Keeping Pace.

Every time I run a race or start to get really into training for one I'm reminded of this quote from a Nike commercial:

"You are in a relationship with running. A love/hate relationship.

Running kicks you out of a warm cozy bed and into a cold hard world.

Everyday with running is a question of your commitment and running is not afraid to ask.

Yes my friend it is a constant balance.

A balance between joy and pain, work and play.... LOVE AND HATE!"

Thankfully my other relationships are not like this!

On June 3rd I completed my third half-marathon within 365 days. If you've been following my blog then you know this was supposed to be my attempt at the full marathon. After being a lazy bum and not committing myself to the long runs necessary for my body to survive 26.2 miles I decided to downgrade to the half-marathon. While I was a little disappointed with myself I'm glad I made the decision. After all, I still have until February 11, 2013 to reach my goal of 26.2 miles in my 26th year. I had a great race that day! Actually the best race of my life! Nothing to feel bad about at all! 

North Olympic Discover Trail Half-Marathon 2012 Race Recap:

Luckily I was able to take the day before the race off of work this year. I think that standing on my feet all day before attempting a big run like this hurts my time. Brian and I headed up in the afternoon and met my parents at our camping spot in Sequim. We ate a carb filled dinner of Spaghetti and garlic bread then awaited the arrival of Ryan and his girlfriend Madison.

Once again.... I have the greatest parents ever. 

S'mores were consumed! They are my favorite night-before-a-race snack! And.... well... maybe my favorite dessert as well!

The morning of the race I woke up to a text message from Nicole. 

It said:

"The best pace is a suicide pace, and today looks like a good day to die...." -Steve Prefontaine

 Pretty motivational huh?!

I'm not going to win any awards for being the fastest, but it is still always a good idea to have goals, otherwise you will never achieve the greatness you are capable of. The morning before the race Brian and I were chatting about how fast I would run that day. Since my last half-marathon time was 2:23:06 I said my goal would be 2:22. Brian said that if I finished in under 2:20 that he would run the full marathon with me on September 30, 2012 in Bellingham.

I am so thankful for the amazing support {team} system I have.

Before the race I was jittery and nervous. This seems to be my pre-race routine.

Yes my socks look silly. No I don't care. I'm in love with compression socks. I don't know if it is all in my head, but I really think that they help my calves during long runs. 

Ryan and Madison: pre-race.

Best boyfriend ever?! 

Yep, he even handed me redvines along the way!

I don't know why, but I get really hungry during long runs.

This will be an interesting thing for me to handle when my runs get longer than 13 miles.

That is why we train. It isn't just so our muscles get accustomed to the pounding they are going to take, but also so we know when to hydrate, eat and also how to not get bored!

Running this race again was awesome. The race sponsored support is fantastic. The trail is great. I love the vibe. I am glad though that this wasn't where I attempted the full. Remember my race recap from last year? {Yes I wore the same outfit and it was sunny that day!} The reason I'm glad it wasn't my full is because it has some very poorly placed hills. The worst of which would have come at mile 20. Yeah... Like I'm not already going to be struggling at mile 20! 

Ryan and I stayed together for the first couple of miles, then he decided to keep a faster pace. I was extremely happy with my pace! Almost every time I looked at my watch it said I was under 10 minute miles! I felt light and fast! Which are two things I've never felt before!

And guess what?!! 

Brian is going to be running that full-marathon with me in September!!

My time: 2:11:51

I cut off almost a minute a mile from my previous NOD1/2M time!

My pace: 10:04 

I feel really great about running right now. That's a good thing because it's time to get serious about this training program! 15 weeks until the marathon!

If You Have a Choice.... Choose Happy.

I have a ton of stuff to do today and not enough time to do it! Is it just me or is time going by sooooooo fast lately? I feel like I can't keep up!

Reminds me of one of the Happiness Commandments: The days are long but the years are short.

Yesterday I got to work and complained to Jessica, one of my coworkers and best friends, that I was in a grumpy mood and was having a bad day. She told me to get over it. All the little stuff I was complaining about didn't add up to anything big. She was of course correct. I was just being a big complainer. It is always good to have someone there who can tell you how it is when you need a little reminder. So I thought about how I have more things to be happy about than I do to be sad about and my mood did get better. So here is a list of things that make me a happy person if later on today I get too caught up in the things that don't matter:

My keep it happy list of the day:
1. I have awesome people around me! A supportive family, a loving boyfriend, awesome friends.
(I feel like I don't even have to list anything else. NOTHING is more important than that one item)
2. I have a job that pays my bills.
3. I'm young and healthy.

(That makes me want to reread, The Happiness Project)

As far as an update goes....

I think I have been pretending that I don't have a half-marathon this weekend. I mean.... I've been making some of the preparations for the weekend and everything, but my mind hasn't fully accepted that the time is almost here. I guess that was until this morning, when I started to get nervous. This always happens before a race, I begin to doubt myself. Then I talked to my friend Ryan who is running the race with me and felt a tiny bit better. If nothing else, we are both unprepared!

The thing that I know will keep me going is knowing that my Mom, Dad and Brian will be along the way providing moral support and red vines :) It is seriously the best motivation. Knowing they could be just about anywhere on the trail will make me overcome those times when I just want to walk (or lie down in a ditch). Today I'm going to do my final run before race day. I'm shooting for five miles. It was supposed to be yesterday, but yesterday wasn't a good day and what I need is a confidence building run!

In gardening related adventures... things are going very well! My garden last year was a bit of a disappointment. I waited too long to plant then never really got in the habit of actually taking care of everything.... then was sad when my plants didn't thrive.

This year is a bit different. I had everything planted almost on the same day I bought them, and things are starting to look pretty strong! As with every year I've lived here I've begun my war on snails. They suck. I hate them. They are disgusting. So I am off to my local coffee shop to pick up some coffee grounds to spread around my vulnerable lettuce and peas which seem to be the latest victims of snail violence.

Check out all the blooms I have on this strawberry plant! This particular plant has overwintered twice!

In reading news.... I have been reading and not updating my list. Which is something I need to get going on. I love having a list of all the books I've read, it's nice to be able to go back and see when exactly I read which books. I would also like it to be my goal for June to catch up on my reading blog entries and get back to what this blog started as: a place for me to review!

Grow!

There is something so magical about growing something from seed. Maybe this is because I have very little faith in my vegetable growing skills. Flowers don't seem to be too much of a problem, but almost all of my veggie starts from last year were either sickly or died. So that's why I'm so excited for these peas. They seem pretty strong so far!

Run Faster.

On Saturday I ran in the Viking Fest Road Race for the second year in a row. The five miler is a great prep for the half marathon that is in less than 11 days! Wow did that ever sneak up on me. Needless to say I'm very glad that I decided to downgrade to the half and wait until Fall to run a full marathon. 

Last year's Viking Fest run was a great confidence builder for me. This year was even better! 

Brian ran with me and was a great motivator. His goal for us was to run the five miles in 45 minutes.... my goal was to just break the 50 minute mark I set last year. 

The weather was gorgeous for the run. Sunny and beautiful! 

See??? It was so nice outside we needed matching shades.

The race was a success!!! We crossed the finish line at 46:40!!! A full three minutes and twenty seconds faster than last year! Wahoo! I felt so much better during this run than I did last year. It was great to have Brian there to push me when I wanted to go slower.... Even if at times it kinda made me mad.

I know that for the half-marathon that's coming up I probably wont be able to keep up a 9:30 pace, but hopefully I can push myself and beat last year's finish.

Also.... This half marathon HAS TO BE the jump start for my full marathon training. I can manage to bullshit my way through a half-marathon.... but let's get real 26.2 miles is serious business..... and I need to get serious.

After we got back home from the race it was time to watch the set up for the parade on my street! I invited some friends over and we had a little picnic while the marching bands and parade princesses assembled.

 The Girl Scout troop that included my Aunt Dawn and cousins Madeline and Josephine! So stinking cute!

 It was a pretty great day filled with almost all of my favorite things!

101 in 1001.

The other day I was cleaning out drawers and stumbled across a list I'd made back in July of 2010.

The list is titled: 101 in 1001 days.... a mini bucket list.

The idea is to write down 101 goals for yourself to be completed in 1001 days.

This was something that I had seen on another blog and felt would fit right in with what my blog is all about.... you know goals, resolutions and lists.

These goals are to be completed by April 10, 2013.

The funny thing is that I only ever made it 44 goals before I forgot about this list.... or maybe I just found it difficult to think up 101 creative/achievable goals for myself. The good thing is that I have, without consciously trying, been able check off some items! Some of the items are long-term and I wont be able to check them off until the end date, but I'm still chugging along on those as well.

I'm going to keep going with this list. And I'm also going to add to it. There are several items (mostly travel related)  that I don't think will happen within the time constraint, but many others will just take a little bit of initiative!

So here is the list:

1. Learn to shoot a handgun/shotgun (Checked off)
2. Drive across the country
3. Learn to sew
4. Have finished 300 books
5. Read the bible
6. Have a scrapbook page published
7. Learn to sail
8. Run a 5k race (checked off)
9. Write a book
10. Go wine tasting (checked off)
11. Hike Mount Si
12. Make bread from scratch (checked off)
13. Can peaches
14. Try out for Jeopardy!
15. Sing Karaoke
16. Learn to fly-fish
17. Have traveled to Ireland, Spain, Norway and France
18. Try a new recipe every week for a month (checked off)
19. Cook dinner every night for a week. No takeout.
20. Try being vegan (checked off)
21. Have photography displayed
22. Make my bed every morning
23. Be consistent with exercise
24. See the Daytona 500
25. Kiss the Blarney Stone
26. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower.
27. Made pasta from scratch
28. Visited Yosemite National Park
29. Lean all the President's names
30. Watch all the James Bond Movies.
31. Make fried green tomatoes
32. Maintain my blog
33. Invest $500 dollars a year in my IRA
34. Gone to Disneyland and Disneyworld again
35. Wash my car monthly
36. Make sleep a priority
37. Wake up every morning and do 100 sit-ups.
38. Have a successful garden every year.
39. Get out of my comfort zone more often
40. Watch more movies at home
41. Visit Scandinavia (Mostly checked off)
42. Go ice skating
43. Go on the Duck
44. Go to Seafair

Spring in to an Update.

I haven't been in the mood to write lately. Mostly because I feel like there is too much to catch up on. Too many books I've read that I need to review, too much food I've eaten that I haven't shared... too many life events that I haven't posted. So.... I guess I'll do my usual post that blurs through the past month or so and move on to the present.

I've been reading.... barely. Of my two book clubs, one died before it even got started and the other is barely crawling along. To be completely honest with you, I'm just not made for book clubs. I've tried. I've failed. I can't count on myself or others to read the books that are chosen and if everyone does read it I tend to dislike the discussion. I prefer my blog as the venue for my rambling reviews. Not that I don't appreciate other people's views on books... but I think most of the time more than an hour discussing the book is just too much. Especially if you feel differently about the read.

The type of book club I enjoy is what I like to call the, "casual encounter club." If there was one reason I worked at a coffee shop for so long.... this was it. I loved the 30 second book recommendations. I loved the old ladies who came in 4 days a week with their books ready to sit around a table and just read. I loved the girl who worked down the street who could probably read a book faster than me (not that I'm bragging, but when I put my mind to it, I can bust out a book pretty quick) and she read read lots of smutty romance novels.

That's the biggest thing I've missed since starting my new job at the restaurant. Besides a minor, hilariously unfortunate incident....I'm really liking my new job. Learning something new is always simultaneously refreshing and frustrating. Luckily I'm starting to get the hang of it now. The things I thought I would hate about my job, like working nights, are actually kinda great. I'm embracing the change.... mostly because I'm working less hours and making more money. But my heart still belongs to coffee and I look forward to filling in on random days to see my favorite customers.

The last few days have been filled with sunshine. When you mix Sunshine and the month of May the likely outcome is going to be gardening! Last year I felt like I only put half my heart into planting, but this is starting out fantastic! I've ran out of dirt twice now! I decided to focus on what I enjoy the most (flowers) and only plant minimal amounts of everything else (fruits, herbs and veggies).

Days like this that are filled with little bits of happiness are my favorite....

In other news I've been failing pretty fantastically with running. I'm just not feeling it lately. My training has dwindled. But I'm not giving up!!!! I'm just postponing. My running/racing partner has had an even worse time lately, so together we've decided to run a half-marathon in June and move our full marathon date to September. So although I'm kinda bummed I wont run my marathon in Sequim, I'll still be completing my resolution by running 26 miles while I'm 26. A pretty big part of me wants to postpone it even further and run it in January at Disney World.... but I think I'll fight that part of me ;)

In food news.... I've been eating meat..... Specifically I've been having an affair with bacon. My newest food obstacle will be trying to stay away from eating restaurant food all the time.

So here are some current goals:
Focus on eating clean.
Read, Review, Repeat.
Run. Run. Run. Run. Freaking Run.
Regularly water all those freaking plants!

So there is your quick update. Hopefully I'll be back soon!

Bitter.... Sweet.

Today's photo is of some pretty tulips given to me by my co-worker Brandy. Aren't they lovely?! They were such a nice little surprise for my Saturday morning. She gave them to me as a going-away-I've liked-working-with-you present.

Last Wednesday I put in my notice at work.

Off-and-on for the past six years I've been slinging drinks at a local coffee shop. In that time I've made great friends and learned how to make a pretty darn good cup of java. But as with most things in life, we eventually need to make some changes.

So if you want to get some excellent coffee from me.... don't waste any time.