Race recaps and life thoughts comin’ atcha!

First off, after falling off the wagon again of recording miles here is what May training looked like:

It’s not super fantastic but I did a fair amount of racing and summer starting/school out was a lot busier than I thought it would be.

Repetitive thought I have: (but first a little backstory) We have this funny little area in our house we lovingly call our “what the eff space” or the “gorilla cage”. The origin of the gorilla cage is a long story but the “what the eff space” is pretty self-explanatory. Our house was built in the 1970’s and is a tri-level so it has some quirky little spots where I can only imagine how the train of thought went as to what to do with the space. Near the entry-way in the living room there is this random shelf type thing that is way too deep and wide to store books and such, but is too small for anything useful.

For way too long we had no idea what to do with this spot. Hence, the nickname. Finally we came up with the idea of putting this shelf in sideways. It’s still weird, but trust me, it was way worse.

Anyway, the point of all this. In the lower right hand corner is the spot where I put stuff I need to return to friends. Let’s zoom in.

I’m really trying to get better at gathering stuff before people leave, but its generally chaos trying to wrangle kids and gear. This might seem like clutter, but to me, this little corner signifies love. I’m really lucky to have the people in my life that I do. I’m lucky I have really good friends who I get to share this life and our kids’ lives with. I feel grateful every time I see a little item there because it just means that recently I got to share my house and time with special people. So thank you. 🙂

No on to April/May race thoughts!

April 23rd- Horsetooth Half- I love this race, its a really challenging course that no one runs for time. Here is last years summary with photos of the hill damage. It’s gnarly, but the most beautiful kind. I improved my time from last year by over 4 minutes so a PR for the course is a happy day. A few other fast ladies showed up to snag the top spots so my time improvement did nothing for my placing. 4th place overall, 1st age group, same as last year. I have an itch to remedy that. 🙂 Post race festivities at New Belgium were pretty awesome, but how could they not be?

May 6th-Fiesta 5k, Greeley, CO- My sister-in-law was graduating from UNC and naturally since we were going to be heading that way to celebrate her accomplishment I checked really quick to see if there might be a race I could run as well. There was! Equally delightful was that I talked a friend into joining me. I’m focusing on shorter distances this summer, partly because I don’t have time for high mileage and partly because I need to gain more speed! 5k’s are really great. It’s a lot of pain, but it only lasts for a short while. For me, I pained my way to a PR of 17:54 and broke 18:00 for the first time which I had been frustrated about not accomplishing last year. This is also the first race that I got to break out my Runners Roost jersey so that was pretty exciting!

May 14th- Mother’s Day 5k, Denver, CO- My husband knows me well. He worked hard to make Mother’s Day really fantastic for me and he nailed it! He knows that for me, a weekend spent racing is THE BEST. This was also special because I got to race in Denver for the first time. And this race freaking rocked. I got my ass handed to me during mile 2 when I had to run into a headwind (so did everyone else of course, but I take wind very personally). It didn’t end until almost the end of the 3rd mile and I was spent. 3rd place overall for me, but they did a really cool “Fastest Mom” award and it took away a little bit of the sting of losing by 2 seconds.
Another great thing about my husband, Ryan. He is a singer/songwriter and one of his latest songs that he is recording with his band, The 14ers, is “Lean Forward, Paddle Hard” It’s a rafting term about the effort you should use to guide your raft when hitting an especially feisty bit of river. I can’t get it out of my head which has been great. It really helps me dig deep when I’m feeling tired and my legs are trying to die.
We hit up the Denver Zoo afterwards and the boys loved it, which made my day. The bottom photo with the lego Lion is hilarious because Owen looks ticked, but really he is just trying to look fierce, like the Lion.

May 21- Colfax Marathon (pacer)- I’ve said it before- pacing is the bomb. I love the race environment, having people to run with, an aided long run, if you will. I paced the Colfax Half Marathon last year which you can read about here. My thoughts are still the same! Plus, I like to give back, but its hard for me to stand still at a race. Sometimes I think I could course marshall but I think I might just start running after everyone. I love people who volunteer at races, they ROCK. I have to hold myself back from hugging them, I really do.
The very best part about the race this year though was my friend Becky Lyn broke the course record! She ran an amazing 2:54 and blew my mind with her altitude marathon status. She is the one “stage left” of me.

May 29th- Bolder Boulder- This was my redemption race- I thought I wrote about it last year but apparently I was being too much of a baby to put anything in writing. Oops.
I feel like the main difference between this year and last year (besides another 11ish months of training) is that my head was in a better place starting off. I was ready to have fun, ready to give it my best effort, and pumped because my sister (read more about her here) and brother-in-law made a huge effort to be there and also watch the boys. Here is a super sweet photo my sister captured of them walking a mile to the finish line. 9th place overall female, 1st age group and I ran a PR of 36:55 and finally broke 37:00!

I’m having a blast this year. I love running and I’m happy I get to do it. I have a lot of people I should thank more that aid me in many different ways and I hope they know how thankful I am.

Last thing! One of my favorite surprises is finding photos on my phone after the boys have been messing with it. I was being tortured grocery shopping today and let Owen and Ansel entertain themselves while I tried to read labels and such. Owen’s face freaking cracks me up. Any photo at this angle is likely to be horrible but his smile makes this 100 times more hilariously terrible.