Sunday, March 30, 2014

Scavenger Hunt

I used Quadracools idea to remember everything:


1. Sign of spring (Running buddy Allison, and husband Ryan in the shot too)
2. Something out of place.  A wooden cow in this front yard. And a shopping cart at least 1/2 mile from any retail stores.


3. Something with at least 4 colors.  I'm wearing orange, red, yellow and blue (the skirt doesn't look blue from the weird cloudy sky but it is).

4. A favorite place to run. Berg Park Riverwalk. I spotted 6 deer bedded down in the trees.  Look close.

5. A fancy house or building.....some bonus points here....first of all, this is New Mexico people so aside from the very old Native American Ruins, the oldest homes around are late 1890s.  This shot is of my house...built in 1907 (which I assume is older than AliKate's great-grandmother) and happens to be one of the 10 oldest homes in town.  Cool part is, this is MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER'S HOUSE (and great-grandfather's) that has always been in the family. The house on the right is the 2nd oldest house in town (built in 1897). 
6. Something with one of the letters v, w, x or z.  Double whammy. Well, we happen to drive two VW cars.....zoom in REAL close to see the symbols on the cars.
Yes we started and ended our run here, but we also ran by it around mile 20 to drop our dork (hydration) packs for the last 2 miles (when I took the picture).

7. A green car.....we saw SOOOO many that we stopped taking photos....here are a few:




 and my favorite one:

8. Something with numbers than can be combined to make 10.  This is actually the house my Dad's family home...it's a Bed and Breakfast now and could also count as a pretty "fancy" house.  The address is 505 (5+0+5=10), but New Mexico's area code is 505 which I think is also cool. Also has a sign of spring on the trees.
Also when we got home and I stopped my watch it was exactly 22.06 miles.....2+2+0+6=10.  Hmm. Handy that.

9. Something with a Loop in it. Potty-stop at the tennis courts and saw their tennis-racket-loopy handrails:

10. Something making a funny face. This tar in the pavement is less than a mile from our house and we run past it often.  Love it.

11. Something sarcastic....no photo here.  Could've been the lady at the Bar (literally) inside the hotel that we stopped at around mile 18 as we were out of water that called our hydration bottles "baby bottles".  
Or could be the look on my Sentry's face when we got home and didn't bring him anything (and obviously didn't take him with us).

Bonus shot of the delicious pear crepes we made when we got home:

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Dear Mr. Pfitzinger

Dear Mr. Pfitzinger,
What have you done to me? And why do I love you so?  I run and run and run and run. I get bored with myself running so many double digit runs each week.  I feel exhausted and think there is no way I can even think of running a MP run for one mile....I warm-up and then somehow run 12 beautiful miles at or under my MP. Why did you do this to me? How did you do it?  I can't say that I won't care about the outcome of this next marathon (Colfax Marathon in Denver May 18) but I am so happy with how well I am running throughout the training that I feel a lot less pressure about having a great race.  This whole running thing is about selfish-little-me anyway so as long as I'm enjoying it and making measurable progress, I'm a happy girl and I thank you for that. I don't know how you designed a program so perfect for me.  I felt like for the first 6-8 weeks that you were slapping me across the face and telling me how out of shape I was and that I needed to run more; so I did what you told me.  You tell me what my heart rate should be and what paces I should be running.  You make everything so clear.  You know me so well. You push me through the hardest and lowest days and then a day later I have a game-changing run; a confidence run; a run that reminds me why I love this sport.

Thank you for being so wonderful...
Love,
Tennille