North Carolina Day 4

Tuesday morning we woke up to a beautiful morning and the water was all dried up. You would never have known what a big storm we had the night before! This is our view from the deck of our rental house. Pretty nice.

We went to a nearby shopping center with my Grandma and had a fancy lunch at Rucker Johns. Here are the girls with the cool fountain outside.

Ethan is always happy to get to eat crab!

 I love my grandma! You can see George and Grandma with me and Ethan in the mirror.

Elle and Katie

Georgie's very nice kids meal: fried shrimp with mac and cheese. Yum!

I also got shrimp and noodles. It was all really good.

We spent the rest of the day at the beach. I didn't take any pictures this time since we got so many the day before!

North Carolina Day 3 - The Beach

We pretty much spent the whole day at the beach on Monday and it was so much fun! I loved that the 3 older kids are big enough to go play in the waves with us now! That was awesome!! It was also really nice to have 5 adults there to keep an eye on the 4 kids.

George wouldn't even touch the water on Sunday, so it was really fun to see him get in and play this time.

 There was even this kind of tide pool that was perfect for him to play in.

I think we had the best waves of the whole trip this day, probably because of the storm that was brewing!

The storm also made for a really cool walk on the beach that evening just as the sun was setting.

That night, we were hanging out, watching movies when the rain and lightening started. It was just relentless! The lightning would just keep flashing, and the rain just kept falling. Soon, our street had turned into a little river. It was pretty cool!

North Carolina Days 1 & 2 - Traveling

We had really been looking forward to visiting North Carolina again since our last visit, 2 years ago, and the time had finally come! Here are my posts from that trip:

Tapering LIKE A BOSS
Making Ourselves at Home - Atlantic Beach, NC
Pirates and Sharks - Atlantic Beach, NC
Shelling at Shacklford Banks Island, NC
Fort Macon & Our Last Day at Atlantic Beach, NC

This year we added Katie's new husband, Brandon, and my Dad to the crew! We had a really nice trip down there. First of all, we didn't leave until Saturday evening so we had all day to finish up packing and get the house clean, and even take Mindy to the instacare for an earache. Luckily it wasn't an infection, but that made for a really miserable landing in NC for her. :(

We got a direct flight from Salt Lake City to Raleigh which was only about 4 hours long, and Pete had the brilliant idea to bring George's car seat on the plane. That was so nice because he's used to sitting in that and he knows he can't get out so we didn't have to chase him around or anything on the plane. It was great!

We did chase a beautiful sunset into Raleigh!

After we landed, George had a blast running fast on the moving sidewalks at the airport! He had stayed awake the whole flight and was nice and tired for when we got ot our hotel which was close by.

 In the morning, we had a fun breakfast at the hotel, then played in the pool.

We rented a SWEET minivan that everyone loved.

And took a 3 hour road trip, through the walls of trees, to the beach!

We stopped at one of the many BoJangles we saw on the way, and I think it was the one we stopped at last time too! They have amazing fried chicken and biscuits. Mmm.

Once we got to Morehead City, our first stop was to visit Grandma an Grandpa!

Then we moved on to meet Katie and Brandon at the house rented for the week. We pretty much droppsed all our stuff off, put our swim suits on and headed to the beach. We didn't have too much time to play because we needed to get back and figure out something for dinner. We went to this drive-up place that had pretty much all the fried sea food and burgers you could want and brought that back to the house to eat. We got some really good hushpuppies and I had a yummy crab cake burger. Then it was time to rest and let the relaxation begin.

Colleen's Injury Blog

I haven't written for a while because I've been really busy with an awesome trip to North Carolina (which I will post about soon!) and school starting back up last week. I've also been injured so I've been kind of frustrated/depressed/bored and didn't have much to write about. I almost feel like I should change the name of my blog since I've had to talk about so many injuries lately! Here is the tale of my latest one:

My last post was the 9k trail race, and at the beginning of that I noticed my right shin was hurting a little, but it wasn't bad - not nearly bad enough to keep me from running. My leg was pretty sore the next day, but I didn't really think it was anything serious so I went ahead and stuck to my training plan which had me run 10 miles that Monday - 2 days after the race. Well, my shin hurt for that whole run and it was pretty painful by the end. I still wasn't too worried about it. I iced it a lot, wore compression sock and rolled it out. I also swam a lot that week which made it feel a lot better!

oh the pain!!

But it was still hurting as the weekend approached so I decided to postpone the 20 mile run I had planned for Saturday. We were leaving that day for North Carolina anyway, and I figured it would be nicer not to be sore walking around the airport and on the plane.

I brought my ice pack and compression socks with me and used them every night for the first half of the trip, and my leg was just continually sore, even just to walk around on it, so I decided not to run at all on the trip. I tried to take it really easy and didn't walk too much in the first few days, and even turned down climbing to the top of the light house we visited. If you know me, you know how much of a let down that was.

But the beach we went to was beautiful and I really enjoyed just walking on the beach and playing in the ocean. I let myself be content with just sitting there ejoying the view:

On our last morning there, I went down to the beach and walked 3 miles. I really just didn't want to leave, it was so nice out there! On my way back, the wind was kind of pushing me and the sand felt so soft and welcoming so I did run a little tiny bit on the beach. And that felt good. My shin felt a little achy that night after all the traveling home. The next morning we were home and it felt so nice and cool outside! My led felt good so I put my new running shoes on and decided to give it a try. I seriously walked to the end of the block, then ran across the street and said, "nope," because it hurt immediately when I started running so I just went home and called my sports medicine doctor. I couldn't get in to see him for 2 weeks, though...

I rode my bike with Pete to work a couple times, did some Nike Training Club workouts, and went on a fun hike for my birthday that Saturday.

The next Monday, which was Labor Day, my leg was feeling really good so I ran, with George in the stroller and Elle on her bike, one mile to the park where I did Nike Training Club and hung out while they played, then ran home, and my leg didn't hurt! YAY! It was a little achy that night, but felt better on Tuesday which was the first day of school for my kids!

Obligatory first day of school picture at our awesome new school:

Tuesday I swam which, as always, is awesome.

George started preschool on Wednesday, and my leg was feeling good so I decided to try to run 4 or 5 miles. Maybe that was too ambitious, I don't know. I started out and I just wanted to cry it felt so good to be running again! It was a wonderful first mile, but by the time I hit the second mile my leg was feeling quite weird. It didn't really hurt, but it was more like a lot of pressure. It felt like my leg bone was being squeezed. Weird, right? So I decided to just take the shorter way home and walk it. I was pretty disappointed and glad I had my doctor appointment scheduled for Friday.

I swam again on Thursday (and I think I did 1000 yards in 17:22 which was amazing, unless I counted wrong...), and rode my bike Friday. My leg was feeling good when I went in for my doctor appointment, and I related all of the above information to my very wise and kind doctor and got some x-rays.

It turns out that I have a stress fracture.

Or had.

It is almost better and my doctor is very optimistic that I will be able to do the St. George Marathon in a month! Luckily I had gotten my mileage up pretty high before I had to stop running. But he only wanted me to run 6 easy miles this Saturday to see how that felt, and not do the half marathon I'd been planning all summer with my friends. I kind of suspected I wouldn't be able to do it, but I had been more hopeful this week so I was still bummed. The crazy thing is that only 3, out of the 9 of us who originally set out to do this half marathon, made it to the start line. Our poor running group was just racked with stress fractures and other injuries and illnesses. Such a bummer. I'm so proud of the 3 who made it, though!

The good news is that I ran the prescribed 6 miles yesterday and it was really good! My leg felt a little achy for most of the run, but the doctor said that was ok, as long as it didn't get worse. It was still achy that night, but I iced it and today it feels just great. I am even able to hop up and down on it and it doesn't hurt so that's a really good sign! I will relay this info to my doctor tomorrow and get further instructions for the next few weeks to get to the marathon.

I'm excited that it seems like it's going to work out! He explained to me that every time you run, your bones get broken down a little, and so does your muscle, but it takes longer for your bones to rebuild themselves so that's why it's dangerous to do a long hard run 2 days after a long hard run. This is what we think happened to me... I did 18 miles which weakened my bone, then the next week I did a 9+ mile race which weakened it even more, followed by a hard 10 mile run 2 days later before it had time to heal. This constant not letting your bones heal business is what causes stress fractures. At least this kind. Also, the doctor told me that there's not anything wrong with me (other than this injury of course), that my bones look really good and to not write running off because of this. Whew!

So, maybe I won't change the name of my blog after all. :)

(Stay tuned for more beach pictures!!)

Park City Trail Series 15k Race Report

On Tuesday I got back to running! 

I ran 9 miles and felt so great! What a relief! 

I was also reminded that 9 miles is my favorite distance! 

Then I saw a tweet about this 15k (which is 9.3 miles!) trail race that was happening this weekend. I immediately wanted to do it since my training plan said to do a 10k or half marathon, and I had written in "trails" so this was kind of a mixture of those. But would that be too crazy?! I waited a few days to see if anyone wanted to do it with me. My awesome friend, Shannon, also immediately wanted to do it as soon as she heard about it! So, by Friday we were all signed up, hydrating and carb loading!

Saturday morning, I met Shannon and we carpooled up to Park City, which is about a half an hour away. We really didn't know what to expect, and I guess we were a bit excited so we ended up getting there an hour early. That was ok, though, it gave us a chance to go do a little reconnaissance on the trail, hang out and take some pictures. It was pretty beautiful out there! We ended up running about a mile and a half which got us nice and warmed up.

One of the sponsors was a bowling alley so this guy was there and we had to get a picture! :)

As we lined up at the start, these hot air balloons started rising above the hills. It was really pretty, and it seemed like they were there just for us, to give us a good send off! We were able to see them for about the first half mile before the trail turned around the hill.

Lining up, just taking in this beautiful venue!

The course really was so beautiful and so fun! It was definitely challenging, with a lot of ups and downs, including one uphill stretch that lasted from about mile 4 to 5.5 or so. I did decide to stop and walk a few times on the steeper hills, but they were all short and it never felt too bad.  They also had 4 aid stations which I stopped at briefly for water. There was a volunteer there that I just knew from instagram so it was really cool to meet her in person and she was awesome to cheer me on when I saw her at the first and last aid stations.

I had told Shannon that I would probably come in at around 1:45 so she planned to come out and meet me at around that time, but by the time she headed out, I was on the home stretch! She took this picture of me, then ran with me the last little bit. I finished in 1:40 so that was pretty awesome to beat my estimated time. Shannon also beat her estimated time and came in at 1:12 and the FIRST FEMALE! I was so happy for her and proud of her, and it felt like I was walking around with a celebrity while we waited around for the awards and raffle.

Here's Shannon with the 2nd and 3rd place females. It was pretty exciting to actually have a reason to stick around for the awards ceremony. She won a pair of The North Face shoes so that was pretty awesome!

We met some cool people and hung out with them for a while. They asked Shannon if she was the fast Shannon they always see on Strava running around their neighborhood, but she wasn't so that was kind of funny! They also took this picture for us.

I ended up winning a pair of $60 sunglasses in the raffle which was awesome, and they gave away a ton of stuff so I think everyone who stuck around for the raffle got something. We all got pint glasses instead of t-shirts which I thought was pretty awesome because

Overall, it was just such a fun race with great support and fun people. We are planning on doing the whole series (5k, 10k, 15k & Half Marathon) next year! I'm so glad I have the fitness to be able to sign up for a race like this last minute, and I'm so glad I have such great friends who like to do spontaneous things like this with me!!

Mary Poppins!

Wednesday I got the chance to take Elle to see Mary Poppins at The Hale Center Theater and it was so, so good!

Mary Poppins was my favorite movie growing up, and the first movie we ever bought with our saved up pennies. My grandpa even worked on the sound for the movie! So when things started to happen in the play that didn't happen in the movie, I wasn't sure I would like it. It ended up being so amazing, though! Elle was on the edge of her seat the whole time and it was so great just to see the look on her face while she watched it. She was totally enthralled! And so was I. It was probably the best musical I've ever been to. I'm so sad we only had 2 tickets and that this run at HCT is almost over and all sold out because I want everyone to be able to see it.

The stage was amazing and made Elle open her mouth in suprize several times. Here's a few shots of it before it started.

Here's Elle at intermission with a cardboard cutout. This wasn't the acutal cast. :) She fits right in, doesn't she?

After the show, we waited in line so we could meet Mary Poppins and Bert. They did such a great job, I was so happy to shake their hands and tell them that. The guy who plays Burt even told Elle that she is beautiful.

Such a great, great show. If you ever get the chance to see this musical, you should go! The whole theme of the story was so good, it made me laugh and cry and the songs and dancing were amazing! There was a lot of femanist feel to it, but also just a lot of the feeling that no one is better than anyone else. I love that. One song that was added in had lyrics that said:

Anything can happen if you let it
If you reach for the stars
All you get are the stars
But we’ve found a whole new spin
If you reach for the heavens
You get the stars thrown in
Anything can happen if you let it
Life is out there waiting so go and get it

Mary Poppins flew by at the end and dropped millions of little paper stars so I let Elle go up to the stage and grab a handful to bring home and remember this fun night. She totally wants to be in a muscial now. She's such a little performer!

I even had a hard time sleeping after we got home because I just couldn't stop thinking about it. What a great night. I just can't praise it highly enough! :)

Hiking City Creek

Since my heel was hurting last week, I didn't run on Saturday, but went on a hike with Pete!

It was really hard, but also really nice. We went up City Creek Canyon and got some beautiful views!

Here's Pete coming up the steep hill we walked up.

We got to where we could see the whole valley!

 It was a lot of work, but totally worth it when we got there!

Pete insisted that we keep going, even after we hit the time we had decided to turn around. I'm glad we did because, with just a little farther, we were able to see the other side of the mountain! That's part of The Great Salt Lake down there. It was a beautiful morning and I loved spending it with Pete. I did end up letting the downhills take me away a little too much, and I ran on the parts that weren't too steep.

When we got home, I took the girls to ballet for their placement classes. Elle went first and we found out that she gets to move  up a level! When she was done, we picked up Ethan and George and hurried down to The Museum of Natural Curiosity at Thanksgiving Point to meet Pete's sister for a fun time there with her kids. It's a new museum and it was really cool! Pete and Mindy joined us later after Mindy finished her placement class, and she moved up a level too! Pretty exciting!

I didn't take many pictures because I was busy chasing George around, but there was a lot of fun stuff for kids to do including a little down, a water works room, and a big rope/slide/climbing playground. Here's one of our favorite exhibits. You could move the sand around to make different mountains and valleys and it would project a topography map onto it. It was pretty cool.

By the time we left, which was close to 8pm, my legs were feeling really sore and I was happy to just go home and go to bed! That hike ended up being a really good long run replacement! It had only been 6 miles, but with a total of about 1700 feet of elevation gain! Yikes! It took us 3 hours. Pete was a little bit annoyed because it was supposed to be a starter hike! Haha. Starter hike, shmarter hike!