Kettlebell virgin no more

I have been wanting a kettlebell for some time, but rather hate paying more than I think I should for something. Therefore up until today, I did not own one.  I ran into Target this afternoon after work for something I just realized I didn't get and decided to see if any were on sale. Lo and behold the 20 pound kettle bells were marked way down.

and I mean way down.. look

Yup, not 20, 30, 40 or even 50% off the regular outrageous price of $49.99, but sixty freaking five percent off.  Whoop!  Sadly none of the other sizes were on sale or I would have bought one in every size.    Briefly considered buying both of the 20 pound ones that were there, but abstained. 

I, of course, couldn't wait to try it out.  I found the Killer Kettlebell Workout on shape.com.

I was a little worried when I saw

Since mine is a 20lbs kettlebell I decided to just sub in my free weights as needed.  Luckily I only had to for one move.

 

I did three rounds and was dripping sweat by the last round and having a hard time holding on to the handle with all the sweat.  

My verdict?  It took a little bit to get used to holding onto it comfortably for each of the moves, but overall awesome total body workout. I see myself using it quite a bit in the future.  My core, legs, and arms were feeling it by the end.  Maybe it didn't help that yesterday I did a workout that had 140 pushups in it..

Some days I am a glutton.

Three.one Things Thursday

1.  My baby girl has been in kindergarten for a week now. I wish I could say it has been smooth sailing, but it hasn't. 

We have had all kinds of drama about what to wear in the mornings although this is getting better.  The first day of school she changed her outfit no less than four times.  She doesn't want to wear any of the great new clothes she got for school because she isn't used to them yet. She has however been very good about getting her hair done right away and this is something she NEVER has wanted done.

Her brother won't play with her at recess, he wants to play football with his friends (which is fine with me.  He is supposed to look out for her not babysit her, and he does).  She cries to me that she can't find anyone to play with and Kindra and Kyann, two girls she knows, are hard to find at recess or don't want to play what she does.  Life is so tough.

Her teacher wrote me a note saying Avery gets tearful during class and says it is because she misses her mom.  We sent a picture of me to school to help with this a little.  She cries in the morning and tries to get out of going to school

Happily she came home yesterday and said she had made a new friend and played with her at recess.  Her teacher also wrote me a note saying "no tears" yesterday.   What a relief! 

I know the whole thing is a big change since she never went to preschool and doesn't know that many of the kids.  I think  a lot of it is just adjusting to the change and being out of her comfort zone.  It is still hard on me though too. 

I admit to shedding a few tears over it in the middle of the night on Monday. 

2.  I got to impress my co workers with some feats of strength yesterday.  We were getting things ready for the next day and probably making fun of twerking when I decided to see if I could do a pullup on a metal bar that is part of our supply storage system.  I could, of course.

Turns out I was the only one.  So then they wanted to see if I could do some tricep dips between two carts.  I knew I could so at that point I was probably just showing off when I did 10 and still no one else could even do one.    I think they think I am on steroids.  HA!

3. I did a 7.5 mile run this morning and apparently did it to soon after breakfast.  My stomach was not happy the entire time and I sit here now with a bit of heartburn.  My legs didn't feel like they had a  whole lot of anything in them by the end of the run either.  I had set out to do 8 miles, but sometimes it just isn't worth it.   Today was one of those days.    I am sure that this means I will be full of energy and ready to kick some butt next week in Colorado at the Ragnar Relay. 

as a bonus.. if you haven't heard the Sweet Lorraine song and story behind it.. you should check it out.  Seriously watch it.

There is a documentary behind the song too

Tell me I am not the only one who cried watching these.

Run interrupted

Yesterday I did a longest run since my quad injury.. 12.5 miles!  Woot! My biggest complaint was simply the HOT HOT weather. (Could fall please hurry up and get here.)  Luckily it was mostly shady for the first 7 miles of the run and it felt pretty good, although it was a run interrupted. 



love these wide open spaces, they make me so happy

I ran two miles and my first stop was my Grandmother Pat's house where her sister (my great Aunt Ginny) was getting ready to head back to California for the fall, winter and spring with her husband my Great Uncle James.  So I had to stop and visit for a couple minutes.  My Dad happened to be there in a tractor too, so it was fun times.

three of my favorite people

Then it was off up the hill for me and my little dog.
Back down the hill and back at my Grandma's house by mile 10, I stopped in to refill my water bottles and ended up staying to eat a nice cold bowl of cantaloupe too.  Tasted so good!  Then I was off again to my car which was two miles away and it was HOT HOT HOT at this point and luckily all down hill.  The great thing about climbing 747ish feet in the first half of the run was turning around and unclimbing it

82 degrees when I got done running.  UCK!  I am sure some of you don't think a thing of running when it is that hot out, but I am a heat wuss.  I don't like to run in anything over 60.

I did go home and try out my new toy.
and made a super refreshing smoothie with frozen blueberries, frozen bananas, fresh pineapple, almond milk, and white chocolate Designer Whey protein powder and spinach.  and I ate a slice of chocolate cake.

What is your too hot to run temp? 
I for sure would never start a long run when it is 82 degrees out.  But finishing it wasn't too bad. It was 74 when I started and thankfully cloudy or I might have reconsidered doing a 12 miler.

As part of Ragnar training I did 45 minutes on the elliptical in the afternoon for a two a day.  Not the same as running a two a day, but it was too hot out for that and I wanted to live through it.

Cake and steak.. living right

I was craving cake yesterday. Seriously craving it. Cake and maple bars are my favorite indulgences and I couldn't think of the last time I had either. Okay I could actually, but it has been a couple weeks and the maple bar wasn't that good. 

My kids were big helpers and couldn't wait to eat cake after supper.  My daughter fell asleep on the kitchen floor 5 minutes before supper and my son wanted his cake with no frosting so I left out a chunk for him before I frosted this.

completely from scratch, the recipe from the Hershey powdered baking cocoa

Plus, we had the most tender juicy amazing beef tenderloins, but seriously they were so good I had to fight my son and my husband for the last bite, so no pictures of that.  We also had some rabbit food (salad) and some rice, but compared to steak and cake, not hardly worth mentioning. 

My kitchen was one big mess most of the weekend, but I did get almost 2 gallons of applesauce canned and 7 pints of crab apple jelly made.  I also froze 4 pints of beets and today will freeze some carrots all from my garden. My kids think they are abused because I never buy jam or jelly at the store.  I always make it instead. 

Avery and I went for a ride yesterday too.   I am not sure what Cola, Shorty, Pepsi thought was so interesting, but clearly they couldn't be bothered to look at the camera.  I love the smile on my daughter's face.  She is excited about getting to help work cows this fall.

Cade also put Shorty through his paces in the corral. He is really gaining a lot of confidence with his riding this summer.
Rocky supervised it all in the horse pen
until Shorty came over to say hello and Rocky apparently didn't like horse breath in his face.
If you are like me, you are still thinking about the cake at the top of this post.  Currently I am trying to talk myself out of eating it for breakfast. 

Weekend workouts..

Friday  7 miles on the bicycle (I could tell I hadn't hopped on my bike in awhile)
             30 minutes strength training
Saturday 8 mile run
Sunday  1 hour on the elliptical
              20 minute HIIT with an abs focus

not a lot of running but since I ran Tues, Wed, and Thurs and will today I wanted to get in some cross training.  Two weeks until Ragnar Colorado!!! 

Three Things Thursday

1. I think my little Cola dog is very happy that we are back home.  We got in a pretty easy paced 10 miles this morning.  I felt pretty done by the last mile, but my strained quad was feeling good so I call it a good run.

2.  I turned on my Garmin this morning and left it in the window to find satellites while I finished getting ready to run, when I came back to it, there was a blank screen.  Ugh.  My first thought was dead battery, even though I had it plugged in yesterday.  I made a couple of attempts to plug it in, but I could never get it to do anything or connect to my computer.  I finally got it to rest, but then had nothing but weird things on the screen.   I reset it three more times before finally it decided to work. and it had a full battery. 

Not really sure what the deal was. It worked fine yesterday.

I hope this isn't the beginning of the end for my watch.  It did work for my run and held pretty consistent with MayMyRun app on my phone, so I am hoping it is fine.

3. I got this super bright orange shirt and am rather in love with it, except my orange compression socks are not bright enough for it.  So as soon as I came home from my run I ordered the neon orange. Not the greatest picture, but you can see my socks are lacking in brightness compared to my shirt. Clearly I need brighter socks.

Where I have been

First the big big news.. today is the first day of school.  My daughter is off to kindergarten and my son is off to 1st grade.  Big milestones!  I thought we were doing great this morning only to learn the bus will now be coming 15 minutes earlier than last year, while I was still blow drying my daughters hair.  We had to wash it this morning because her brother got toothpaste in it last night when they were getting ready for bed. 

I barely had time to throw in a quick braid and get the kids out the door for a picture and the bus was here!  Luckily it comes right into our driveway.

Now for the where I have been!  We went on a quick family vacation over the weekend and had a great time.  Saturday we went to the Lewis and Clark Caverns and saw lots of great cave formations. 






                           
After that we headed over to Virginia and Nevada Cities to explore the old gold rush towns. 
Sunday we went and did the self tour of the old Montana State Prison, which parts of were very creep and said to be haunted.  We didn't have any ghostly encounters.  I am not sad about that. They also had an old car museum at the prison.  The kids thought they were being tortured looking at all the cars.

We also took a drive through Phillipsburg MT where my husband worked on a ranch before I met him,  They have a great candy store there and the kids favorite part was the phenomenal playground the very small school has. I think we spent at least an hour and a half there.

Monday we headed back towards home and made a stop at the very fabulous Museum of the Rockies and took in two planetariums shows and looked at as many exhibits as the kids could handle.

Our final stop was the Grizzly Bear Encounter place right outside of Bozeman, MT.  There were two bears out while we were there and they were very active.  The guy at the place was full of great tips and information on bears. 

We also made a random stop somewhere along the way at a lake to play around and practice skipping rocks across the water.


Fun times.  One last little hurrah before school started.


I also didn't run at all on vacation.  I don't even feel bad about it.  I kind of wanted the whole weekend to be all about spending time with the kids.  Now here I sit in an empty house and have lots of time on my hands to run and workout.  Feels strange.

I admit I took this whole week off.  The first part of the week I wanted to just have to spend time with the kids and the rest of the week is all for me.  HAHAHAHA!

Three Things Thursday

1. Yesterday was kind of a crazy day at work.  Normally the first case of the day starts at 7:20.  Yesterday was a meeting morning so that means the first case of the day doesn't start until 8:20.  No meeting yesterday though, instead I went to a memorial service for a nurse I worked with for many years that passed away a couple of weeks ago.  He was an old hippy surfer who moved to Montana attracted by the cowboy lifestyle.  One of his big claims to fame was attending Woodstock.
,
So anyway, my first case was supposed to start at 10:30.  Folks this is nearly half way through my 8 hour shift!  So I helped with other things and then found out we were further delayed.  My first case of the day didn't start until 12:30.  Then all the other rooms were so busy at 3 when I am supposed to get off work that there was no one to relieve me out.  I ended up staying at work until almost 5.  Whew! 

Even though I nearly pulled a ten hour shift I felt like I had barely worked since my day got started so late.  Helps when you like the people you work with and get to listen to good music.

2. Had a great little 5 mile run already this morning with my little dog.  No big hills today, just an easy relatively flat run.  That will be part A of my workouts today and part B will include some arm and core strengthening. 

3. My parents were brave and took my kids and their cousins to the fair on Tuesday.  The kids had a great time and I didn't have to go on any rides.  Awesome.  Fair rides make me want to vomit, especially spinning ones and my kids always seem to want to get on something very spinney.

Happy National Left Hander's Day from 2 South Paws

My daughter and I are both south paws so here on some fun lefty facts. My paternal grandparents are both lefty's too.

 1. Left Hander's Day was started in August 13 1976 by Left Handers International. 

 2. About 7 percent of the population is left handed. 

 3. Lefties are also called "Southpaws". 4. In twins, there is a high tendency for one to be left-handed.

 5. 1 in 4 Apollo astronauts were left-handed. 

 6. 4 of the 5 original designers of the Macintosh computer were left-handed. 

 7. Left-handers usually reach puberty 4 to 5 months after right-handers. 

 8. George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama are all left handed. Ronald Regan was left handed too. 

 9. Pablo Picasso, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Leonardo Di Vinci, and Michelangelo were also left handed. 

 10. Right handed people use the left side of their brains. Left handed people use the right sides of their brains. 

 11. Left handers tend to adjust quickly to seeing underwater. 

 12. Right handers tend to chew food on the right side, left handers tend to chew on the left side. 

 13. Albert Einstein was left handed. . 

14. Left handed people who have higher I.Q.s tend to have an I.Q. of over 140. (this surely is true) 

 15. In some cultures it is impolite to touch your food with your left hand. source 

 p.s. Yesterday I did a 10 mile long run and even though the heat kicked my butt and I chaffed my armpits my quad feels great. I think I may have turned a major corner in my comeback. WOOT!

Weekend Success

I had two rather fabulous runs over the weekend.  Saturday I did an even 8 miles and Sunday I did a pretty hilly 7.  My right quad didn't give me so much as a niggle.  I would call that a pretty big success. 

The wild sunflowers on the side of the road are all going gangbusters right now.  They are one of my favorite flowers, happy and cheerful.

I took the kids to town yesterday and we finished the school shopping.  Well almost, I still need to find some water color paints for my daughter.  Apparently they are in high demand this year.  We also stopped at the candy store where I say this sign.

I hate spiders, creepy eight legged little freaks.  My son had one on him once and he was crying for some help and all I could do was tell him to brush it off.  He wasn't impressed.  I ended up getting the stick and brushing it off.  It was a large garden spider and I sure as hell didn't want it on me!

One more shot from the candy store.  The kids both picked out lollipops but I went for a bag of Jelly Belly Beans.  Love those little nuggets of fruity sweetness.

From yesterday's run.  Love my Altra Torin's but these shoes are a clear case for Lock Laces. 

Apparently the combination of school shopping and going to a BBQ in the afternoon wore my kids out.  They were both asleep by 6pm last night and I enjoyed a quiet night with my husband. 

Kona Kase review and coupon code

I was excited when I got asked to review a Kona Kase, I always see people post pictures with such yummy things that I want to try.  I couldn't wait to rip into this box when it showed up in my mailbox.  Seriously, I could hardly take it.  What yummy things were in there waiting for me?!

The big reveal...

what you don't see is the Enjoy Life Seed and Fruit Mix, (I ate it before I could take a picture).

Also included inside is an inspirational quote

are you inspired?

 and a card with all the contents listed as well as the websites where you can find each of the contents.  You can also give each item a grade so if you ate the whole box really fast you can remember if you liked it or not.

My favorite 3 things in the box were

1. Perky Jerky (go Team Beef!)(I already have more of this sitting in my house)
2. Health Warrior Chia Bars (big fan of chia here)(just ate some in my oatmeal)
3. Garuka Bar (these were amazing)(I could eat one everyday)

There wasn't anything I didn't like and wouldn't eat again.  Good stuff. The only thing I haven't tried yet is the Body Glove Surge.  Mostly because I am not doing long runs right now really and I am saving it for when I finally get in a run over two hours.   Hopefully that will be sooner than later. 

If you want to try a Kona Kase for yourself use the code "GIFTSUMMER"  to receive $5 Off  your first Kase.  They normally run $15, but I noticed if you order 3 months at a time the price reduces. 

Final take on the box.. a great way to try new products without having to go shopping.  Pretty sure I would have had to go to multiple stores, and order off the internet to try all of these things here. 

Disclaimer:  I was compensated with a free Kona Kase in exchange for this review.  I was not required to give a positive review, all opinions expressed are my own, as always.

Three Things Thursday

1. This whole right quad thing is taking WAY longer than I ever expected it to heal and be back to 100% .  I am sure it would have healed a lot faster if I were able to just take the time off running/exercising in general when it happened, but I go CRAZY if I can't do something.  It is getting there.   I was talking to a gal at work Tuesday and she said her husband tore his quad ten years ago and it still acts up.  Not really the kind of thing I want to hear. 

Makes me wonder if I am going to have to give up on the whole speedy runner thing and accept a slower pace. It does great if I keep the pace 8:30 to 9:30ish.

I wonder if I can do that and be happy about.

2. Don't get me wrong I am extremely grateful and happy I am running. An incredibly gifted and compassionate surgeon that I have worked with for over the last at least 10 or 12 years had a pretty big stroke a couple of months ago.  He was an avid fitness enthusiasts and we shared a love of Bodyrock and HIIT workouts in general.  He also had recently completed a century ride. 

Now they don't know if he will ever operate again. He is in very intense rehab just to get back to the basics right now.  I can't even begin to describe how much his patients loved him.  They would put up with longer wait times to get surgery and appointments to go and see him.  He has three young children.

So yes I am grateful to be able to run.  Every time, I start feeling sorry for myself I remember Mike and I run for him because he can't right now. That he didn't like to run because it bothered his knees and he would rather bike is totally beside the point. I am running because I can and I am grateful.

All about perspective. 

3.  My daughter made a bed on the coffee table yesterday and to our great surprise she not only went to sleep there happily at bedtime, she slept there ALL night.

I can't think that it was all the comfy, but hey whatever floats her boat and keeps her from crawling into bed with me.  She tends to get turned around and start kicking people in the head.

A run with my girl

My daughter was very determined to run with me today.  She was also quite sure she wanted to run all the way with me.  It took quite a bit of convincing that a mile would be a long way for her and I was planning on 7. 

She didn't walk once for the first .77 miles and ran happy the whole way.  We turned around then and walked a little, hydrated, had a photo session then started back.  She had to walk a little more on the way back and agreed that 7 miles was not what she wanted to do yet after all, but someday when she got bigger she assured me.

Once we got close to the shop where my Dad and brother were busy doing some maintenance on the combines she assured me she could go the rest of the way back by herself.  My sister's house is just down the hill from the shop, so I waved goodbye to little cowgirl and started off on the rest of my run.

love her little running capris and skirt

I did another mile until I got to a hilly part of the road and ran some hill repeats.  Everything felt pretty good, just a niggle in my quad that was less and less as the run progressed.  I did stop and eat some chokecherries.  Yum

I ended up 7.7 miles counting the 1.1 miles I ran with my daughter. 

Couple of randoms.

Ragnar Colorado is now a month away!  I at this point have reconciled with the fact that I am going to just run my legs at easy pace and not worry about how fast I am going. 

My kids found out who their teachers are going to be and are excited about that.  My daughter will have for kindergarten that same teacher I had for third grade.  My son will have a gal who is also a runner and is awesome.  Her son will also be in my son's class.  Two weeks until school starts!

Update and a Laugh

So I have been a bit of a bad blogger, but it is summer and life gets busy!  Last Wednesday I decided to try out my legs a little (prematurely) for a shorter speedier run.  Besides proving to myself that I am longer in the awesome shape that I was three months ago I managed to stress out my right quad.

I am a little mad at myself for that one.  The good news is that I did something smart afterwards and rested Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and did the elliptical Sunday (I'm not perfect) and then took it out for an easy run today.

5 miles at about 9 min/mile pace and it felt pretty darn good.  YAY.  So since I work tomorrow it will be another rest day tomorrow.  In retrospect a cut back week about now (or last week) is really a good idea. I have ran a lot more miles in July than I did in June.  I am not keeping track right now I just know.

In other random news I went to a small outdoor concert for Brenn Hill Friday night and had a great time with my husband. Super huge bonus points to anyone who has heard of him.

and some things that made me laugh today.  From Runner's World's 25 Worst Questions to Ask a Runner.   Which ones are your fav?  These  are mine.

 and number one on my list.

Three Things Thursday

1. Clearly we don't have enough to do at work some days.  My friend Karla was going around challenging people to arm wrestling contests. These pictures are only posted because I won.
It was a pretty good contest, in the end I had more stamina. All those pushups paid off I guess.

2. My kids begged me to take them to a local gravel pile a couple of nights ago so they could look for cool rocks and play in the sand. Some kids go to the beach, mine go to the gravel pile.  It is pretty fun to dig around and look for fun rocks and there are some really great sand piles to play in.  The kids both took a bucket of sand home.

3. Wednesday we weren't busy at work so I got the day off and I decided to go for a shorter and faster ish run.  I did mile repeats and paused my Garmin in between each. 

It pretty much kicked my butt and made me want to vomit. Coming back from injuries kind of suck, this used to be so easy for me and to top it off my right quad feels mad today so I am taking a forced rest day from running.  So maybe I shouldn't have done the mile repeats.  It just felt so good to run a little faster.

ugh

When is the last time you were in an arm wrestling contest?