100 days, 100 laps

 

We have 100 days until the Marathon!!!!  100!!!  That sounds like a lot, but really it's not!  Life is crazy busy for us right now.  Some of us just did Ragnar and some of us are getting ready for TZR.  Some of us even both...  crazies..  Work, kids, husbands, church callings, etc... etc..  we are feeling overwhelmed, but still felt it necessary to mark this day with something symbolic of our 100 days to the marathon.  So we ran 100 laps.  Not each of us, but collectively.  And I'm not going to tell you which track we used..  ha ha.  No but really, we shouldn't be killing ourselves, we have a relay in 2 days.  After that, we all say, we are really going to get serious about this marathon training thing!! 

 

 

The track we used was brilliant for this event.  Haha. Life has been a little crazier than normal. Two relays in a row really takes it out of you. So much planning and time has gone into this but I'm proud of us all for being so passionate even when we don't feel like it! My favorite is that we always would forget which lap we were on. Haha. We are awesome like that.

RUN, RIDE, EAT, DANCE, REPEAT

The slogan for RAGNAR is really Run, ride, Sleep, repeat. But I don’t really think sleep should be in there because so little of it happens. A lot more eating happens. Ya, so I switched it up. (Can I echo your A LOT more eating happens. I think I doubled my weight at this race alone!)

When MaryAnn ask me a long time ago if I wanted to be on her RAGNAR team I was so excited. Ragnar is like the mother of all relays. Ragnar metals are AWESOME and this was the one that started it all celebrating its 10th year.

Wasatch back was the first RAGNAR they did, (the creators are from Utah) They only had 22 teams the first year and this year there were 1500 teams.. Crazy huh?  More crazy is that there are that many crazy people. I really don’t get it even though I am one of those crazy people. Like it is miserable, and you are sleep deprived, and you are running in the dead heat, or the middle of the night, and you get blisters and sore muscles and ride in a van with a bunch of stinky people, and your stinky.. and you sleep in a gym with hundreds of other people or on a lawn, or where ever you can. You pay a lot of money to do it. but it’s awesome!! It’s one of those things you just can’t explain. Maybe teamwork, silliness, camaraderie, amazing accomplishment, Fun, dancing, singing, food, Laughing, Friendships…. are a few words I would use to help someone understand, but you just really can’t understand until you do it. And in the middle of it your like…. “What the Heck, this isn’t fun!” This is about 2am when I’m waking up from sleeping on the gym floor to go run in the cold dark night all alone. But at the end it’s awesome and you want to do it every year! It’s really an unexplainable thing… Like Ragnar makes you bi-polar!

Three Of us fishies were on our RAGNAR team.  It was a good time.  We had a fun team name;  MUGGLE POWER.  This name gave us Celebrity Status with all the Harry Potter Fans around.  We were ask many times to get our picture with people..  ha ha. 

Us same 3 are headed into another relay this weekend.  Completely crazy or hard core?  Not sure...  We just love to run..  or maybe we just love to hang-out with our friends and eat and dance around in the middle of the road.  ya, I think that's it!! (Becka you hit the nail on the head, we are crazy, but we love it!)


I loved Ragnar and the girls I ran with. We had so much fun. I love that we are all starting to get each other's personalities and just have fun. It cracked me up because Becka and I kept laughing about how we would tell people we were about to run from Logan to Park City and everyone was shocked. Haha. Neither of us had been to Logan and we didn't leave until around 3:00 PM the day before the race. Everyone kept saying "You do know Logan is on the other side of the state...right?" Yeah... we like to drive far away places to run. We kept laughing about how we spend time away from our families and a lot of money to go run and not sleep! We could be spending this money and hitting the malls or spas. Nope! Haha. Instead we like pure torture! It's the beauty of running I guess.

I was seriously amazed by how pretty Logan and the surrounding towns were. It was honestly so beautiful and such different scenery than I'm used to seeing in Utah. I loved each one of my runs and even had an I hate you moment in my first run. (You've always got to have an I hate you moment in running to make you realize how much you love it).

The most bizarre thing about the entire relay was falling asleep in a high school gym with about 6 people and waking up to the gym completely covered with sleeping bodies! Almost an eerie feeling! I was thinking about how trusting we are as runners. Would I just randomly sleep in a gym with that many people in any other conditions? Nope! But the running community is just something else.

So glad I was able to do this race. It was fun to meet new people and see new sites!

Run Richfield

This weekend, our son's had games in Richfield, so we got to experience running there.  It is really hard to get up early on these baseball trips when we've been up late at games, but we did it!!!  yay!  MaryAnn and Bryant were out of sight pretty early on.  We headed out on a great trail along a canal.  After we had gone 4 miles, we realized we should start heading the other way, so we took a side road of that path.  It was on this side road that a big black dog scared the bjeezies out of us.  Well, Ebbi screaming is what really scared us.  This dog followed us for probably 3 miles, along the highway, where I'm sure people were cursing us for just letting "our" dog just roam around in the middle of the road.  We yelled at it and tried to ditch it many times, but not until we got to the Cemetery did we finally succeed in losing him.  We all went in the gate and he followed us, then we went out and shut the gate.  Was that mean?  Probably, but he needed to go home and there were lots of ways out of there.  =)...  ok, we are mean.  =(  We set out to run 7 miles and ended up doing 8.5.  Our Friend April who ran with us was not very happy since she is not training for a marathon and really has no need to run 8.5 miles...  ha ha.  Her trophy, she said, would be a bottle of ibuprofen!!  MaryAnn and Bryant beat us back and they ran farther than us.  I hope they don't decide to give up on us one day!!  good times yo!  One more week down!  BAM!

We can't have a post without pictures!  This was a beautiful run.  I did go ahead of the girls because I needed to run an extra mile, or so I thought, they ended up doing just about as much as me!  My watch did die on the way back and I was ok with it.  I knew I would have  my 9 miles in by the time I got back and I just enjoyed the run.  Beautiful area!

(dead watch, but still a good run)

Running with the bears

For our first long run, some of us were up in Beaver for the Beaver Bash Baseball tournament.  We thought it would be really fun to run up Beaver canyon.  It is so beautiful.  It was a really nice, early run because one of our son's (I won't mention whose) had an 8 a.m. game.  We met at the base of the canyon at 6 am.  We ran up half of what our scheduled run for the day was and back down. 
Later when Ebbi told her brother-in-law, a local of Beaver where we ran, he told her there were bears up there.....  WHAT!!!  Mountain lions, Bears..  we like to run in the face of danger!  (more on the mountain lions, I'm sure, to come) 

Week one long run down....  16 to go!!!  17 if you count the actual marathon as a long run...  ha ha

I ran a couple of miles further then some, so I had to have a little quicker pace.  Plus I was trying out my new run, since I have fallen victim to having to have Physical Therapy on my leg.  My new run makes me have to concentrate more and running and talking with others probably would have caused me to run too casual and therefore run wrong!  Several people just camp off the road up this canyon.  It was a little scary to run past Ax Murders vans and not feel a little scared.  I guess you could say, my imagination gets the best of me most days.  Beautiful run, with some amazing, beautiful people.  Yep that would be my husband that jumped in on this run with us!  Although I have to say that most of that run was uphill, Ebbi told us it would be rolling hills! Next week we will have an adventure in Richfield.  Gotta love baseball tournaments.

Opening Ceremonies

One of our motto's is "Go big or go home".  So of course we had to start our marathon training off with an Opening Ceremonies.  This consisted of a sign we jumped over, a passing of the torch, a ceremonial lap and running through the sign.  There was a lot of symbolism involved..  ha ha.  So much that I can't even go into it here.   Of course we took pictures to show this awesome ceremonial start to our journey, but....  the fish with the camera set the camera wrong, and the pictures didn't turn out.  =(  This may or may not be a blessing in disguise because although we thought the ceremony was completely awesome, others might not feel the same.  So just picture in your head a totally cool, motivational music blasting (as opposed to being sung by the runners) event!!  That's how it went down.

And so begins our 18 weeks of training....  Here we go!!!!

I honestly LoVe this picture so much! I can not wait to look at it when we are done with this JoUrNeY and see just how far we have all come! I can honestly tell you at this very moment I am questioning my decision to run a marathon. I do not love running! Three miles is a task for me! I don't love my shoes and I haven't lost any weight thus far....I will tell you that I love when ever I see one of these girls because I know we all have something in common and we share the same fears and feelings as one another. I look forward to having our Closing Ceremonies and take a similar picture...."I cant wait to See How Far We've Come!" (Hey I knew I loved that song... might possibly be my new motto. Thanks Match Box Twenty!) 

 

 

I loved this! I love that we enlisted kids to hold a banner for us! And I more than anything love that we ran around with a tiki torch. This picture is so cute. It's almost like we have no idea what we are in for type of smiles! One of my favorite moments. The best part is that we had our kids hum that song. Duh.Duh Duh Duh. Duh Duh Duh.Duuuuuuuuh.

Tip for the day

Since shoes seem to be on all our minds I thought I would share a picture of my Big Foot- foot.  No really I just read in my running journal, there are tips along the side of every page, that you should take the insert out of your shoe stand on it, if any portion of your foot is hanging over you shoes are too small.  So there you have it!  I did go and run my 3 mile, that I was suppose to run yesterday, this morning. I was stiff and had low energy, I guess a lot of hiking will do that to a body.  I went too late, it was hot!  I need to get up earlier and run while the sun is still down mostly.  What am I gonna do when TOZ rolls around and it's hotter then HECK!?!!  

Day One

Well today's the day!! Day ONE, only 124 days to go!! I can not believe it! I did my first run this morning, it was good. I actually ran it a little faster than I normally do. I did stop and walk a few blocks with Lindsay's mom so that probably gave me some more energy to go faster haha... Anyway here we go now! SCREEEEAAAAM!!!!! 
(You go this Ebbi Rou)

I decided for my first training run I would run in 90 degree weather to prepare for TZR.....  WORST IDEA EVER.  I'm going to wait to run in the heat until I have my awesome team to mist me, dump water on me and fill my bra with ice (yes that's what it takes!!)  Then maybe I can handle the HOT run.  I got my weekly lists made on bright, fun paper, so I am totally ready to go.  The one good thing about how bad I was dying in the heat, I'm thinking I'll be able to get out of bed better to run if I just remember how misra it is in the heat!!!! (Morning runs here we come Becka!)

Day one for me... well I was hiking myself out of a little slice of paradise.  I spent the weekend at Havasupi.  One of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.  It was ten miles in and ten miles out, of pretty extreme hiking.  I loved every min of it.  Actually I did, this morning when we were hiking out, I was bookin' it up the hill trying to catch up with other hikers and pass them.  Ya I am a little competitive that way I guess.  It worked though I was soaking wet with sweat by the end and way excited to be at the top before the sun came over the canyon wall!  

(that's me running in the water, you know like a fish!) 

(Haha Love this MaryAnn)

Looks like I'm the last to write tonight!  Day one is done! I made it through my run in my new shoes. I bought the Saucony Virrata's at the St. George Running Center on Saturday. The guy told me they are very similar to the Brook's Pure Connect (Which I absolutely love) but that they would provide a little more cushioning to get me through those longer runs. I really loved the shoes. They are light and awesome but my arches and calves hurt. The Virratta is a 0 mm drop shoe and the Pure Connect is a 4 mm drop shoe. I really felt the difference. I just am kind of bummed and don't know what to do! It's occupying my thoughts tonight! I want to keep the shoes but feel like I need something to get me through those 20 milers! My run was decent. I didn't like that my body ached and I also don't like running these distances all alone!  Note to self: lather myself in bug spray before I go out on night runs! Bugs ate me alive tonight.  Here we go girls!  

Tomorrow it begins!!

Our training that is.  Ya, really. 18 weeks of training starts tomorrow.  124 days from today. (my app says 125 and start today, but the official St. George marathon site says 124- so we'll go with that) That seems like a long ways a way, but it's kinda freaking me out right now.  We are all picking which training schedule we want to do.  I think I'll do Hal Higdon Novice 2.  It makes me feel a little better that 2 behind it, but I probably should do 1.  There is a cool app for my phone for it:

I'm also looking at nutrition stuff.  I've learned in the past that how I eat has a big effect on how I feel when I run.  I need to get a good nutrition plan in place.  So today I ate like crapola!!  Made Tavin, who turned 13 today a big glob of no cook cookie dough in Laue of a cake.  Yum-my!!  I last meal of sorts. 

HERE is a blog I think will be very helpful.