recent happenings

Happy Wednesday folks!  Just popping in to keep ya'll up to speed on the goings-on in my life.  This past weekend was a fun one.  We got the chance to go back up north to stay with Nathan and Nichole for the weekend. Nathan was doing the Birkie Marathon and Jake was doing the Chequamegon 100 bike race, and they both happened to land on the same day, so it was a perfect opportunity to hang out, and cheer on the fellas.

is there a better view than this?!

  We got up there Friday evening and had a pasta dinner, figured out logistics for racing/spectating (which Nichole and I came to find out, isnt as easy as it looks :), then we all hit the hay since the boys had an early wakeup call.

Saturday both races started at 8am so the guys went to their respective starts, and Nichole and I made our way a little later to the half way mark of the marathon to had off new bottles and gels to Nate.  We got to our meeting spot with time to kill, so we sat in the car and chatted until it was time to go cheer on Nate, all we had to do was grab his bag of stuff from the car.....that I SWORE we packed.  Except, whoops, we couldnt find it.  It had dry shoes/socks in it, along with his extra bottles and gels.  We scrounged for anything we could and we ended up finding a gel in the car, and I had one randomly in my gym bag, and Nichole had an extra bottle that she brought for herself.  So it could have been worse, and luckily Nate didnt seem too mad :)  He looked great at the 13.1 mark, we handed off our random assortment of fuel to him, and he took off for the last half of the marathon.


Also, lets keep in mind that Nichole was dressed like this the whole time...

even a cow costume for their dog Mesa!

The cow suit is a running joke with their family for spectating/cheering on a race.  Jake and I are getting some for Chicago :)


We jumped back in the car, and made a plan to try and see him at another point.  Here's the thing, neither one of us claim to be great with directions or a map, so it was pretty amusing trying to find our way around.  After some time of driving, we decided to just head to the finish.

*note, we didnt really try to see Jake, since he was biking through the woods on trails, trying to find him was next to impossible, we were just hoping that by some dumb luck we would see him somehow

We got to the marathon finish and watched everyone come in.  Nate did a great job!  A regular road marathon is hard enough, but for these folks to do one on trails is awesome.  We hung around the finish tent for a bit so Nate could relax and eat, then we all made our way to the finish of Jakes race.  Since his was a 100k race (about 62 miles), we knew we would have some time to kill, and Nichole and I also needed to get a run in.  So we got the Jakes finish, and her and I took off.  We ran out and caught up with a gravel road and decided to just do an out and back.  Heres the thing, while trying to come back to running, I have been taking it easy, and turns out, I havent been running many hills.  I have been sticking with flat trails because it feels safe and I'm a giant baby.  So this run kind of kicked my butt in a bad way (I was super slow!)  Not a great feeling.  We turned around at about 3.85 miles and made our way back, and as luck would have it we ended up seeing Jake!  He was about a mile or so from finishing, and it was really fun to see him :).  We got back to the car, and Nichole took off for a few more miles to make it an even 10, but I was done.  I was a little disappointed I couldnt do the full 10 miles, and I know if I was on the road or my trusty flat trail then I could have, but this was a good kick in the pants to start running some dang hills!

We went back to the cabin, and hung out for the rest of the afternoon/evening.  Sunday I got up and ran again.  I knew I wanted to try 2 days in a row again, so I did an easy 4 miles that morning.  Surprisingly I felt a lot better than the day before.  My hip/knee felt fine, and it felt much "easier" than the day before.  This was a good sign and made me feel better about Saturdays run.  We hung around some more, and I was able to talk with Nichole about my future plans and where to go from here.  I will go into more detail in another post, but I'm excited to have some focus back and things to look forward too - it makes this "in-between" phase easier to deal with.

Jake and I took off a little after lunch time and got home at about 6pm.  Whenever I get the chance to talk with Nichole I always come back with a new sense of purpose and motivation, so I'm thankful we got the chance to figure some things out.  Wasnt that one of my resolutions to "Run with Purpose"??  I should re-visit those one of these days....

Oh, also, Nathan even convinced Jake to sign up for the Birkie Ski Race next February.  Yikes!  Looks like this winter will be a major training season for both of us!