Homeownerish

The past two weekends I've spent major hours doing house projects.  The first was putting more of an order to the chaos in my garage.  

The starting right wall...at least it is all in totes but they were driving me crazy.

The starting left wall

Putting it all in the middle to tackle it.

I bought three shelves from Lowe's and now it feels much better.

The big pile here is front is for donations that need to be hauled off but overall I now have two walls that at least aren't just piles thrown on top of each other.  They are piles thrown on shelves.

My other project has been planting.  I've found some steals lately.

I've never planted mums so I was excited to give it a go this year.

While shopping for flowers I found this cool sign at Wal-Mart that I couldn't pass up.  I'll lean it in the corner by my front door this winter.

Just some of all the bulbs I bought.  I am learning you have to buy them in the fall and plant them now for spring.  I have no green thumb but lucky for me my co-workers do.  I just follow their instructions.

Putting in the bulbs.  You can see one of my succulents in this photo...I love those things.  They are cute and very hard to kill.  Perfect for me.

The mums all planted.  Hoping after trimming the hell out of this bush it will come back better in the spring.

Excuse the dirt all over the patio but I also planted a dwarf pine and more bulbs in planters.  So hopefully I can get all this right and come spring enjoy it all!  The weekends have been busy but productive.  I'm ready for more low-key next weekend.

Life happens on the hills: Roots n Blues Half Marathon Recap

After weeks of training in the summer heat, October 1^st arrived bringing 60 degree temps.  It was perfect running weather.  I really think summer training helped for the day of the run, even though some of those hot training runs were not my favorite runs ever.  Training on Saturday mornings became something I really looked forward to.  It was nice having training partners to get up and meet and helped me stay on track with the long runs.  We would switch it up and sometimes meet at the trail and other times meet at the track.  I really enjoyed the training overall for this race. 

I always said I wouldn’t do a half marathon in Columbia because of the hills.  I’m glad I didn’t stick to that.  Turns out the hills aren’t a bad thing at all.  This was my best half yet.  I was better prepared going into it but I think overall a flat 13.1 miles doesn’t give me any momentum where as some of the downhills that come with the uphills gave me some speed.  I had a 10 minute mile pace for this race.  My last half I completed in Chicago was a flat course and was a 12:30 pace.  I was very happy with the improvement since then.  I was also thrilled to be able to walk normally within a day of this race.  One thing I did was foam rolled throughout training.  My IT band still caused some knee pain here and there but not nearly like I have had in the past and it wasn’t nearly as bad of lingering after the run was over. By Monday morning I was feeling really great. 

Glenda and I met up at 6:30 and walked to the start line.  It was a bit of an anti-climactic start. No pacers…which actually was probably a good thing.  I would have underestimated myself.  Just a quick countdown of 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go…and we were off!  The first big hill came at mile 2.  I thought for sure this hill would kick my butt but I started running it and just kept going and going.  I was feeling good.  It was about a half mile uphill and I walked about .10 of it.  Then it was .5 downhill and that was, of course, awesome.  I love downhill.  After about three miles or so we hit the trail and ran the next 7ish miles on the trail.  This actually became kind of difficult at some points since it was just so flat…even though I had done all my long runs on the trail.  About mile 6 my knee started hurting but I tried to ignore it.  We ran around parts of town I had never ran before so that was fun although I really had no idea where I was.  I knew the next big hill was at mile 9 so when I was tempted to walk I told myself I had to get to the hill at mile 9.  I’ve ran up this hill before but not ever after 9 miles.

One of the best parts of this race was the spectators.  Our names were printed on our bibs and there were a lot of spectators out cheering us on.  They would look at our bibs and actually cheer us on by name.  That is a real pick me up.  A lot of times the cheering would happen to come at just the times when I wanted to walk and when I heard my name it really helped keep me going.  I did walk up a lot of the hill at mile 9 and realized that walking actually hurt my knee more than running through the pain did.  The rest of the race was mostly uneventful…just fighting through the fatigue of tired legs.  The last mile is usually something I can talk myself into running with “you’ve made it this far, less than a mile left” but my legs were exhausted so I walked a bit more of that last mile than I wanted to.  But when I heard the cheers towards the end and saw the finish line I perked up and managed to find that last bit of energy.  I was especially excited to see 2:11 on the time clock.  My goal was to finish under 2:30.  I was thrilled with this finish time.

Glenda finished a bit after I did and announced she didn’t enjoy the course as much as I did.  I reminded her this was all her idea and then I said "This was so fun!  Wait, when did I ever think a day would come that I would say running 13.1 miles on a Saturday morning was fun?"  Times do change. We then enjoyed our BBQ sandwiches, Glenda enjoyed her beer and mine, and then we proceeded to walk slowly back to the cars.  Uphill. 

Pictures from the race:  

This photo is meant to be of the woman in front of me but I saw myself in the background and the look on my face cracked me up...could be a caption this type of photo with all kinds of things to fill in the thought bubble over my head.

First rule of crossing the finish line...always stop the Garmin.

Some life faves...

Well I had planned to make this post a recap of the Roots n Blues half marathon but the half marathon photos that were uploaded today from the race are taking forever to download...so we are going to pend that recap for another post.  In the meantime...here is a photo from the end of the race.  

Brad, Glenda, and myself.  Brad completed the 10k and Glenda and I did the 1/2.  Spoiler alert-it was awesome.  Don't ask Glenda...she will disagree.  More on that later.

After the run I came home and foam rolled, stretched, foam rolled, and iced my knee.  I thought I was pretty creative with getting the ice pack to stay in place!

While I iced the knee I enjoyed some post-race cuddle time with my favorite pup.  Since this post was going to be the race recap but I am saving that until I get the photos downloaded...I thought I would mention a few of my current life favorites.
1.  Fall weather.  It makes me very happy.  Especially just sitting reading a book with the windows open.  Or walking the dog without feeling like I am walking through a sauna.
2.  Decluttering.  I am in the process of decluttering my garage.  The more progress I make the more motivated I get.  So much STUFF that I do not need and will never use again.  Bonus of decluttering...it makes me shop less.  I do not have any desire to go buy new STUFF that will just need to be decluttered later down the road.  Decluttering makes me feel great.  It also makes me appreciate what I do choose to keep because I am keeping things I truly enjoy.
3.  Slowing down.  Just going with the flow and not rushing through life has made me happier.  Every day I have a list of things I want to accomplish after work and I usually give myself until 7pm to be productive.  After that, all downtime is acceptable.  Anything not accomplished on my to-do list can be pushed to the next day.
4.  Being present.  Along the same lines I'm working on being present in the moment I am in.  When I am walking the dog I'm trying not to think of everything I need to do and instead I'm focusing on enjoying my walk.  During my half marathon I tried to force myself to look up, stop focusing so hard and enjoy the scenery.  I want to be present and not just let life pass by while I forgot to notice.
5.  Strategic planning.  Along the same lines of slowing down, when I am planning out what I want to accomplish for the week I am trying to break it up throughout the whole week vs. doing ALL THE THINGS on the weekend.  This way I can be productive throughout the week and not end up exhausted because of all the things I had to get done on the weekend.
6.  No Spend Days.  Usually two days a week if not more I will plan out as "No Spend" days.  These are days that are just what they sound like...I can't spend money.  I may need to plan a bit ahead and if I know I'm going to need gas I'll get it on a Monday if Tuesday is a no spend day.  But having these days has helped me really think before I spend.  Example, a few of these days I thought to myself "I feel like driving to Sonic and getting a drink."  Then realized "Oh I can't spend that $2 it is a no spend day."  Know what happened as a result?  I started making iced tea at home again.  I haven't made iced tea in years.  In general, if there is something I want on a no spend day then I get creative.  This also helps me be more aware on the days that aren't designated no spend days when I am thinking of buying something...I really do think harder about it vs. mindless spending.  The other night I went to dinner with a friend and thought about getting ice cream after.  Then I realized for less than what I would spend on one ice cream out I could go to the store and get 2 half gallons of ice cream.  I didn't want two half gallons of ice cream in my house so I passed on both spending too much on one and going to the store for too much.

Those are my current life faves!  Headed to see friends I haven't seen in too long this weekend...excited for that!