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Showing posts from May, 2013

I may be a chicken, but you can be a SPARTAN!

I've been pretty straightforward in previous posts about how I feel about adventure and obstacle type races and color runs. I am seriously afraid of getting injured and derailing my training in the one type, and I have no desire to have anything thrown at me, no matter how soft, in the other. But I think it is awesome that so many of you have a little more courage than I do, that you have jumped over fire, crawled through mud and had a rainbow of colors thrown in your face. So when Dan with Spartan Race contacted me to see if I'd be interested in giving away a race entry on my blog, I was excited. So many of you are willing to get out there and get dirty. To bust your butts in a totally different way than I do when I line up at a starting line. Besides being able to let one of you totally kill it at a Spartan Race, I am looking forward to heading out to the Soldier Hollow Spartan Race here in Utah on June 29th. As a spectator, of course. And you will get to find out

Things I Love Thursday - Getting Back on the Horse

My little Bean is obsessed with horses. After asking for months when she could ride a horse, we signed her up for riding lessons. She is fearless. All she wants to do is "go fast." But she's also willing to do whatever it takes to be able to ride a horse. She puts in the work. She brushes the horse; cleans out its hooves; puts on the saddle and the bridle. She has learned all the commands and noises to guide the horse to do what she wants. She has completely devoted herself to learning to ride a horse so that she can go fast. (Sound familiar?) Her last few lessons, she started galloping. First it was walking, then trotting and now galloping. For that tiny little 4-year-old body on top of a great big horse, a gallop is pretty fast. Yesterday, her horse decided since she liked to gallop so much, he would gallop when she wasn't expecting it. And my Bean fell off. Luckily it was kind of a slow slide down the side of the horse, and she landed fairly flat on her back.

Things I Love Thursday - Grammar Nazis

Because it has been a decade for some of us (just go with it) and even longer for others since your last grammar lesson in high school, I just want to tell you how much I love it when people use correct grammar. Some of my favorites, when used correctly, are: It's and its It's means it is or it has. If you can't substitute one of those for it's, you shouldn't have the apostrophe in there. Example: It's been rough tapering this week. It's going to be even worse next week. Its is the possessive form of the word. Yes, possessives normally have an apostrophe, but this is an exception. Get over it. Example: I put my Garmin on its charger but forgot to plug it in. Your and you're Your is a possessive pronoun. Don't remember possessives or pronouns from middle school (or probably elementary school)? Basically it shows ownership. They are YOUR running shoes. It is YOUR marathon PR. You're is the contraction for you are. If you can't

Things I Love Thursday - Struggles

One of the things I love most about running is it has taught me I am stronger than I ever thought. I have been thinking about this more lately as I've seen some of the people I love face different challenges in their lives. No matter how hard a run is or what struggles I face in running, whether physical or mental, I am never alone. There is always someone who has gone through the same thing. Someone there to understand, commiserate and comfort. In running, as in life, we are not alone in our struggles. Whether the people around us have experienced the same thing or not, they have had their own obstacles to overcome. No one is immune. And if we can let our guard down, admit that we are human, let others see deeper than the surface, we can have an amazing support system. As a runner, I am constantly amazed at how runners support and lift each other up. We share something, and it's something that only runners understand. There's a strength that goes to the very core of