Just Plodding Along

When you friends ask you to be on their Ragnar Angel Fire Trail Relay team you say heck yes. And then you grab your running buddy and make her join as well and then force her to go on adventure time with you before hand.  We drove six hours up to Taos to check it out cause you know rich people ski there so it has to be cool. We were not super impressed by the actual town of Taos, not sure I would go back there but the natural area around Taos was amazing.   We found like a mini grand canyon or the Rio Grande Gorge which I had no idea existed until I googled things to see in the area. It was pretty incredible. Afterward we found the most photographed church in New Mexico and .....photographed it. Then we stuffed our faces and went to bed to get up to hike in the morning. The next day we headed to Williams Lake located at the ski area. After a bit of a treacherous gravel road drive we found the trail head and headed uphill ....in the altitude and qu...

 So apparently this is why  I feel like death when I try to run now after three weeks off. So unfair. Cardio is the hardest to build up and than poof just disappears pronto the minute you find yourself out with an injury ....or just lazy. LAME. But this week I did manage to get back to running pain free. Well to clarify. My foot feels fine- tendinitis appears to be pretty much gone. The rest of my body feels like death when trying to run.  This week in trying to avoid a sedentary disaster I got a couple runs in and hit the gym: Monday: Leg day= felt like puking. 25 minutes on the stair stepper. 1 mile test run to check out the foot with Max Tuesday: Back and arm day, 2 mile walk on the treadmill, 2 miles on the elliptical, 1 mile walk with Max and a 3 mile evening run/walk in 100 degrees. Weirdly that did not feel great. I am over summer. Wednesday: Chest and triceps, 1 mile walk on treadmill, 1 mile walk with Max Thursday: Leg day = felt like dying. 5 m...

Today I ran five miles. It was hot. It was humid. I was ridiculously sweaty. I felt like something was sitting on my chest the entire time. There was definite loud mouth breathing. My legs felt like 100 pounds each. I loved every disgustingly sweaty, hard minute of it. Yay for running!!! Now stay healed foot! I got some runnin to do!

I ran three miles yesterday. Okay I ran/walked three miles yesterday. It was hot. I am out of shape. Only been three weeks of no running but oh lordy that run was tougher than I expected. Like it totally sucked. But the good news is my foot no longer hurts and the insoles seem to be working so now the hard work of building back up before my fall marathons begin....... This should be interesting.

...well at least a whole new insole. These cute ladybug and flower insoles are supposed to get me back to running. (Yes I got to pick a design and yes this is the one I went with cause I am an adult and I can do what I want).I have spent the last few days trying to break them in. They are pretty stiff but my foot feels pretty good so hopefully these will do their magic. The insoles meant I got to go out with my training group Sunday morning. No running but I did get a five mile walk in. Not a bad way to start the morning. Got to see all my awesome runners out there killing it on their 10 mile training run.  I never really get tired of this view.  On Saturday night the hubs took me out for dinner and we headed to the Edge of Texas restaurant.....which is on the edge of Texas and in the middle of nowhere (aka the border between New Mexico and Texas). Yay for date night. On the drive back I think I also scouted a new route to run which will be a two state...

I love french bulldogs . This french bulldog and baby best friend combo is just too much Jenny Simpson is amazing and she is headed off to Beijing for the World Championships and New Balance has put together a series about her preparation. Short and totally inspiring. The first two episodes are out! Episode 1 Episode 2   This song. Over and over again while doing the dreaded no-impact cardio And this one This bucket list...kinda want to do them all 10 Races In or Near National Parks The fact that I get new orthotics today that will hopefully help with my posterior tibial tendon issue!

Random Rants: So there has been this news story everywhere. Woman run's marathon while free bleeding . Woman runs marathon without a tampon  to fight period shaming. I can not look at any sort of news feed without STILL seeing this story. Like it has been in the news cycle for two weeks. Why? I just don't get it. Apparently she got her period the day of the London marathon and bravely decided to run it anyway and then wanted to stand up for period shaming by bleeding all over herself during the run. News flash: like half the population has periods, is going to have a period at some point or at one time was getting periods. And that population has a sub population, i.e. females who run, run while on their periods. They run big races and small races and Olympic marathons and local 5ks and none of them made a fuss about it. They have also cycled, swam, flown fighter jets, climbed Mount Everest, made important scientific discoveries and in general went on with their day to ...

So last week I did some form of cross training all seven days. Can someone please put a gold star on a chart for me. I am not gonna lie, the entire time on an elliptical, stair machine or bike I am super But the fear of the three marathons I have registered for and the fact that I don't want to be left in the dust by the people I am training is the only thing keeping me from embracing a sedentary lifestyle. So onward with cross training I will go. The one good thing in all of this is that I have actually started to enjoy weight lifting. Even leg day which makes me very sad about two days after when I try to move. I am more willing to spend more time lifting and hopefully this will result in a more balanced and injury free running body. If it could also result in a six pack I am totally fine with that, I don't want to by pushy about it but I am just saying if it happened I would be okay with it. This week in cross training workouts: Monday- leg day, squats,...

I have a pretty kick ass job. While there is a bit of retail weirdness involved sometimes but for the most part the people I deal with on a regular basis are my kinda people...runners! The best thing about my job is being the run coach for the store. I basically have a giant group of people who are my running buddies.  Some of the best things about coaching: 1) Seeing people get more confident in their abilities over time 2) Getting to run with all types of people 3) Getting to run all over the El Paso area 4) Getting runners started with our couch to 5k programs 5) Having couch to 5k runners progress from run/walk to completing a 10k to training for a half marathon. It is pretty great to have people stick with me for multiple training programs. 6) Starting new running programs 7) Living vicariously through them while I am not running I realized last week how much I enjoy running with my training groups when I couldn't. I feel super frustrated when...

When the inevitable running blow out happens it is important for me to have something to fall back on (lets see there was the knee blow out, hip flexor strain, stress fracture, heart issue, tendinitis in various places, to name a few). Cross training helps keep my fitness level from falling to nothing, to get my daily dose of endorphins and because I want to keep stuffing my face like I am running 50 miles a week. Mostly the last one. This time around I decided to actually try to limit even the amount of walking I was doing to let me posterior tibial tendinitis heal as quickly as possible. So I have been hitting the weights hard. Actually it feels like the weights have been hitting me pretty hard. Everything is sore and this has been a reminder of why I find it hard to lift regularly while running a lot. Lifting weights makes it really hard to move the next day. But I am doing my best to stick with it in the hope that I will be able to power through my upcoming runs even though I...

Sooooooooooo Long time no blog.... I don't really have an excuse. I just didn't feel like it one day. And that one day turned into a week and that week somehow freakin turned in to a few months. Time really flies when you are not documenting your every move on your own website or the website you have 'borrowed' from blogspot. Thanks Google. Maybe it was the fact that I now talk about running all day everyday in real life between being the run coach for the local running store and a personal trainer I just didn't feel like talking about it on here. Or maybe I just burnt out on talking about myself....no probably not it. Or maybe I just got lazy....could be it. But then today I kinda missed it. So I decided to start blogging again. Because I realized that my blog, while housing numerous posts about me talking about nothing using super awful grammar, it also houses some pretty awesome memories of trips and races I have done. And in the span of not b...