Because There's Nothing Better to do in Ogden

Before all you Ogdenites get all huffy, that title was sarcastic. There are tons of great things to do in Ogden including: beer bottle fights, drive-by shootings, and my favorite... drug deals down on the parkway. HA! Just kidding. I hear they have blue fish. Not just any town can say that.

Anyway, looks like we're going to do another 5k here shortly. I got talked into it by my sister, Annie. You'd think I'd know better by now. This one is on May 1st and is going to be up by Weber State. I'm assuming the proceeds go to help Shadow Valley Elementary as that's where this whole thing is going down. I could be wrong though. Head on over to RunWalkJog to sign up. (Be warned... the webpage listed on the form kind of sucks.)

Here is a map of the course:

Spud Day

*All photos courtesy of Seth's wonderful brother Scott. Thanks!

For years I've been hearing about the infamous Spud Day in Shelley, Idaho. I've constantly begged Seth for the opportunity to experience the starchy goodness of free baked potatoes and mashed potato tug-o-war and this year I was given the honor of making the pilgrimage to Potato Land for this wonderful occasion.

To make the trip even more exciting, a couple additions were added to the list of activities and attractions. First, Seth's brother, Scott and his wife Amanda were going to be in town. They are currently living in Houston, Texas and have a baby girl on the way. Getting to spend some time with them was on the top of our list.

As great as Spud Day would be with Scott and Amanda around, we added yet another source of excitement. The Spud Run. Yes, we signed up for another 5k. I mainly wanted to do the Spud Run so I could get a shirt with potatoes on it, and let me tell you, I wasn't disappointed.

The Spud Run started early Saturday morning (7:30!) and it was pretty chilly outside. Seth and I were the only ones in the family that ran this 5k, which meant we had a lot of people there to cheer us on. For this race they gave us actual race numbers that we pinned on our shirts, which we thought was pretty cool. And the blue t-shirts with running potatoes on it were amazing. That all combined with a real starting gun was almost too much to handle. It was like a REAL race!

Pre-race with our numbers & a view of the legendary Spud Run t-shirt.

Everyone standing around freezing, waiting for the race to start.

I was pretty nervous during the morning of the race (like usual) and that anxiousness combined with an early cold morning made the run feel twice as long. I felt so shaky and weird for the first little segment that I thought about dropping out. But, I told my body to just keep going and what do you know? I made it!

And the race begins... notice the Potato mascots in the road.

Seth and I ended up coming in one second apart... 28:08 and 28:09. A new record! Although in the "Shelley Pioneer" and on the Shelley website, everybody's times are 2 minutes off... it shows our times as 26:09. Which would be super fast for me. But I'm not complaining. Especially because once again I came in 5th place out of all the women! WOO HOO!! I don't know how that happened! Maybe this is an unconscious tradition? I'm not sure what place I was in my age group. Seth came in 17th place out of the guys, but the men put up some pretty stiff competition. Still, there were 114 runners, 48 men and 66 women, so we both did awesome. We were in the top 25%!

Seth coming through the finish line. I got confused and went in the wrong lane.

Seth had to hold up my arm. I was too tired to do it myself.

After the race we went and watched the Spud Day Parade. Neither of us had been to a parade for years. It was fun watching all the kids chase after the candy thrown from the paradees. We also had a famous family member in the parade! Arielle was on a float with her middle school volleyball team and looked pretty cool in her red and black uniform. We made sure to throw her some candy because apparently that's what the kids do these days when they see a float they like.

When the parade was over Seth and I went and checked out the park where all the booths were set up. It was really crowded and the line for the free baked potatoes was huge, so we ended up leaving. Luckily it was Tessa's birthday party that night so we got to have a baked potato and a funnel cake over at her house.

As would be expected, our free time was filled with fishing trips. I didn't catch a fish the whole weekend, but at least I got to fish the Snake River and the Henry's Fork. You can bet I'll be back and next time I'll be taking names.

On Monday before we left for home, we went up to Harriman State Park. Seth and I got there a couple hours early to fish (this was the Henry's Fork trip I mentioned above). We were hoping to hear some elk bugle and were lucky enough to hear a few loud calls when we first arrived. It was pretty cool.

The rest of the family showed up a couple hours later and we did a small hike around the park. We didn't hear anymore elk but we did see some deer and a couple beautiful lakes.

A cute pregnant Amanda on our Harriman hike.

We had a great long weekend up in Idaho and Spud Day was all I have ever dreamed it would be and more. I'm sure we'll be back again.

The Results Are In!

This is the moment you've all been waiting for... race results! Wahoo! First I just want to thank everybody for the encouragement you gave me the last few months. It definitely helps make each run a little bit better. Also, I can't believe all of you who came and participated with me! It was so much fun! There were four people that ran this 5k with me: Seth, my sister Annie, Seth's sister Rachel, and Seth's brother-in-law Marty. There were also several more people that came to show support: Rachel's husband Abraham with their two boys Soren and Liam, Hillary (Abe's sister), Marty's wife (Seth's sister) Collette and two of their kids Tessa and Marty Jr, Marty's mom (sorry I can't remember her name!), and Annie's husband Eric with their little girl Belen. Eric was the mastermind behind all the wonderful race pictures.

(Left to Right) Annie, Me, Seth, Rachel, Marty

I was really anxious the morning of the race and I think it sapped some of my energy, but I still ended up doing pretty good on my run. My official time was 29:30 but I timed myself and was more like 28:30, which is about a minute faster than I was the last time I tried running the course, so I was happy about that. I didn't quite make it all the way without stopping and walked for just under a minute on the big hill.

The race has just begun!

This is me at the half-way point. This is my out-of-breath smile.

I ended up coming in 4th in my age group for the women, 5th for women overall, and 20th place out of everyone. I was really surprised! There were about 100 racers total so I feel really good about my effort. I ended up finishing before the others in our group so I got to see everyone else cross the fnish line. Seth and Annie were neck and neck the whole way and were racing against each other on the home stretch. It was pretty funny.

Seth & Annie racing to the finish!

Everyone in our group did really good and I'm really proud of all of them for the hard work they put into their training. We're going to have a re-match in a couple weeks up in Idaho Falls at the Spud Day 5k. So, if you missed out on this race, you still have time to join us at the next one!

I'm So... Startled

We're two days away from race time people... do you know where your children are? Oh wait, I mean, are you ready for this?! I don't know why, but I get so nervous for these things! I don't know what I'm so nervous about. All day today I've been walking around with butterflies in my stomach. I think I'm just worried that all this training is somehow going to fly out the window and I'm going to suck really bad or get injured the day before the race or something stupid. Why do I do this to myself? Who knows. I just want to do really good. And I want to run the whole way without stopping. Which I still haven't done on the race course, but have done many times during all my runs for the last several weeks. Even up big hills. But not on the big hill on the course. That's my main goal for Saturday... to run the whole thing without stopping.

Anyway, for those of you who are coming to race, here are the details again:

Ogden Family Fitness Day 5K Run:

•If you haven't already registered, it'll cost you $20 on race day and you probably won't get a shirt.

•Race begins at 9:00 a.m.

•Check-in and Day-of registration

8:00-8:50 am

I would recommend giving yourself plenty of time to get there, check-in,  and get warmed up. Here's a map of how to get to the MTC Learning Park. I would recommend taking the 24th St. exit off of I-15 in Ogden  because 12th St. is under construction. Plus, then you only have to make one left turn onto Monroe Blvd. and you're pretty much there. The MTC Learning Park will be on the right as you start to go down the big hill on Monroe.

Good luck everybody!

Chafed Thighs and Apple Pies*

Blackie (our black Pontiac) decided her two power windows were no longer needed and thus quit allowing them to roll up or down. I don't see window function as an option, so I took Blackie into the shop today so they could change her mind.

I called the shop this afternoon to tell them I'd be bringing Blackie in and asked when they closed. They were only open until 6:00pm so I knew I'd have to hurry home from work so I could pick her up and drop her off on time.

Now the other part of my plan, since Seth still works nights, was to drop the car off and run home. If I took a slight detour it would be just over 3 miles. Perfect. I drove the route on my way home to check it out and started to get a little nervous. It was pretty much all uphill. And it was 90 degrees outside. But, I could do it, right?

So I got home from work, changed into my running clothes and drove down to drop off Blackie. I had my ipod and stopwatch with me like usual, but today I thought maybe I should carry a bottle of water with me too. I walked about a quarter mile to warm-up and then started running.

Holy crap it was hard. I started out running on a steep part of the hill and it didn't get much better after that. I ran about a half mile before ditching my water bottle because it was throwing off my rhythm. Don't worry, I threw it in the proper receptacle.

After another half mile I came to a fork in the road. This was the point where I could either take the shorter, easier way, or take the harder way which would end up equaling the 3.1 miles I needed. It must have been the heat that made me delirious enough to choose the longer hard way.

I ran for another half mile up the hill until I couldn't run anymore. I ended up walking 3/4 of a mile. After this point the running was all slightly downhill, but it was hot and my legs were tired. I ran half a mile with the sun in my eyes before I stopped again. The heat and sweat was starting to get to me and now I was dealing with some chafing between my thighs. Yes, I'm going there. My legs were now Jello and my thighs stung with every step. I could either run the rest of the way to get it over with faster thus speeding up the friction on my thighs, or try and walk bow-legged for the last stretch. I settled on a combination of the two.

By the time I made it through the front door, my thighs were rubbed red and stinging, my legs were about to collapse underneath me and sweat was pouring into my eyes. And I managed to add six minutes to my time. Wahoo!

I've actually had a lot of successes in my training this last week or two and it took today's experience to make me remember something very important. Don't bite off more than you can chew. Anytime you do something clearly out of your fitness range you are going to end up frustrated. It's good to push yourself in order to improve, but you've got to set reasonable goals.

I'm going to run again once more this week. I'm going to try running the race course. I almost did it a week or two ago without stopping but didn't quite make it. This week I'm going to.

You better watch out race course. I'm coming for you.

*I had to mention apple pies so you'd read this post. And it made the title sound more cheery.

Ew! So Sweaty!

I was wandering around on the Runner's World magazine site the other day and happened upon an article that talked about how much water you need to drink while you're running. I've always heard these studies about how you need to drink about 10 gallons of water for every hour you exercise (or something like that). It always seemed excessive to me... there's no way I sweat that much! If I really lost as much water as they say I do, my shirt would be drenched, right?

So this article says that you should weigh yourself before and after you exercise and then drink 2 cups of water for every pound you lose. I immediately thought "there's no way I sweat enough during my run to lose any weight, let alone enough to be measured in POUNDS." So I decided to prove that article wrong and weighed myself before and after my run.

One whole pound. That's how much I lost after a half-hour run. Isn't that crazy?! And I lost at least another 1/2 pound after adding in 30 minutes of Pilates. I couldn't believe it! Who would've thought that dainty little old me could sweat that much! Apparently that evaporation thing they talk about actually exists. And I guess all those self-righteous scientists and doctors with their data and tests were right this time.

I Finally Did It!

Today I finally ran 3.2 miles without stopping. Yes my friends, that's 5k. I did it. In 31 minutes 17 seconds no less. I'd say that's pretty damn good. Although, I would suggest not running on garbage day. It was a little smelly out there. And the goats were back in the field on the corner of Church St. and Antelope Dr. I'm pretty sure I heard them cheering me on.

As a somewhat related side-note... have you ever tried smiling while you're working out? There's this girl named Tawyna on my stability ball workout. She wears her hair in braids and has a toothy smile the whole time. I decided to try it once. I felt ridiculous. It's just not natural.

Race Details

So Seth and I finally chose the 5k race we want to do. It's the Ogden Family Fitness Day 5k on Saturday, August 29th at 9:00am. This race is along the Ogden River Parkway where Seth and I have been fishing many times. It's a beautiful spot!

We've already got my sister, Annie on board to run with us and I thought it would be fun to invite all my devoted blog readers to join us too! So if you want to try it, go ahead and go to the Ogden Family Fitness Day website and sign up (they'll send you an email with the address of where to send your $15 registration fee... and you'll be guaranteed a t-shirt!)

I posted this as a comment on one of my other posts, but I liked the training schedule I used so much, I'm gonna put it here too. I swear it works really good. And it's not complicated. For me, running for one minute when I'm just starting out is really hard. But the cool thing is that you can see results and improvement really fast so it motivates you to keep doing it! I'm already running for two whole minutes! WOW! Plus this 5k schedule says it will train you in 8 weeks and if you start training today, you'll have 13 whole weeks! Also, I learned the hard way last time I tried this that having good running shoes makes a huge difference. Having crappy shoes is a good way to hurt yourself. If you live in the general Ogden area, go to Striders. They will do a foot analysis and tell you what shoes work the best for your arches and "stride." Made a huge difference for me. Ok, here's the training schedule:

How to Get Started With Running

By: Christine Luff at About.com

Week one: Walk for 6 minutes, then jog at an easy pace for 1 minute. Repeat 3 times. Aim for three sessions with that same sequence for week one.

Week two: Walk for 5 minutes, then jog for 2 minutes. Repeat 3 times. Aim to do three sessions in week two.

Week three: Walk for 3 minutes, then jog for 4 minutes. Repeat 4 times. Aim for four sessions in week three.

Week four: Walk for 2 minutes, then jog for 5 minutes. Repeat 4 times. Shoot for four of those sessions in week four.

Week five: Walk for 2 minutes, then jog for 8 minutes. Repeat 3 times. Do four of those sessions in week five.

Week six: Walk for 2 minutes, then jog for 9 minutes. Repeat 3 times. Try to do four sessions for week six.

Week seven: Walk for 1 minute, then jog for 11 minutes. Repeat 3 times. Do four sessions this week.

Week eight: Congratulations on making it to week eight! For your first run this week, try walking for 5 minutes to begin and end the workout, and run for 20 minutes in between. By the end of the week, try to run for 30 minutes without stopping.

Aim to run for 30 minutes four times a week, and you'll notice that your stamina and fitness will continue to improve. Soon you'll be ready to run your first 5k!

Round 2

It's raining. I can't do it by myself. I should have started 2 months ago, it's too late now. I need to clean the bathrooms. I just ate dinner. It's getting dark. I can't find my pants. I don't want to carry my keys. I'll have to start all over.

That last one. That last reason is the one real reason I knew I didn't want to run today. All of those other things were reasons my brain came up with to try and talk me out of it in a "it's not your fault" kind of way. I have a lot of will power, just not the kind that gets me to do things. My will power is great at talking me out of stuff.

So here I am, a mere what, 6 months later? Six months ago I ran my first 5k race. Six months ago I was on top of the world. Six months ago I told myself I'd keep running. Six months ago I quit.

It really is depressing. It's amazing to me how many excuses I can come up with. You know why I didn't keep running? I told myself it was too dangerous to run outside in the winter. There was too much snow. "But you could run inside," I thought. But I HATE the treadmill. I'll just do workout videos during the winter. But I didn't. And as the weeks went by I kept thinking I should run again before I waste my efforts, but then there was this nagging voice in my head telling me it was probably too late and I'd have to start over again. Looks like another self-fulfilling prophecy.

So here I am six months later. Seth sent me a text today daring me to guess what he'd just done. For some reason I immediately knew he'd gone running. Maybe it was because we'd driven past Brigham City the day before and Seth said, "Remember when we ran our 5k?" Yeah I remembered. I'd brought our running shoes with us on our trip to Idaho this weekend. Not to use for running... just to have in case we needed to do lots of walking or something. Seth unpacked the car when we got home and handed me the pairs of shoes to put away. I saw a certain look in his eye when he gave them to me. I felt a twinge of guilt and pretended not to notice.

After Seth told me he'd gone running, it immediately gave me a little nudge of motivation. I thought maybe I should go running when I got home. But on the way home it was raining. Ok it was barely sprinkling and by the time I got home it had stopped. Then I was hungry. So I made dinner. Then I wanted to watch my shows. So I did. It's definitely too late to go out now. I'll do Muscle Motion again. In fact by that time I'd given up on the idea of doing any sort of physical activity for the day. My plan was to watch more tv. Then Seth sent me another message suggesting maybe we sign up for another 5k. I cringed at the thought. I'd have to run again if we did that. But then something clicked in my brain. YOU'RE NEVER GOING TO START. YOU WILL NEVER RUN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO. YOU WILL NEVER START WORKING OUT AND YOU WILL ALWAYS BE OUT OF SHAPE.

For some reason that woke me up. I knew I needed to sign up for another race because otherwise, I would never accomplish my goals. It worked last time and I knew it would work again. So, before I even signed up for a race, I put my running clothes on and walked out the door.

As I began to walk down the street to warm-up, I thought, "Maybe it won't be that bad. Maybe I'll still be able to run good." But, after about a quarter mile of running, my chest and throat hurt too much to keep going. At that point I realized I was going to have to start all over. I would have to start at the very beginning. Run for 1 minute. Walk for 4. Upping my running gradually one week at a time. I'd finally procrastinated for so long that I'd made myself start all over.

At this point I should have been congratulating myself. You're finally doing it! You're running! You're outside and you're trying! Seth isn't here to cheer you on and you're still doing it! You're doing it all by yourself! Look at this beautiful place you live with the green grass and blooming flowers and towering mountain views! You did 40 minutes of physical activity! But all I could think was how much I'd lost. How far I'd fallen and how far I was going to have to go to get it all back. I told myself I'd never get back to this point and here I was. Sigh.

It's no wonder I've talked myself out of running for so long. Who would want to with this brain throwing out guilt and belittling comments for a whole 2 miles? I know I'm not going to get very far with this attitude. So I'm using this post as a way to vent my frustrations. A way to get rid of all these negative feelings and to just start over. Again.

I can do it. I know I can. I've done it before. This time is going to be harder. I'm on my own. No Coach Seth around every night to make me get off the couch. It's all me. But I can do it. And I'm not going to quit this time.

Holy Crap We Actually Did It!

Some of you may remember a previous post about Seth and I signing up for a 5K race.... the Snowman Shuffle. It was our attempt at forcing ourselves to run on a regular basis to try and get in shape.


Well, after training diligently for 8 weeks, race day (December 6th) finally came. The weather was beautiful that morning and I was very nervous and excited for my very first race. The race started at 10:00am, but Seth and I were both up and raring to go at about 7:00am. We wanted to make sure we got up to Brigham City with enough time to get our sweatshirts and do a warm-up walk, so we arrived at about 9:00am.




I was surprised at how many people ended up coming to the race. The route followed the area around the Eagle Mountain Golf Course and the old World War II Army hospital buildings.




Seth pulled ahead of me very early in the race and stayed in the group with the faster runners. He did very well and ran the whole time... even up the very steep hill by the golf course towards the middle of the race. He came in 35th place overall with a time around 26 minutes (I'll update this when I can get the exact times).




The Snowman Shuffle course was pretty challenging... very hilly. It was definitely harder and probably about a half-mile longer than what we had trained on, so I thought we both did really good. I was at the back of the middle group (or the front of the slower one!) and came in 56th place overall with a time around 32 minutes. The benefit of me coming in way behind Seth was that he was able to get the camera and take some really flattering pictures of me crawling across the finish line.






Seth mainly wanted to run in a 5K so that he could get a t-shirt. We ended up getting sweatshirts so that was even better. Seth was a little disappointed because red isn't his signature color. I however look ravishing, especially when flashing my million dollar smile.

We both decided that signing up for races was a great motivator for us. I'm sure we'll be signing up for another one soon!

Call Us Crazy...

The other day one of my co-workers was talking about how fun running is and got me to thinking that maybe I should try it... again. I've tried running a few times in the past, but never stuck with it very long. I figured that somehow running is harder for me than everyone else and that my body just isn't designed for it. I always forget about this though and whenever I hear someone talk about running, my brain tricks me into trying it again.

When I got home that night I talked to Seth about maybe starting to run again. We've been wanting to get into better shape lately, but somehow have lacked the motivation (wierd, I know). He said that he would like to try running too and suggested that we sign up for a 5k race so that we'd be forced to train for it or die. For those of you who don't know, a 5k is about 3.1 miles. I'd be lucky at this point to be able to run 1/4 mile.

The race we signed up for is the Brigham City "Snowman Shuffle" on Saturday, December 6th. It is exactly 8 weeks from the time we decided to try running. Oddly enough, 8 weeks is the amount of time they say it takes to train for a 5k, so hopefully that's true. I'm a little skeptical.