LA 5K

 Well, started what I think will be an annual race - the LA 5K. Avenue and I decided to do this a few months ago and finally made it to today. It is unfortunate that I do have this cold but otherwise, I'm here for the fun! 

This was just so much fun! It was soooo windy so that was wild to deal with but we just had fun, it was mostly us walking but I don't even care. This was such an event - I wanna do it again next year for sure.

A Decade!

 Y'all. Today marks 10 years since I started my running streak. 

10 years.

A decade. 

Good holy cow that's wild. 

I did the math and I've done: 

16,337.5 miles

I've run in 16 states and 12 countries. 

On cruise ships in the middle of the ocean. 

Every single day.

New Medal Decor

 I was noticing that my medal hooks were getting a little overflowing so I found a new one that I really liked, and brought it into the fold. I needed some help to get it onto the wall, got the medals distributed, and then stepped back to enjoy how it look. Love it.

I decided to make the new one just Disney, with bibs on it and it looks so nice.

Disney Half Marathon 2024

 Today was my first Disneyland Race (my previous race was Disney World!) and I was hyyype. I had planned on doing the 10k and the half marathon, but the 10k was sold out so I just had to do the one race. I chose Little Mermaid for my costume and left the house at like ... 3:30 this morning, OOF. 

The race was hard and was SO HOT and I was soaking with sweat everywhere by the time it was done. But we did it, and I was so glad to finish and get water. 

Sooo glad to be done with this! 

Yikes!

 This weekend, I realized that I signed up for a half marathon that's gonna be in 3 weeks. So I went for a longer run today (10 miles) just to make sure I could do it with no issues. And good news, I could! I finished running and pulled off my socks and ...

OUCH

Where the heck did it even come from?! Its in such a weird spot!!

Luckily I have 3 weeks to heal, oof. 

Sunrise

 I know this is a boring post, but trying to blog every day while still in quarantine and not seeing anybody is actually pretty difficult! So please enjoy the sunrise I snapped this morning when coming home from my run. 

There are worse things to look at, I'm guessing. 

Sunrise!

 Now that we've had Daylight Savings, it's finally a little light in the morning when I go running. I got a sweet sunrise beginning this morning. 

So lovely! 

Just Nice to Enjoy

With summer coming to a close, my morning runs are no longer sunny. It's usually dark, and the sun comes out by the time I'm reaching the end. This morning as I ran, I noticed the sunrise was just absolutely beautiful, stopped for a second and snapped a pic.

Sometimes, you just gotta stop and look around you.

Foam Run!

Y'all, last night I did a foam run. I had never heard of this, but my cousin heard of it, so of course we had to do it. Firstly, because I would be spending the night up at her house (because the race starts at 9:15 AT NIGHT!), I had to drop Cookie off at my sister's to spend the night there. She enjoyed the ride.

Then time for the race! We lined up in the dusk of the day, and then it slowly turned to night as we glowed with the foam showered on us for the race. 

 It was a blast! It was only just a little bit chilly (this weird summer weather this year is so odd! It was 49 degrees this morning. In the end of June! It's nuts.) and so much fun. I'm looking forward to next year!

Happy Independence Day!

Happy 4th, everyone! I started the day in my usual fashion, the Provo City Freedom 10k. I added a cape this year! Magical.

 Husband got a cool action shot of me finishing the race, look at my majestic cape fly.

 That night, we had our usual dinner and fireworks at my house, and these jokers sat on my lap the whole time of fireworks.

 Earlier, my SIL asked if I could do a handstand. I said no, and then she said to try and that she would spot me. Her face as she tries to do so here kills me, zoom in if you need to, it's amazing.

All in all, a pretty good holiday! I hope you and yours had a great day too!

Provo City 5K 2017

Today is the 10th anniversary of the Provo City Marathon/5k! I think I've run it for like, 6 years now? I'm not sure, but something along those lines. This morning I was feeling really sick before the race, I was actually afraid of not running it, but after a banana and a prayer, I felt better. I got to the race with a few minutes to spare, and felt all right. Then the gun went off, and so did I.

I finished with a time faster than last year - 24:41! Holy! I was so proud! I crossed the finish line, got my breathing under control, and checked the race times. I got 3rd place in my age group! Yaaaaay! I went back and found PJ making her way over, and then we hung around and waited for the medal ceremony to start. I got a pretty sweet medal, and I was so proud of myself!

The medal is so giant this year! I'm just so happy that I did pretty well, and that I had a good race!

Nose Bleedin’

I was doing my usual Saturday run this morning, and decided to do an easy 6 miles. When I say ‘easy’, I mean, I was running slowly. For some reason, I was tired this morning, and I didn’t even feel like running, but I went ahead anyway. Why do I do this? I don’t know. I’m going through a running slump right now, I never even want to run lately. I wake up every morning, and just sort of slog to get going, and then I have a lazy run that’s shorter than usual. I know I should probably have some rest days, but I don’t want to have rest days – not with my month of races coming up. Anyway, as I was reaching the three-mile turn around mark, I had to do a snot-rocket. (For those that don’t know, even though you should, a snot-rocket is what you do when you’re running and need to blow your nose. Put your finger on one nostril, and blow as hard as you can through the other, to clear out nasal passageways.) I did this, no problem, like I do every week (yes, I know it’s gross), and kept running. After a few steps, blood started POURING out of my nose, literally pouring out. I stopped running, and started to walk, to try to make it stop. I had no luck. After a few feet, I saw bathroom up ahead on the trail, so I went to it. IT WAS LOCKED! I thought those things had to be unlocked at all times in the summer, but I guess that’s not true. I went to the river and put my hands in it, to wash off some of the blood, and naturally, I stepped into the river, thereby sloshing my shoe, and now I just had a wet foot. I then decided it was time to turn around and go home. I stopped at some sprinklers, to wash off more blood, (it wouldn’t stop!) and I was clean. After walking a little bit on my way back, my nose had stopped, so I decided to try to run again. After another few feet, blood again. It bled for about another mile/mile and a half, with me just walking, trying to stop it. Maybe I should have stopped altogether, and not done anything at all, and not moved until it stopped, but that didn’t really sound appealing to me, I just wanted to get back. Finally, I found a bathroom that was unlocked, and went in. I saw myself in the mirror, with blood literally all over my face and hands. Oh man. No wonder people had looked at me horrifyingly on my walking back. I washed myself off, and by then, the blood had stopped. I walked the rest of the mileage back to my car, and that was that. Luckily, no more blood, and now I’m scared to do a snot rocket, because of this problem. It’s never happened before, but now that it has happened, will it happen again?! Next time I do it (which is a lot of runs) (I know, I’m a monster) I’ll just be paranoid.

Miscellaneous Monday

I haven’t done a Misc. Monday in a while, and while each of these could indeed be their own entry, I just don’t want to write a bunch of blogs, so I’ll just consolidate them into this.

On Saturday, I finally had my half marathon. All week, I didn’t really feel like I had a race coming up. I don’t know what it is, but it just didn’t feel like I had anything coming up. So, come Friday night, we had our pre-race feast of pasta (chicken alfredo with some broccoli and red peppers for some color) and then I went to bed earlyish, since the race was at 8, in SoJo, and I wanted to be there at least 30 minutes early. I woke up Saturday, and off to pick up PJ. I was running late, and so I ran to the car with my stuff in hand, and off we went. (Husband drove us to the start line, because we weren’t allowed to leave a car there. Dumb.) It wasn’t until we were near her house, that I realized I didn’t grab my breakfast/pre-race banana. Oh the humanity! And of course, PJ didn’t have any bananas. We drove up, and got dropped off at the race start, and what should be there but a 7-11! I ran inside with the change I scrounged up, and took a look, and they had no bananas. The cashier asked what I was looking for, and I told him bananas. He said he had some that he didn’t want to put out, because they were getting ripe. Even though I HATE eating bananas that are too ripe, I was pretty desperate, so I bought one, and ate about half of it before I couldn’t take it anymore, and threw the rest away. Then, the race started. It was a little chilly before we started, then it was a pretty  warm race after that. We finished in 2:23:00, and a finisher’s medal was mine for the taking!

After the race, I walked through the corral for runners, I picked up the usual post-race far. A bottle of water, an apple, an ice cream sandwich, and a snowcone. Tiger’s Blood, my favorite flavor. It was a good race, I think I’ll do it again. After stretching for a while, I’m still sore, 2 days later. Worth it, though, for the medal.

I went to Lagoon this weekend. On Sunday. That’s right, everyone, I went to Lagoon on Sunday. Here’s my rationalization for it, and I’ll gladly explain why. I bought the tickets for Husband’s birthday 3 months ago. I’ve tried several times in those 3 months to go, and it just hasn’t worked out. So, now, this week is the final week of being able to go at all – it closes on Halloween for the season. So basically, it’s use or lose all that money, because they don’t do refunds – no exceptions. And we can’t go this upcoming weekend, because Husband is out of town. So it either had to be Sunday, or no day. So, off we went. We rode all the rides we wanted – Colossus, Wicked (SO AWESOME), The Bat (Yawn), Samurai, the white Roller Coaster (That’s seriously the name), Centennial Screamer, and one more that I can’t think of the name. Basically, all the roller coaster rides, and similar ones thereof. Then we  took a walk through Pioneer Village, and looked through the cool small buildings, played a Midway Game, and won a small polar bear stuffed animal (I would have included a pic, but I forgot until I was writing this, and then I didn’t want to get up. I’m sure at some point, I’ll include a pic somewhere). I call him Jaques le Bear. He has a French accent in my head, so I liked it. After spending a few hours there, we called it a day, because rain clouds were threatening, and I didn’t want to be caught in the rain. It was a fun trip, hopefully we can go next summer again, to enjoy it more, for longer.I wish I had some pics or something to include, but the problem with only being two people is that there’s only 2 people for to take, and I hate asking strangers if they’d take a pic, since it’s usually with my phone.

This morning, as I was eating breakfast, I broke a glass. I don’t even know how it happened, it just did. I was in bare feet and everything, so Husband threw me a pair of flip flops, and I cleaned everything up. Of course, this broken glass leaves me with 5 glasses instead of 6, so now I want to break another one to have an even number.

Independence Day 10k

Happy Independence Day, y’all! I celebrated this morning like I always do; I ran in the Provo City Freedom Run 10k. This is my third year running it, and for the previous 3 years, Stadium of Fire has been on a different day than the race. The race is always on the 4^th, no matter what, but as many of you probably know, the fireworks are somewhat decided by what day of the week the 4^th is, if it’s a Sunday/Monday, the fireworks are on Saturday, that sort of thing. So this being the first year I had to deal with both events, and it made me late for the race! Usually, I drive down University Pkwy (Yes, you’ll be getting great details, deal with it) and park on 9^th East, near the Creamery on BYU Campus. But today, they had closed down many of the roads leading to the race, so we had to crazy detour, and had to park pretty far away from the race, by some sort of building, I don’t actually know which one. Then we (PJ & I, in case I hadn’t specified) were hurrying our fastest to get to the start line. When we were a block or so away, we heard the countdown of the time, and then the gun went off, and before we knew it, the racers all started running past us, a few of them teasing us and telling us we were going the wrong way. We were one of the last people to cross the start line – by several minutes.

This race is always a favorite, because it’s so easy-going. The thing I both dislike and like about it is that you run the parade route; so basically, most of the race is done in front of the people waiting for the parade to start. It sucks running in front of all of these people, but at the same time, you do get a lot of high fives from a lot of strangers that are cheering you on. Plus, Provo city has a lot of music stations randomly placed throughout the race, so you get to have mini dance parties every like, quarter mile for a few miles, its fun. I made a friend on the sidelines who danced with me as I passed them.

The race ended, and they were handing out the water bottles and medals you get for finishing. The thing I HATE about the Provo race is that they don’t really give you any water. Usually, if they do, it’s in a tiny cup, and its hose water. I don’t mind hose water, necessarily, but for some reason, Provo’s hose water tastes gross gross gross. So this year, we had to use the new water bottles we were given to drink our water from. We had to stand in a long line to get our water, and then, they gave me exactly 5 pumps of water, which filled up about a quarter of my bottle. When I looked at the guy, all he said was “Sorry, we’re rationing.” Seriously? I just ran 6.2 miles in the July morning sun, and I get about 3 gulps of water? Awesome. Then I was like, I should put on my medal, it’s time to celebrate my run. I pulled the medal out of the wrapping and…it broke. The medal was broken! I went back to the medal hander-outers, and asked for a replacement. She informed me that they were out. GAH are you kidding me, Provo?! So at this point, I gave up, and we walked back to the car, to go get our own water.

So, all in all, it was a pretty good race. I enjoyed the run, naturally, but the after-events really made me hate it. I almost want to write a survey or something to send back to the race directors, so that my opinion is known, but I doubt they’d even care. I’ve included some pics we took of the race – the first is the ‘before’ picture, when we haven’t run, and we’re still good, and then, the after, back at my house, after we’re sad about the medal, the water, and the general tiredness of running. I can’t wait for next year now!