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The Friday 5 – 9th Edition

/ Amy / 2 Comments

It’s Friday! Here are five things I’ve been thinking/doing:

1. It’s not very warm out yet, and I love it! Okay, I whined about it being cold and rainy on Wednesday, but once I got outside, I remembered that 48F is actually a pretty perfect running temperature. It didn’t take long for me to have some sense knocked in to me. I am now appreciating every sub 60F day, because I know I’ll long for them in a few months.

Good Weather

This is good. I don’t care if it’s almost June.

2. I’ve been doing short runs lately.  My legs are feeling much better now than at the beginning of the month, but I’m still keeping most of my runs fairly short (between 2 and 4 miles). Yesterday, I ran with Jeff for 25 minutes. It’s nice to get a run in and still have lots of free time. 

3. Yesterday’s post got a lot (for me) of responses. I liked reading all the how I started running stories people commented with! I’m glad I posted about how I started running; I always thought it was kind of boring (still do, actually), but it resulted in some fun comments, so it was a good choice!

4. I love to Juggle.  After mentioning joggling last week, I’ve been juggling more often. In fact, I decided last Friday to start a little knitting project. Over the course of a week, I have now knit 6 juggling balls. I love them! I still have no plans/desire to joggle, but I’ve started juggling on a regular basis.

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Aren’t they awesome? And they’re filled with beans!

5. I got my fitbit! It finally arrived, and works! Woohoo! Now I’m back to tracking my steps. I’m working my way up to 10,000 steps per day. I started with a goal of 1,000 steps in a day (easy), then I moved on to 2,000 steps for two days in a row; then 3,000 steps for 3 days in a row, etc. These early ones aren’t hard, but I like to have a system.  When I get up to 10,000 steps per day for a week straight, I’m giving myself a reward. 

Have a great weekend! 

Any interesting plans? How do you feel about cool temps when it should be warm? Do you juggle? Do you reward yourself for exercising?

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The Friday 5 – 8th Edition

/ Amy / 4 Comments

I hope you’re having a lovely Friday! Here are five things:

1. This weekend is Memorial Day weekend I have a plan to count all the flags I see on my run on Monday. Then (if I remember) I’ll do the same on July 4th and report back as to which is the flaggiest holiday.  I’ve been thinking about doing this for some time now.  2014-04-18 17.24.51 2. I’m going to try trail running this weekend. Or if it’s too hard, maybe it’ll be mostly a walk. I’m nervous about tripping, and also about bugs, ticks, poison ivy, etc. Why am I do this again? Nature, ick!

3. My fitbit is coming tomorrow! Remember on Tuesday when I complained that fitbit was out of stock in my color and I had to wait. I guess they were wrong because the very next day it shipped! According to tracking on the USPS site, it should get here on Saturday. Hooray!

4. I’d like to knit a blanket for our bed. I have to find a pattern I REALLY like though, because it turns out I will need an extremely large amount of yarn to do this. And, yarn is NOT cheap. 

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It took months to knit this baby blanket – about 1/9 the size I’d need for my bed. It may take a decade to knit something for my bed.

5. Have you ever seen a Joggler? I learned to juggle a long time before I was a runner, and was intrigued by joggling (running while juggling) as soon as I heard what it was. It’s never something I’ve wanted to do myself (cue visions of dropping a ball and breaking an ankle as I trip on it), but just thinking about it makes me smile. I saw a joggler once in a 5k and I was ecstatic… a real life joggler! The record for women’s 5k joggling (3 balls) is held by Trish Evans – 21:46. This is 4 minutes faster than my current 5k PR sans juggling.   

I hope you enjoy your long weekend, and if you decide to run on Monday, let me know how many flags you see! 

Running and things…

/ Amy / 8 Comments

I don’t want to write an organized blog post, so let’s just go with a list.  Nah, bullet points. –

* The Runner’s World Summer Run Streak is starting up next week. I still really want to do it even though I know it’s not a good idea.  This is how I will fix that: I will do a summer stretching streak…in lieu of running at least 1 mile every day from memorial day until July 4th, I will stretch every one of those days. Huzzah! I’ve solved it. Stay tuned for my progress…also, feel free to check up on me, stretching everyday is not as easy for me as running every day.

* Talking about a stretching streak has made me want to do other types of streaks too. Like a cleaning/decluttering streak, and a knitting streak, a blog streak, and a board game streak. I tend to go overboard.

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I knocked off the Runner’s World image with my crazy awesome paint skillz

* My sister had a BABY yesterday.  A little girl. I’m so excited to see them all in a couple weeks when I make the trip back to my hometown. Do you know what this means? Another potential family member to run turkey trots with (I know, I’m getting ahead of myself). What age is appropriate to buy a baby her first pair of running shoes? It’s older than two weeks, isn’t it?

* I haven’t run since last Thursday. It feels like FOREVER. Isn’t that funny? I mean it’s only been 5 days, but it still feels like a very long time.

* I “have” a fitbit flex. I mentioned it’s brokenness in another post a while ago. I downloaded a software update and it went bonkers. I contacted support and found out they couldn’t fix it. They had FedEx send me a shipping label. Eventually, after me asking multiple times, they explained that I should send parts of it back. Eventually, I did that. It was a ground label and took an entire week to get there. Finally yesterday (it’s been over a month since this started – thanks to their and my slowness), I got word that they will ship me a new one. Hurray! But wait, the color I currently have is out of stock. So, I get to wait until they get them in. Then I can wait another 5 to 9 days for it to get to me. I contacted them to see if I could get another color, but no response.  The color doesn’t matter. I didn’t have to send the strap back to them, I already HAVE the strap in the color that I’m waiting for them to get so they can send it.  Come on FITBIT! Don’t you know I have a problem with lack of patience?

* I want/need to run a five mile race. I haven’t run one in a long time. And I know I could PR easily.

* I save all of my race bibs. I didn’t do this on purpose from the start; one day I noticed that I had saved all my bibs, so I started doing it on purpose. Last Christmas my sister gave me a BibFolio to hold all my race bibs. I decided to use it for bibs from my PR races (I already have a binder full of bibs, and the BibFolio is not big enough to hold all the bibs I anticipate accumulating over my life time). I like it a lot.

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Bib’s on disply

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My 6.66 mile race PR. The Devil’s Chase is such a fun race. 🙂

 

* It turns out I didn’t actually save EVERY bib, and I’m missing the bib from my current 5 mile PR. So, now the BibFolio is missing a distance. See, I need to find a five mile race and set a PR. Until I do, my poor BibFolio will feel incomplete.

* I made a board game once, and it was really fun. For a few years, on and off, I’ve wanted to make another board game – a Harry Potter themed one. I’ve started working on the game, but haven’t really followed through. I recently got the idea to make some kind of running board game. But first, I must dust off and finish the Harry Potter one.

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Pieces of my HP board game board. Yes, this is a very involved board game. #GoBigOrGoHome #YOLO #BestBoardGameEver #HP4LIFE

* I’ve been taking Epsom salt baths. Well, I’ve taken 3 over the course of 4 or 5 weeks. I’m not sure exactly if they’re helping with leg soreness or whatever else they do, but it is relaxing. So, I’m going to keep it up. It’s certainly more enjoyable than an ice bath, that’s for sure!

Well, I’ve reached the end of my bullet points, thanks for hanging in there. Until next time…