Category Archives: Running

Weekly Recap: July 17th-23rd, 2017

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Monday:

  • 1 mile run
  • 1 working in the garden

So I’ve been making a point to run a little later in the day a every once in a while. Just so it forces me to run when it’s hotter and the suns been out for the while, because that’s my least favorite weather in general, and that’s when I tend to not run very well. So basically I’m just trying to work on my weaknesses a little bit, and hopefully become a little more mentally and physically strong. Haha but let me tell you, it’s absolutely no fun! So far I’ve only been able to make it a mile running later in the day, but I’ve been running a mile and and then walking a mile back home, just so I’m out in the heat a little longer. I’m hoping working on running and being in the heat is going to make half marathon training during the summer months a little bit easier, but I guess we shall see!

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Tuesday:

  • 2.5 mile run
  • 2.5 hours working in the garden ( I got shit done on Tuesday!)
  • 20 minutes of stretching

Ugh it was so hot and humid, and my run sucked…But I got a shit ton done in the garden, so at least there’s that! 🙂

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Wednesday:

  •  1 easy mile

Luke had fallen at a softball game and hit his head pretty hard on the ground so he took the day off from work. Since he had hit his head I wanted to keep an eye on him and didn’t want to be gone running for too long. 😉 But it turns out he’s fine, so it’s all good!

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Thursday:

  • 20 minutes of yoga

So I woke up tired and sore everywhere. At first I thought it was because I had done so much work in the garden earlier in the week, but turns out I was actually coming down with the flu (or something similar to it) and I just didn’t realize it on Thursday.

Friday:

  • Rest Day

I was definitely too sick to do anything on Friday. I woke up tired, achy, had a headache, had a slight fever, no appetite, and just felt like crap in general. So I spent most of the day resting.

Saturday:

  • Rest Day

Still not well enough to do anything…but I did feel a little bit better! I wasn’t as achy and my fever had gone down a bit, so I think by Saturday I was on the mend. 🙂

Sunday:

  • Rest day

Hurray! Half marathon training officially starts today! And on a rest day too haha. I really enjoy that Garmin’s training plans tend to start on a rest day. That very much amuses me, and I guess it helps mentally prepare me for the next day when the actual half marathon training workouts start. 🙂 Plus since I’m still getting over whatever illness I had it probably best that I rest today (although I am feeling much better this morning!). 😄

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Thursday Things

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Oh man, things definitively took an interesting turn Tuesday/yesterday!

So Tuesday night, Luke subbed on his boss’s softball team. Something he was very happy to do, as he isn’t on his own softball team this year. But in the second inning of the first game (it was a double header) he was trying to slide home but he ended up falling and hitting his head off the ground pretty hard. He said right afterwards he had tunnel vision for a few minutes and was a little bit disoriented. So he told his boss that there was a good chance that he was either going to be late to work on Wednesday or just may not come in at all. And since his boss saw him fall and heard the sound his head made when it hit the ground, he said that was absolutely fine.

So yesterday Luke slept until about 8 am (about 2 hours later than he usually gets up), but when he woke up he was a little bit dizzy. So after a little bit of debate with me (he for real got dressed and ready to go into work) I convinced him to stay home, because I really thought he needed a little bit of rest. But of course Luke is stubborn and couldn’t actually sit at home and rest. We ended up taking Finn to one dog park by himself, then we ran home, grabbed Lily and Dean, and then took all three of them to a different dog park haha. Luckily after walking around a little bit, Luke said he felt a lot better so maybe a little bit of moving around was good for him. 😉

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Finn, Dean, and Lily. My babies are so pretty. 🙂

After our second dog park adventure, we stopped at a Sprout’s, which is about 5 minutes from the dog park (and this dog park is about 30 minutes from our house). Originally just to get lunch, but we also ended up getting walnuts (we haven’t been to a Sprout’s for a while and forgot how great buying stuff in bulk can be hahaha), and water and disposable cups so we could give the dogs water, who we had left in the car. Yes, we did indeed leave the dogs in the car on a hot summer day, but we were also parked in the shade, and left the car running with the air conditioner on full blast. We also didn’t have our spare key, so we had to leave the doors unlocked, but our dogs are all super protective/territorial so we really weren’t worried about it. They were cool, comfortable, would keep the car from being stolen, and we were only in the store for a few minutes anyway.

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Side note; I tried kombucha for the first time yesterday. Not bad!!

Well whenever we were walking back out to the car, some lady was looking into our car windows, looking all worried, so Luke told me to go run out there before she decided to break a window or call the police. Now, I totally understand why someone would be worried about dogs locked in a car on a hot day if the car wasn’t running. Hell, I’d probably be one of the first people to go help the dogs. But again, OUR CAR WAS RUNNING AND THE AC WAS ON!! Trust me, they were absolutely fine!! And I know for a fact Lily was growling at her from the driver’s seat, and I have a feeling Dean and Finn have been growling at her from the back seat. So I ran up to the car, opened the door and told them they were all being good puppies. The lady didn’t look too happy, but she walked back to her car. Good riddance to her. People are too nosy sometimes, and if she would have tried anything I feel like one of the dogs would have nipped at/bitten her. Oh well, it all ended well, so that’s all that matters. 🙂

Anyway, after all of that we went home, made some pickles, and then spent the rest of the day playing Story Of Seasons on our Nintendo 3DS’s. Good times! Plus I’m very glad that Luke spent several hours sitting and relaxing. 🙂

 

So that was all yesterday. Today kinda ended up being pretty boring though. 😉

I had intended to get up early and do a 5 mile run, but oh man I just couldn’t. I woke up at 5 and I was just so fucking tired (and after looking at my sleep chart thingy I can see why…). So I tried to go back to sleep (but I feel like I kept waking up a little bit), and eventually go up at 7:30. So there’s that, but I’m also crazy sore. Probably because of all of the work in the garden earlier this week. DOMS definitely caught up with me today haha. So today ended up being an impromptu rest day, but there was absolutely no way I running would have went well or have even been a good idea, so I’m not too worried about it. 🙂

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So I haven’t exactly done much today, but it was nice to take a little break. 🙂 And hopefully I’ll be able to run and have fun while doing it tomorrow morning. Anyway, today I cleaned up the house a little bit, did a some yoga, played some more Story Of Seasons, and that was pretty much it haha.

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Anyways that’s all I’ve got for today, I suppose. Happy Thursday!

~Ashley 

My Morning In Photos

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https://vid.me/zTFlp

(I wish Vidme was like YouTube in the way that when you add the link to a video in a post it would automatically embed the video into the post, but oh well)

But it you’re at all interested in my summer morning routine go check out my latest vlog! I shared my morning in photos today. 🙂

Actually Back To Scheduled Programming

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Welp, it’s my first full week home back from Florida, so now I’m going to be posting the usual weekly recap, what I ate Wednesday, Friday fives, etc. posts, since I didn’t do any of that last week, or the week before. 😉 Plus I kinda like to keep things on a scheduled and it’s kinda been driving me crazy that I haven’t been doing that lately.

Anyways, happy Monday! I hope you have a good day and a great new week!! I’m definitely doing to be trying to make this week a good one! Half marathon training round 3 officially starts this Sunday and I’m a little nervous because I currently feel very unprepared but I’m also very excited!

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At this point I haven’t officially registered for what will be my third half marathon, but hopefully I’ll be able to do that very soon. But the goal is to run the Longview Half marathon again! Haha I know at this point in my running career that this is the only half that I’ve done, and eventually I’m going to broaden my horizons and run a different half, but for now I’m sticking with this one. Mostly because so far, I’ve run every Longview Half except for the very first one, and years and years from now I still want to be able to say that. 😉 But eventually I’m definitely going to start running more than one half marathon a year, but this is just not that year.

I’m thinking maybe next year I want to do the Running With The Cows half. I did the 5k last year and it was a lot of fun! It was a beautiful course, there were in fact cows, and there was a HUUUGE feast at the end of the race. But since I only did the 5k last year, I only had a bagel, banana, and chocolate milk, because after only 3.1 miles I didn’t feel like it would be right to eat any of the other goodness that they had there. Especially since it was probably around 9 in the morning at that point. Haha but I could totally justify partaking in the post race feast if I  were to run the half. 😉

 

 

But enough about future/past races. Lets talk about some current running stuff!

So, I ran one whole mile today! Yay! Haha but I’m currently doing this thing where I intentionally go out a little later in the day than I normally would, just so it’s a little hotter out and the sun is shining on me. And so far I can only make it a mile without feeling like I’m absolutely going to die under those conditions, but I feel like intentionally getting out in the conditions that are hard for me is going to make me more mentally (and maybe even physically) tough, and I’m hoping it helps me adjust to training in the heat a little better. Haha it still really sucks though. I’m so ready for fall to get here. 😉

 

 

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All summer long I’m just a sweaty, gross, unhappy mess.

But I’ve been getting it done! Like I said, whenever I purposely go out later I’ve only been getting a mile of running done (I’ve been making a point to run a mile out and then walk a mile home), so that’s what I did today. I got out the door at 9 am when it was about 82 degrees, 70% humidity, and sunny without a cloud in the sky. So basically my least favorite conditions ever! Haha but at least today the humidity wasn’t all that bad. That was my one happy thought throughout all 12 minutes and 17 seconds of my run. 🙂

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I’m so very excited about how awesome both of my new tattoos look! 

So yeah, I guess I’m trying to take my weaknesses and use them to make me better. Haha it’s not fun though…Especially since I’ve pretty much got a routine down where I run, walk the dogs, and then work in the garden, so when I run later in the morning sometimes the dogs don’t get walked (I don’t like walking them on the asphalt if it’s super hot and the suns been out for a while), and that means I have to be in the garden when it’s hotter and sunnier. That’s no fun. But the garden is definitely recovering from the 10 day’s it didn’t get cared for while we were in Florida! I’ve got two new watermelons growing out there, more cucumbers than I know what to do with, and a shit ton of green tomatoes, and a few tomatoes that are just starting to turn red/yellow. I’m very happy about all of that, but I am still mourning the loss of my zucchini plant…

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But anyway, I do feel like I’ve gotten a little bit accomplished this morning so now I need to sit down in the air conditioning, drink something with electrolytes in in (I’m a super salty sweater), and recover from being in the heat. It’s kinda sad, but the heat really does take a lot out of me and it takes me a while to recover haha.

Anyway, I hope you have a great week!

~Ashley 🙂

July 15th, 2017

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So yesterday when Luke came home from work he surprised me with a new pair of Nike Pegasus 34’s for an anniversary gift! Haha that jerk does this to me all the time! He acts like these things are no big deal and that he doesn’t plan on doing anything for them (which is fine by me, I’m not big on celebrating this kinda things anyway.), but then he always does something like this haha. He said he also wanted to go out to dinner, but he got home later than he would have liked and that probably wouldn’t have worked out well. But now he’s promising to take me out on Monday. I told him I didn’t care either way, but whatever. 😉 Seriously though, he’s the best!! 🙂 🙂 🙂

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Ok but for real though, I’m super excited to add a third pair of running shoes into my rotation. Although I have a feeling it’s going to drop back down to two before too long. I have a feeling on of the pairs of my Nike Free’s is nearing the end of their running life. But anyway, about 2 years ago I had a pair of Pegasus 30’s and I absolutely adored them! But once I retired them I never ended up with another pair of the Pegasus. Mostly because from what I understand, Nike likes to stop the production of certain models of shoes for a few years or something like that. I guess that helps bump up their sales once they resume production and sales of those models of shoes. But also because it seems to be hard to find shoes in my size. I wear a size 9 for regular everyday shoes, and a size 10 for my running shoes, but I swear every time I go to a sporting goods store they only have 7’s and 8’s. Which is weird. At least I think it is…I thought 9’s and 10’s were pretty common sizes for women, but whatever. Haha Luke said he had to go to several different stores yesterday to find my size, but he knew how badly I wanted another pair of Pegasus so he hunted them down for me. Like I said, he’s the best!

So I didn’t plan on doubling yesterday, but obviously I needed to take my new shoes out for a spin! So I did! 🙂 They felt just as good on my feet as my last pair of Pegasus did. Obviously they are a little bit bigger and heavier than the Nike Free’s that I usually wear, but I think it’s good for me to add a different model of shoes into my rotation. That’s supposed to be good for working the muscles and ligaments in your ankles and feet a little bit differently and that’s definitely a good thing. 🙂

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So aside from my new shoes being awesome, this run kinda sucked. It was crazy hot/humid (which is my absolute least favorite) and for whatever reason Strava decided not to record my run. Ugh, that was kinda frustrating…I miss my Garmin…But oh well, at least the sunset/clouds/sky was pretty.

 

 

Anyways, I stayed up a little later than usual last night (I went to bed around 12:30 am, instead of my usual 10:30-11 pm), with the intention of sleeping in just a little bit this morning. Finn didn’t exactly let that happen though. He woke me up at 5 am because he needed to go outside. Then he woke me up again around 5:45 because he needed back in. Then around 6:30 my neighbor let his dog out and he was barking, so Finn started barking, so I let him back out, but about half an hour later he needed back in. So at that point I gave up and just got up, even though I really wanted to sleep for another hour, but at that point it just wasn’t going to happen…

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So I got up, had my coffee, and then spent a lot of time procrastinating getting a run in. Not gonna lie, right now I’m kinda liking the idea of doing a run streak and so far I’ve run for 3 day’s straight. Haha I know that’s not much, but you gotta start somewhere, right? Well at this point I’m not really going to call it a streak just yet, but at this point that is the goal, so to keep that going I needed to run at least a mile today. But I really, really wasn’t feeling the whole running thing this morning. But that was definitely more of a mental thing than a physical one.

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Literally me this morning…

But luckily for my little, baby “streak”, I finally got off my ass and got a mile done. Haha obviously it’s not much, but now I’m just that much closer to actually being able to call this thing a streak. 🙂

Anyway, I think they whole mental block with running is because of anxiety. I keep thinking I’m having breathing/asthma problems, but I’m like 90% sure it’s just my anxiety acting up. Especially since it’s been pretty bad lately… I don’t think I’ve really talked much about my anxiety issues on here. Maybe eventually I’ll do into detail about it, but I had to go through a whole thing with a cardiologist a few years ago (because my GP had heard a murmur in my heart at one point), but long story short, turns out it was all just anxiety and my heart is fine. And I mean, I pretty much already knew I had some kind of anxiety disorder. They tend to run in my family actually, and my grandma, mom, both of my sisters, and a few of my cousins all have it in some way shape or form. But I guess it’s nice to actually have a doctor tell you that’s what it is, and that you’re not dying or crazy or whatever.

Honestly I probably need medicated, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon. I hate going to the doctor, I hate hospitals, doctors offices, dentists, and all that stuff (probably because of the anxiety haha). Seriously, every time I go to any kind of doctor’s office my blood pressure tends to be a bit high. Isn’t anxiety great?! (That’s super duper sarcasm by the way 😉 ). I also probably need to back off on the caffeine, but that’s also not going to happen anytime soon. 😉 Luckily staying active in general, but especially running and yoga seem to help. 🙂

Anyway, I suppose that’s all I have for today.

I hope you have a great rest of the weekend!

~Ashley

July 13th, 2017

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So last night I totally forgot to set my alarm for 5 am and I accidentally slept until 6. Oops… Haha but other than that I think I’m definitely getting back into my usual summer routine without too many issues. This morning I quickly downed a cup of coffee, ran a mile, and then did some more work in the garden. So pretty typical, I was just up an hour later than I would have liked to be.

Anyway, we got some rain earlier in the morning, so it was hot/humid/muggy/gross outside. And by now you probably know how big of a wimp I am when it comes to hot/humid weather, so it may not surprise you to know that I only had a mile in me this morning. After that there was just no way I was going to go any farther. I was hot, sweaty, tired, and completely drained. Unfortunately hot weather tends to have that effect on me. But I’m really going to have to get over that and really get my ass into gear, because half marathon training starts on the 23rd and I’m feeling very unprepared at the moment. I’m still kinda excited though. I always do better with running when I have a scheduled to stick to.

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But anyway, I’m just glad I got out there and did something today. Even if it was just one measly mile. And it wasn’t even that slow of a mile. Well obviously it was slow, I’m a slow person, but it wasn’t the slowest mile I’ve ever done and all things considered I’m pretty happy with how it went. 🙂 Oh and I’m on Strava now! Probably until I can replace the Garmin I broke, but I may end up continuing to use it even after I have a GPS watch again, so feel free to add me on there!

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After my short little run, I got straight to work on my garden, which is looking sooooo much better today!! All of my plants are less wilted and I’ve taken care of most of the super tall grass that’s in there. Like I said yesterday, the battery on my weed eater isn’t very good so I can go for very long, but I’m definitely making progress! Haha but yeah, pretty much all I did in the garden today was weed eat. Since it rained this morning I didn’t have to water the plants, but I may have to later this afternoon.

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Here’s the difference between the grass I have cut and the grass I haven’t gotten around to cutting yet. Oh and Lily and Finn. 😉 It seems like border collies are just always poping up at random places in my garden, but I guess that’ll happen when you have three of them. 😉 It’s pretty great. 🙂 

In the photo above, Finn is sitting next to my cucumber plant. I had done a bunch of weeding around it (yeah, hard to believe, right 😉 ) on Tuesday and then after that it was looking kinda sad, wilted, and I was afraid I might have damaged it so much that it was going to die, but it seems to be doing just fine! I’m just going to have to pace myself when it comes to getting rid of the grass all around it and probably the watermelon too.

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My three helpers. 😉 Haha this fence doesn’t do a very good job of keeping them out of the garden. They all hop over it likes it’s nothing. Oh well, they’re actually all pretty good at not trampling my plants and that’s all I care about. 

So yeah, that pretty much covers what I did from 6 am-about 9:30 am haha. After that I showered, ate a little snack, and now here we are. 🙂 I’m not entirly sure what I’m going to do with the rest of my day at this point. I guess what I really need to do is mop my floors since the dogs and I got them nice and muddy this morning, but it’s supposed to rain again tomorrow so that almost seems pointless. Ah the joys of having dogs… Seriously though, I wouldn’t trade any one of them for all of the money in the world. They are the best. 🙂

I hope this summer is going good for you, because so far it’s kicking my ass haha! But summer miles bring fall smiles, and I’m just going to keep telling myself that until it gets cold again. 😉 Wishing you lots of healthy, happy summer miles.

~Ashley

July 12th, 2017

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I’m trying to get back into my usual summer routine, but that’s kinda hard to do after vacation. Especially since I wasn’t exactly into my summer routine before we left haha. Oh  well, It was a little rough getting up at 5 am and then getting stuff done, but I managed. 🙂

So I began my morning with a run, of course! It was a super short, super slow 2 miles, but still better than nothing. 😉 I kinda wanted to go farther than that, but we’re still under a heat adviory here in Kansas, so I needed to get all three dogs walked before it started to get too hot outside. But this was the first time I’ve run since July 3rd, so I’m just happy that I did something. Even if it was short and slow.

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After my run I got to work walking the dogs. I would probably save myself a lot of time and effort if I would walk at least 2 of them at the same time (there’s absolute no way I’d be able to walk all 3 at the same time haha), but I prefer to walk them by themselves because it gives me a chance to spend a little one on one time with each of them and that’s definitely good for them. Plus whenever I try walking 2 of them at a time, no matter what combination, they gang up on me and end up dragging me down the street haha. That usually doesn’t happen whenever I take them one at a time. So I walked Lily, then Finn, and last but not least Dean. So they all got out and got a little bit of exercise before it got too hot and I think they’re all happy about that. I don’t think they got walked at all while Luke and I were in Florida and that tends to make them go a little crazy.

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Dean and Finn were very happy to see Lily and I after we got done with our walk (probably because they knew it would be their turn soon).

After the dogs were taken care of I got to work on the garden. I had done some weeding yesterday, but I’ve still got sooo much to do…Luckily I got my weed eater working today so that made my life a little bit easier. 🙂 But first I had to water everything. Luckily my plants are all starting to perk up a little bit after I watered them yesterday and this morning, so I’m thinking the plants that are left are going to be just fine. 🙂 After that I did a bit of hoeing, weed pulling, and then I basically mowed around my tomato plants with the weed eater. I didn’t quite finish weed eating the whole garden plot though. I guess the battery that’s on the weed eater isn’t the best, so it dies pretty quickly. I had time to let it charge a little and then continue on once, but after that it was just starting to get too hot for me to stay outside much longer, so after it died a second time I decided to call it a day. I still feel like I got a pretty decent amount of work done and hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to get even more accomplished. 🙂

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My tomato plants (left) are huge and looking good! My banana pepper plants (right) are super small, but they’re growing decent sized peppers so I guess it’s all good. 🙂


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Finn is terrified of the weed eater, but every time I turned it off he had to come make sure I was alright haha. 

So yeah, I got a run done, the dogs walked, and the garden tended to. I’ve showered, cleaned both of my new tattoos (which are itchy, but healing nicely), eaten breakfast twice (before and after my run/gardening adventures 😉 ), and wrote this blog post. Now I need to clean the rabbit cage, probably record a vlog since it’s been a while since I’ve done that, and then after that I’m thinking a nap is going to be necessary! But so far I’m having a very productive day and I’m very happy about that!

The itching/peeling phase is seriously the worst part about getting a new tattoo.


Have a wonderful Wednesday!

~Ashley