :D And I kept running....

The run was really great until I encountered the first, seemingly endless, hill. I can rock hills. Because "I am a machine," a mantra I said over and over while running it. But uff da, it was getting difficult to breathe! As I was running up, I was catching up to a girl in front of me. We had a mid-way up the hill chat.

Me: Wowsers, is this hill ever gonna end????

Girl: I know...it's....

Me: .....brutal.

Apparently there were some beautiful views on the way up the hill. Unfortunately I was just focused on the top of the hill and taking air into my lungs. Lucky for you all, my teammates snapped some shots. :)

I started getting a bit dizzy and light headed while trudging up, but judging by my Garmin I knew I only had a little ways to go to get to the top. Once I did I was rewarded by a pretty sweet downhill portion.

Wheeee!!

Dunno why this is such a small picture. :( Grrr....

The handoff to Julie, our van's final runner for Leg 1.

And I'm done. Sweaty. Salty. But done.

And another with the mountain I conquered behind me. You might be able to take the wind out of the beast, mountain, but you can't take the BEAST out of the beast. :p

How many road kills did I garner, you ask? 3. Boom.

Run Stats:

7.3 miles in 1:10:32 for an average pace of 9:40. My goal was 10:00 miles, so take that mountain. :p

1. 9:11

2. 9:30

3. 9:35

4. 9:31

5. 9:37

6. 9:58

7. 10:40

.3 2:27 (8:07 pace)

*Can you tell at which point I wanted to jump off the mountain? If you answered mile 7, you are RIGHT! :)

Plenty more to come so stay tuned. :)

Wild West Relay: Day 1 + Getting to Meet My Team

At 5:30am, most of us popped out of bed and were ready to go. I was smart and laid out my clothes/shoes/etc. the night before, so I was ready in about 4 1/2 minutes. I did get some ribbing from Amanda for putting on mascara, but oh well. :p I wanted to look cute for the 5 hours prior to me sweating it off!! Hah.

After asking Melissa if I hogged the covers all night (I have a tendency to do that. The BF and I actually sleep under 2 different blankets to prevent it), she said that I was fine, except for sleeping diagonally across the bed with my feet under hers. After telling Taylor about this, he said that's how I sleep most nights. Whoops. Nothing like some footsie time to act as an ice breaker!

We started loading up the vans, and making introductions to those that didn't meander in until long after I was counting sheep. After hitting up the hotel's continental breakfast, and wiping them out of peanut butter portions, we were on the road!

I love that I look tall around runners. :p

Thumbs up, this girl is ready to RUN!

That team is so Dangerous..... We should've been blaring Akon. Dang it.

Steve, Kristin, me, Bobbi, Melissa, Jen, Julie, Alesha, Ryan, Cynthia, Amanda, & Shannon.

Once we got to the starting line, it was time to decorate the vans. There were some sweet teams with crazy sweet names and matching vans. We did our best to make ours look pretty. I got to put some of my old cheerleading sign skillz to work. Or maybe I just hoarded the window markers...one of the two....

It was around this time that Bobbi was interviewed stating that we were from 12 different states! Well sort of.... which is actually not at all, but still we represented a decent variety. I actually had a guy from SoDak talk to me at an exchange, and another guy cheering for me throughout the race. He even knew the schools that were in my hometown, including my alma mater. I may have thrown out a GOooooooo VIKES! Cheer in my delirious running state. :p

We had the great idea of taking a photo looking in to the sun. Here we are at the start prior to Melissa taking off! After starting the race and cheering Melissa on, we all wandered back to our vans to get going. I started to question who had the timer and if it got started when Melissa took off. Whoops, it was still in the package. This is timing clock fail #1 of the relay.

Pretty much sums up how excited I was to get started. I think I said, "I'm SO EXCITED!!" at least 1,200 times in the first hour. Sorry Van#1. :)

Quick photo op at the 3rd exchange after Bobbi murdered her first leg.

And another photo before Shannon took off to dominate her leg.

We were mean and had a road kill count on our van window. Melissa is tallying up her "kills" for her leg.
Shannon is taking her turn. I told you we were dangerous. :p

Next up.....my first leg!!!

Wild West Relay Report: Getting There

It all started a couple months ago when Kristin at ChasRunner posted on her blog about the Wild West Relay she had signed up for. I commented that I had wished I had signed up when I saw people posting about it on their blogs. She responded back that they had a teammate back out and had an opening, and that I SHOULD DO IT!

Now if any of you know me in real life, you know that going on a trip to Colorado with literally 11 strangers is out of my comfort zone. I'm sure Kristin can attest to that in the 1,200 emails I sent her with a gazillion ?s and me changing my mind about going at least a dozen times (a dangerous dozen times, ha!) Finally, I signed up for good and didn't look back.

I flew out of the Sioux Falls airport around noon on Thursday and was somehow put aboard the geriatric flight. Seriously, I was the only person on board who did not have to use a cane/walker/wheelchair to get on or off the plane. Must be on their way to the Denver old people convention, right? Sweet.

Once I landed I knew that Cynthia at AMBER had already landed and was at our rental car place. After going up and down countless escalators, I finally found my bag. Then after circling where I thought I should exit at least another hundred times, I finally figured out where I was going. The shuttle driver almost got me to my puke threshold on the way to the car rental place, so 5 stars go to him. This immediately reminded me that I should've packed Dramamine for the trip. Whoops!

I finally made it to the car rental place to see beautiful Cynthia waiting for me!!! :) We inhaled my pretzel then decided to head to the airport to pick up another of our teammates. But first we had to lose our rental slip, park the wrong way in a shuttle-only parking spot, and giggle like school girls.

We took turns calling our next teammate, Amanda at Run to Finish to see if she had landed and got yelled at numerous times by the "cop" patrolling the area. After finally realizing she was on the OTHER side of the airport, we picked her up and were off!

We ended up stopping outside of Greeley, CO where one of my BESTEST friends used to live, for dinner at Panera. I had the usual pre-race meal of a turkey sandwich with some delicious spicy mayo and potato soup. Nom nom. Then it was back on the road. Sadly I had to wave goodbye to the Nike outlet store before I even got a chance to meet it. Sniffle. :(

When we finally got to Ft. Collins, I was in awe of the beauty of the city. I think I would move there in a heart beat. Part of our team and our volunteers were already there! After driving 15 (??) hours from Cali, they had gotten in around 10am, and were also starving. Dinner #2, here we come. We loaded back into our sweet minivan along with Bobbi from N Her Shoes and Melissa from Trying to Heal. The pizza place we ended up at made me SUPER upset that we ate at Panera. It looked amazing. Luckily for me, they had Skinny Dip beer on top at happy hour prices. Mmmm that's the kind of dessert I was looking for. It was then that I realized that the brewery for New Belgium (maker of Fat Tire & Skinny Dip my two FAVE beers) was in Ft. Collins!!! Why oh why do I have to run a relay tomorrow!?!?!

It was right around this time that we learned that one of our teammate, Alesha's, flight had been re-routed to Amarillo, TX because of the storms in Denver, and we had no idea when she was going to get in. Uh oh. Once we learned that she was on her way to Denver, and that the second van's ETA was after midnight, we decided we would meet them in the morning and called it a night! 5:30am was going to come very quickly, especially after a full day of flying.

I settled into bed with my soon to be footsie/snuggle partner, Melissa, and fell into a fitfull/restless slumber.......

Stay tuned for Day 2 of our adventure. :)

Rest? What?!?!

Apparently the lack of sleep coupled with the intense runs this weekend (race report(s) still to come I PROMISE), has finally caught up to me. Yesterday, I refused to get out of bed at 5:30am to do my 6 mile run, promising to do it after work. Well after work brought 95+ degree temps. As much as I wanted to be a pile of sweat 6 miles later, I decided not to. I skipped a run. Whoa. That hasn't happened since.....March? I'd have to look back to be sure, but it's definitely been awhile. And the last time I skipped it was to go to Chevy's. I didn't even have anything sweet to do. Grr..

So this morning, I had a running "date" planned with one of the guys who works at my gym. He just started running and has decided to do the same half I'm doing in September. He's FAST and has been suggesting we go on a run together. (BTW, he randomly decided to see if he could do 14 miles a week or so ago before deciding to do the 1/2 and did it in a 7:30 pace. Um ya...) I figured it'd be best for us to join up on one of my speed days, as that's closest to his insanity pace. We had plans to meet at 6:30am to run, even though it's my late day to work, and I could sleep in til 8 if I wanted. Um..ya....I woke up at 6am, texted him that another day would have to do, and went back to bed...until 8:30am. Holy crappers. My body is just BEAT!

I went out to do my 6 mile tempo run on my own. Fortunately the humidity was in the 90% range and the temp was already mid-80's. Who's regretting that extra couple hours of sleep? This girl. My. Legs. Felt. Dead. Oh my God. You would've thought I had JUST completed my 3rd leg of the relay, they were so tired. :(

Also, I ended up having some serious user errors with my Garmin this morning. I had stopped to stretching halfway through (after 2 tempo miles) and stopped my Garmin also. Or so I thought. Then after restarting the run, I ACTUALLY stopped the Garmin, so it wasn't timing me for roughly .25 miles. Annoying. The run pretty much fell apart from then on. Another thing I was thinking after Glenn The Running Fat Guy brought it up, was having to do with my tempo paces. When I created my 1/2 plan, I was doing it off of the 5k I predicted to run if I had no ab issues 23:30. When in fact I ended up with 24:02 because I did have ab pain. After hitting my first two tempo miles on the correct time, I resigned to let myself use the slower paces for the second two. It's my training I can do what a wanna. :p

I did 6 miles in an indeterminable amount of time. (I'll have to do some looking after I upload my stats to see how much time I was stretching, then average .25 worth of running at the remaining .75 pace. LAME!)
What I do have:
1. 9:45 (warmup)
2. 8:19 (supposed to be 8:09-8:19 based on my not correct 5k time)
3. 8:18
4. ???
5. 8:27 (which I think would technically be in line with my actually 5k time/pace of 7:45+:45=8:30. whatever.)
6. 9:36 (I actually had to stop and stretch during my cool down mile because my legs were SO TIGHT. I really hope I ran the pain out of them, because that run suuuuucked.)

I know missing a run is not the end of the world, and that my legs probably deserve a break after the crap I put them through last weekend, but I'm still going to try to make up part of the miles. Maybe do 6 tomorrow instead of 5, and do a 2-3 mile recovery run Sunday night, after the 11 mile long run Saturday morning. Besides it's been awhile since I've gotten to do a SHORT run, maybe that would put some pep in my step.

Guess who actually has her 100th post today? ME!!! Although I'm sure you knew that was coming based on my mix-up last week. :) Feel free to send me all sorts of presents/toys/love to celebrate the momentous day.
___________________________________
OK, I'm going to take the rest of my lunch break to start on the WWR RACE REPORT. Get excited kids. There are MANY photos to follow. :D

Oh "easy" runs, I missed you so.

I'm back from the land of mountains. No relay race reports yet as I'm waiting for all the pics from my team (my camera managed to take 12 before being full...LAME!), so back to regularly scheduled (read: boring) blogging until then. :)

After a 2 day hiatus post-relay, it was great to hit the road today. It was even better to hit the road at 1,200 feet and to be able to breathe the entire run. :) I had 6 miles to do at a 9:40 easy pace. Oh bless the word EASY. Something my runs were NOT lately. Ha.

I plugged away at the 6 miles, and they flew by. After taking last week off from morning running, I was shocked to see how long it took for the sun to rise. I was 2-3 miles in to the run before I even saw it peek out. Pretty soon it's going to be dark my whole run. Still trying to contemplate what I do when we reach that point. By my estimates I have about 4 weeks to decide. Ugh.

I did the 6 miles in 57:02 for a pace of 9:31.
1. 9:43
2. 9:34
3. 9:49
4. 9:29
5. 9:26
6. 8:59

I did have some pain/tenderness/soreness on the outside of my quads, especially after running some slight uphills/downhills on the trail, but I suppose that is to be expected.

ALSO, I got back on the push up train last night, and did 3 x 15 of "real" push ups. I feel so strong after doing them, it's ridiculous. I'm going to be cut before long. ;)

Ok, back to catching up on your blogs/writing up the sweet report(s). I haven't been commenting very much since I have SO MANY to catch up on, but will get back to commenting as soon as I'm caught up. :)