About Me

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Hello and welcome to my blog! My name is Nancy. I decided to retire early and my last day at the Fire District was December 31, 2020. My dream to do this pigs 'n poultry thing full time started on January 1, 2021. So far so good...

Monday, July 28, 2014

Week 4 and Wahine!

The end of week 3 was not so great. I got out for about 15 minutes, if that long, and realized that a 5 mile run on my own was not going to happen. Before I even reached the main road, I decided to turn around and go back home. I'm getting better about my training runs though. If I don't feel that great I don't need to beat myself up if I want to turn around and go back home. At least I gave it a chance. As it turns out I didn't want to get out yesterday either. So, no long run in week 3.

Week 4 - well this week is all easy running. I'm SO excited!!! Mostly because I don't want to get all sore and tired before Saturday and have a bad experience with Mary...Wahine baby!

Okay, so I'm a little excited - it's almost Wahine time! It's been a 3 years since I have been to the All Women's event at Blue Lake and I'm really looking forward to getting back into this particular event/venue. Blue Lake is a favorite with us - Tom and I  have done the Duathlon during the June event and then Robin and I teaming up to do the Duathlon at All Women's - oh and me doing a couple of Tri's there the last year that we were there. Man! It would be nice to get back into multisport, maybe see if I can get someone else to join the fun - perhaps Mary could  run the 2nd 5k on her own while I do the first run and ride - THAT is a definite possibility for 2015.

Until then, Mary and I will be running the all new Hula Girl 5k together (there is also a 10K). She's been getting her running groove back and has been using those running shoes more often in the past few months. I'm so proud of her and the progress that she has made! In June we did the Marriage Team event together and my goodness when we are not running she is walking REALLY fast and I'm doing a bit of a fast shuffle run just to keep up with her. I was not blessed with the legs that go speedy while walking...it's almost like I'm a little kid trying to keep up with my mom at the grocery store or something. That's the great thing about Mary, she has a lot of get up and go when she wants to! So blessed to have a friend who is game enough to try new things!

Here's to an easy running week and a quick race on Saturday.


Thursday, July 24, 2014

Week 3 and New Shoes!

We have started week 3 of training and we are a little off track. I think some of the problem might be from the fact that I got myself a new pair of shoes...


The fact that they are new shoes isn't the problem, the difference this time around is that I decided to have another gait analysis and the dude that I was working with decided that I didn't need a stability shoe and that I could get away with running in a neutral shoe. Huh...interesting. So, I went with his recommendation and starting wearing them this past weekend on our long run. Didn't feel bad, but I could tell there was a difference. Then on Monday I was still sore from running Saturday and ended up running less than the plan and then made up the difference on Tuesday. Yesterday I was feeling tired and sore so we took the day off - aaahhhh.

Now, we have been switching up our tempo runs for hills, which the next half will have plenty of and so that happened today. A day of rest really made all he difference and here I am a few hours later and still feel pretty good. Saturday will be another 5 mile run, no problem!

Tom and I were talking about how fast the next 9 weeks will go - REAL fast! I feel like we just started...which we did, but with the weeks being so busy and all our weekends filling up fast, we WILL be running Half Marathon #3 (for me) before we know it!

Weeeeee!!!! Get out and move!!!!

Monday, July 7, 2014

Half Marathon #3

Well, this is it...I've started training for my 3rd half marathon. This will be the third on in less than 10 months. I think that next year will be a little different and I'll just do a couple of halfs. Definitely the Vancouver USA half, but I'll leave the second one open until I find another favorite race to do.

I've got my training runs all dialed into RunningAhead.com and it has already started sending me reminder emails for upcoming runs. How considerate!

I know that this next half will feature more hills than Vancouver so we are going to focus on hills every other week and probably throw a hill in here and there because we really can't help it where we are. I might even do some core exercises and some other strength moves to make myself believe that I'm getting better.

So, week 1 has begun and this morning was pretty good. Although our route with a section of non-asphalt, non-sidewalk is going to be messed up...I'm hoping that the trail will still be gravelly and not asphalt when they are done working on it. Speedwork is up next!

run, Run, RUN!

Training Tools

For my birthday last month I received a nifty new sport watch...go HERE. Then I posted about the new stuff HERE. I do love me a gadget and if it's a running related type gadget even better! 

So my first post I was concerned that the darn thing would be more of a distraction than a help. Which it kinda was. I did a fair amount of playing with it during my half marathon. THEN I realized how much information that device packs...a lot! I get my pace, avg pace, elapsed time and distance as well as a history, records and other fun stuff. NOW I can see what my pace is and what my average is in a very short period of time AND during my run. Not only does it show me all of that information - once I get home and upload the information to my computer...more information is made available. HOLY COW...who know fitness could be so much fun?!

So, since my watch is GPS I get a map of the route that we ran AND when you review the route and let it run, it will show what your pace was at any given point during the run and it will also be color coded. The quicker you run the more green you'll see if you slow down it will turn to yellow if you REALLY slow down (walk) then you get a big ol' red section on the route. It's cool and not so cool at the same time. I had to get over myself pretty quick as I post my stats to facebook from the nike website. Because if anyone were to click on the map it would "fly" through the route and show just how slow I go. I might be slow, but I get out there and do it...HA!

The thing that I really don't like would be the red sections on my route. Depending on the day, I might have a few spots or just a couple. Today was just a couple because I REALLY didn't want that much red on my map! 

So what this watch is turning out to be is a giant kick in the rear! Toward the end of my last training plan I did a fair amount of brain training - telling myself that I CAN do a certain section of the training or make it up the hill or make it another mile or whatever. If I gave in every time I felt something unpleasant I won't see any improvement. Now that I don't like red on my maps I'll be training even better than before. 

As we start our next training plan I hope to see more improvements over the next 12 weeks. Maybe I'll take another 10 minutes off my last half marathon time. 

2014 Independence Run

Me, Tom, Judy, Norm and Suzy
The 2014 Independence Run has come and gone and it was a good one! Not only did Tom get to run this year (he was out the last couple of years) our barista friend Suzy and a couple that we knew from our Federal Highways days also ran. Suzy's hubby was in attendance, but opted not to run.

Before the event started, there was a kids dash...which we got NO pictures of this year...the kids are so cute out running like crazy. Love that Ridgefield is a small town and that closing down main street is pretty easy!

Right after the kids dash we all got situated at the start. Since Tom runs his own race and would be "racing" Suzy he disappeared and was in the first half of people running. I stayed near the back so that there wouldn't be nearly as many people passing me - little miss poke-along...haha. The gun went off and then we were let loose.

About a half mile in I lost all sight of Tom and just settled into a pace that I could maintain until we started up the big hill. I felt pretty good for the first mile, but once the hill started getting a little steeper I was walking more than running, but still moving forward, because that is the goal. To keep moving! After about 15 minutes I saw Suzy and we high 5'd as we passed each other. I was a little surprised because Tom was so intent on trying to stay ahead of her. Then a short distance up the road I spied Tom coming around the corner...and I told him that I just passed Suzy and he was aware of that :(

The rest of the run from that point was pretty much how it always goes. To the turn around and then back down, down, down the hill and then one last climb to Main Street and then a half mile jaunt to the finish. The longest finish straight ever!

My goal was to finish with a faster time over last year's time. Which I did, by 36 seconds...I think. I'm not sure what the official time is, but my watch was telling me that I was about 37:59. We'll see what gets posted later.

While I may have taken time off of my last year's time...everyone else got 2nd place in their respective age divisions. I guess I'm going to have to get older if I am going to get 2nd in anything!

Tom is the only one paying attention!
The ribbons were a little cheap-o, but hey, bragging rights baby! Now that Tom is back at it...maybe we'll be doing this running thing together for a good long time!


Tuesday, July 1, 2014

96 Degrees

Temperature at this very moment is 96 Degrees. Yesterday I was unhappy with running when it was 81 Degrees. 81 will feel like a piece of cake next time. I really don't enjoy HOT weather. If I don't have to go and do anything outside when it is really hot I won't. We get so few really HOT days that when we do we all turn into big babies...no joke. How do people in the South or the Midwest do it?! I suppose if you had to, you could get used to anything. 

I guess I'll try to get a good night's rest tonight so we can be out nice and early tomorrow morning for our RUN! Will try to push out 3 miles and add some hills just for the fun of it...and to prepare just a little for the 4th of July run in Ridgefield. Never fails, every year I tell myself I'll do more hills after whatever event we did in June and then don't. At least I'll be consistent!

Let's take a looky-loo at the 7 day forecast...