What Have I Been Up To?

It's really weird to be done with my Ironman. 

I am kind of having a hard time not having anything to be training for. At least not anything that takes like 12-14 hours a week. I am training for an olympic distance tri in Burley, ID in about 3 weeks, but I haven't taken it too seriously yet. The swim will be down-stream and the bike and run are both really flat. Pete and I did this tri 2 years ago, and it was so much fun! The only draw-back was that Elle was still nursing, and we had left her with my dad 3 hours away. I was pretty uncomfortable by the end! This year we're leaving the kids with my dad again, but I won't have the same problem. I'm excited to see how fast I can do it too!

I haven't been training for an Ironman anymore, but here's what I've been doing:

Last Saturday:

I was itching to go running by Friday, and I even woke up without an alarm at 5:30 all excited to go. (yeah, it was a little weird) I got up, then decided that I wasn't actually feeling very well. I thought I might have been getting sick or something so I decided to go back to bed and take one more recovery day.

Well, I wasn't getting sick. I was fine. I was kind of sad that I didn't go because I didn't have another chance for the rest of the day.

Saturday we went up to Heber to hang out with my family because my sister had just gotten home from 6-months teaching English in China! It is so good to have her home!!

Her she is with our niece, Aria.

While we were up there, Pete and I headed up to Dutch Hollow to do a little trail running. 

We did a 1.8 mile loop, and it took us about 20 minutes. (Looking back, we should have warmed up a little on flat ground first.) Then I went again by myself and did it in 15 minutes. It was really fun. It's so much nicer running up in the mountains on trails where you feel more adventurous because you've got to be careful not to step anywhere funny and twist your ankle. Also, there are the animal sounds you hear as you pass the bushes, and you have to hope it's not going to be a moose or anything. The trees are great for running in the summer too. It was much cooler up there than it would have been out on the street somewhere.

Monday:

I spent the morning doing yard work. I weeded the garden and found about 50 snails that have been eating up my vegetables. I had the kids come get them, and they entertained themselves with the little "snail school" they started for quite a while. I got the lawn all mowed and they were all just happy to be playing with their snails. It was cute, they were telling them stories about snails and everything.

This is towards the beginning of the snail school, when there were only about 10 students.

We put the snails in a box with a plastic lid so they wouldn't get out and get back in the garden, and we put them in  a nice shady spot when we headed to the library. We ended up being gone for a couple hours. Sadly, by the time we got back, the sun had moved, putting the snails in full sunlight. Yep, they were all dead.

Luckily the kids weren't too heartbroken about it. It's sad, but I guess it helped take care of my snail problem. I'm sure I'll be able to find them more sometime. I couldn't believe how many there were!

 

Tuesday:

I think I went running on Tuesday? Yeah, that's what I did. . . Maybe for an hour? How can I be expected to remember back that far anyway?

Wednesday:

I woke up early and went for my favorite bike ride through the city, and up past the zoo. It was the perfect weather, and the perfect amount of traffic. It was so much fun coming back down, like usual. I got going 40 mph down that crazy hill where you can't see the bottom when you first go over. Even the car in front of me was pushing on its breaks, which, of course, made me more nervous, but we made it!

It took me an hour and a half, and I almost felt like it wasn't a real bike ride because it was so short, but it was fun.

Thursday:

I ran hills! Since I decided to enjoy sleeping in instead of going running before Pete went to work, I had to figure out how to do my workout with the kids. I took them to the Lindsey Gardens park which is up in the Avenues (in the middle of a big hill).

Here's the hill above the playground that I ran up. It looks like nothing in this picture.

When we first got there, we found a path that went into the trees so we went on a little "adventure" through there before we went to the playground. It was really fun, and Ethan was already begging to go "exploring" again by the time we left. We'll have to do it again sometime.

Here are Elle and Mindy in the "forest," Ethan had gone ahead scouting out the trails.

The playground at this park is awesome! It has one of those old merry-go-rounds that they've taken out of most of the parks these days. Probably because they're so dangerous. That's also probably why it was my favorite thing at the park when I was a kid.

You can't really tell in this picture, but the merry-go-round is actully moving, Elle's holding on for dear life, Ethan's crying because he just got hurt, and Mindy's trying to stop it so he can get off. (What a good mother I am that I just stand by and take pictures at moments like these.) Like I said, THE FUNNEST THING IN THE PLAYGROUND!

I got the kids playing and started running around the playground to warm up. Then I would run up the grassy hill above the playground which would shoot my heart-rate up into the 170s. Then I would run down and run around the playground a few more times until my heart-rate was back under 150, giving Elle a push in her swing every couple of laps. Then I would hit the hills again. 

Elle took these pictures for me. I think she did a pretty good job! This is the hill below the playground. I traded off doing both.

I kept doing this for half an hour. It was a pretty short workout, but it was hard in the heat and with the hills. Also, the kids were getting tired of waiting for me so I decided that was long enough.

Friday:

I kind of took Friday off, though I did take the kids to Target then to the swimming pool with my sister. That was a lot of fun. Then in the evening Pete and I hooked the bike trailers up to our cruisers (He just got a new city bike, it's sweet!) and rode to the gateway where the kids played in the fountain. Then we went to dinner before riding around for another half an hour. Elle was asleep by the time we got home. It was a really fun evening. We're planning on doing this more often. Who needs a car when you can do this? Plus, with a bike, you don't have to worry about parking. It's awesome.

Saturday:

The training plan that I'm going to start following is for a half marathon, and to figure out how fast to do all your workouts, you have to know how fast your 5k or 10k is. Since I haven't done just a run race for a while, I wanted to figure out how fast I could do a 10k so I mapped out my own little course, and did that.

For the first half, I kept my heart-rate at around 165 because I know I can keep it that high for at least a couple hours. I got the the turn-around spot in 29 minutes so I made it my goal to get back by 58:00 and I started pushing a little harder. My heart-rate was in the low 170s for most of the way back except when I got to the last block when I really sprinted, and it shot up to almost 180. It was so fun running that fast, though! I wish I could do that all the time! How would that be? Of course, my "fast" is probably like 8 minute miles or something.

I finished in 58:43 so I didn't quite make my goal, but at least it was under 59, and I'm pretty sure that's faster than the last 10k I did which was right around 1 hour. Of course, I don't know how accurate my little course was either. I just figured it out with google maps. I should go ride it and see what my bike computer says before I get too excited.

While I was running, songs kept coming on that I would think, "This seems fitting for the 4th of July!" I also felt like being out running was the perfect thing to be doing on this holiday. There were a lot more people out then usual, and I almost felt like I was running a real 10k with some of them even cheering me on.

We did fireworks with some friends in the evening and it was really fun, though it didn't help to get the kids back on a good sleep schedule. 

I'm so grateful to be living in this country, and for the freedom and safety we enjoy here. I'm grateful for our forefathers who sacrificed much so that we could have these freedoms. It is such a beautiful land with so much diversity and I just love it. God bless the USA!