May 2019

May 4, 2019:

Last big run before Timp Trails. I was hoping to have had 3-4 runs just like today’s distance and elevation under my belt by this point, but that wasn’t in the cards. 

I got my nutrition dialed in, no stomach issues on today’s run, and very minimal ankle/foot/post tib tendonitis flares, so all in all, I think the changes I made were good ones. This run wiped me out, I’m hoping race day will have enough good vibes to keep me moving forward. It was great to tag along with Jen and Kat the first half of the run, and see Jen and Adrienne at the top of some trail snow.

May 4, 2019:

Just because Utah doesn’t have an ocean doesn’t mean we can’t go look for shells, fossilized ones! The last photo is a bivalve mussel with both hemispheres intact. The bottom is a plain brown rock. The shell shows the growth rings. But there’s parts of the shell chipped away to show the flesh inside is agatized! The boys had fun right up until I told them they couldn’t wander off because of mountain lions and it started raining.

May 4, 2019:

Easter Pirates made a pit stop at our house 🐣 🏴‍

May 4, 2019:

Max gave a talk during primary on Easter. He shared our new Easter nestling egg story, and said his favorite egg was the heart, because Jesus taught us to love everyone.

May 4, 2019:

The boys are getting into new book series, The BoxCar Children. I loved these books when I was little, and it’s neat to see Pace and Max read a whole book in an afternoon, completely engrossed in the story.

May 4, 2019:

The boys cashed in their Get Out of School Free tickets, and we spent the day buying new summer clothes, finding new LEGO sets, hanging out at Coin Crazy—it was super fun watching Max get excited at a racing game, he even got some bonus cars he could choose to race, one of which was a triceratops 😂. Max and I also won BIG on the ticket wheel—350 tix!! Cubby’s for dinner, and new video games (to look forward to their screen break being over in another week), and so, so many games of Incan Gold.

May 10, 2019:

Max’s first loose tooth finally popped out! He had that tooth hanging by a thread for weeks, I’m surprised he didn’t swallow it at night. He was playing outside with friends and picked up a bucket of balls, and accidentally hit his chin/lower lip, and popped that tooth right out! He cane in grinning, holding his tooth, and asked, “Is there blood?” 

The first fairy is very generous on the first tooth lost!

May 11, 2019:

I had a stress dream last night where I woke up around 8:30 on race day, and didn’t realize it was race day til about 12:15. I was so heartbroken I’d missed my event I’d been training for. My next thought was, “Well, I guess I’m running the course on my own tomorrow.” Even my dream self knows I have something to prove to myself. 

This marathon makes me nervous. I felt much better prepared for my last one—I’d had more 20-24 mile runs under my belt, and felt consistently strong on the longer runs. This course has over 1500ft more elevation than my last marathon, and I’ve only done one 20 mile run in training.

And I’ve felt pushed to my max on so many runs lately. I feel like I work so, so hard on each run, but my work doesn’t seem to equate with speed. I spent this week listening to my body—instead of getting up early and pushing my cross training, I slept in til 6:30, ate whatever I wanted, and did yoga. Once. My body just kept saying “Sleep...I’m tired”. 

So on this run, my last one before the race next week, I had two goals: 1. Climb, and 2. Stay calm. I headed up Squaw Peak, and it was more of a mental run than anything. Don’t push too hard, just breathe. I felt good. Strong, even. I don’t know how fast I was going, but I kept repeating my goals: don’t push too hard, just breathe. When I got to the top, I sat and had a stare down with the Timp Trails course across the valley, tracing the course and seeing my feet on the sections of the course I’ve already run. To be melodramatic, it was a little emotional. 

I think it might be an emotional run next week.

May 17, 2019:

Playing our new Exploding Kittens game—we were laughing at a hilarious card describing a black hole and a goat, or something.

May 17, 2019:

Friends of ours keep goats on their property, we got to go help feed the babies! Pace thought it was pretty fun, but Max was a little scared and stayed in my arms while we were outside.

May 17, 2019:

Happy Mother's Day cards from my sweet boys.  We made Nutella bread later in the afternoon.

May 17, 2019:

Bishka got flowers in the mail, but she is gone visiting MM and DD, so we get to enjoy them. At Bishka’s suggestion, we are measuring the flower’s growth.

May 17, 2019:

Another dance lesson for Pace, another book for Max.

May 18, 2019:

Timp Trail Marathon 2019, aka, Mudfest, aka Mudtopia, aka So Much Frickin Mud. I cannot put into words how lucky I feel. I got into my head a week or so ago about this race, and immediately had friends texting me to help me get into a better head space. Then Lorri texted me asking if she could give me a ride to the starting line, and that meant the world to me (she also did her out and back run along the BST so we high fived it, AND she met me at the finish line!! 🤗❤️). I immediately felt a community around me, saying You can do this, and we’re here to back you up. Between that, all the training runs I did with friends, and all of David’s support, love, and massages, I’m one lucky girl. 

By Mile 3: soaked through.
Mile 6: felt the trail high, and my only thought was, “I l😍ve this so much!!!”
Mile 9: cursing my gaiters for slipping twice already from all the mud and having to stop and readjust them. I eventually took them off and bagged them. Not worth the energy going into the annoyance.
Mile 15-16: rain turned to snow. The good news was that the snow was sticky and perfect for running on, and, no post holing! Made the section from Grove to Battle feel pretty relaxing.
Mile 20: V8 break. (I ate only about ¼ of the snacks I packed, but V8 is always worth packing—such a treat at this mile...any other time it’s gross 😋)
Mile 25: start repeating David’s mantra he taught me: *This* is the mile you’ve been training for, *this* is the mile you’ve been training for, *this* is the mile you’ve been training for.
Mile 26.2: got a little emotional seeing David and the boys and Lorri at the finish line, but also felt a little like a bada** for still feeling pretty strong and not completely wasted. 

I feel kinda torn about my time of 7:27...when I registered for this race a few months ago, my original goal was to beat my Moab marathon time of 6:50. David said I should have a more realistic goal, that the Timp course is nothing like Moab, it has over 1500ft more elevation, and weather is notoriously bad. So I adjusted my goal to come in under a generous 8 hours. 

I felt strong the whole time, and I knew this came from my training. I could pinpoint exact training runs I did that were perfect for this course and kept me moving (albeit at my pokey pace). I kept telling myself to wait til mile 20 to really push it. But the mud just kept coming. When there wasn’t mud, there was snow. I think there was a total of 4-6 miles on the course that was good trail instead of mud. I wasted so much time trying to navigate the mud, slip through the mud, try and climb in the mud. I kept asking myself, what would David do through this section, and most of the time, I knew he’d just run right through it, so I tried to do that, and eventually just started bombing through muddy sections instead of picking my way around them. 

Have I mentioned the mud? There was every kind of mud on that course today, deep mud, puddle mud, slippery mud, waterfall mud, clodhopper mud...I almost lost my shoes a handful of times from 4-5” mud that tried to eat my shoes off my feet, grabbed onto branches to pull myself up steep sections when I’d take a step and slip back two, tried to be careful so I wouldn’t twist a knee slipping and sliding through the mud. Ugh. 

I think if it hadn’t been for navigating the mud, I would have met my original goal and beat my Moab time. Kinda frustrating that I didn’t do that due to factors out of my control...But I am proud I finished still feeling strong, and knowing I’m stronger now than six months ago. And, you know what this means—I’m just going to have to do it again and hope for less mud to prove it to myself 😏🙌🏻

Update: I came in 85/122 overall, 27/42 in the womens category. Would you believe first place overall came in at 3:55??!!

(Notice how clean everything is...)

I love this part of running events--the very beginning when everyone is lining up to start.  It's just the coolest buzz and makes me happy!

(This is in the very first mile, and I thought, "Good thing I'm just stubborn enough to finish this thing, regardless of weather or trail conditions...)

(To be fair, this sign was for motorized vehicles, but it still made me laugh considering the amount of traffic on the trail!)

The snow was perfect and runnable...and then back to mud...

I have the coolest friends--this sign met us at home!  David said helping me take off my soaked and muddy compression socks was the hardest thing he'd done all day.  This coming from someone who benchpressed 325pounds!

May 25, 2019:

Pace had his end of year school program, and he was grinning from ear to ear during the whole song and dance. You could see him counting the beats, and he was spot on the whole time. 

Max was home sick that day with a fever. No other symptoms, just a fever, so he missed his program. He didn’t seem to mind sitting in the audience watching his classmates do the dancing, he just talked to me the whole time pointing out what he thought was cool.

May 25, 2019

No complaints about trail conditions this morning.  It was fun heading back up to Timp this morning for a déjà vu run.  Despite aaaaaallllll the rain we've had, there were just a few puddle sections, trails were mostly butter.  Also no complaints about post-trail breakfast!

May 25, 2019:

The mornings are such a rush, I didn't get a photo of the boys heading out on their last day of school.  But we did measure them!  They each grew about 2 1/2 inches over the school year!

May 27, 2019:

Last minute adventures are always the best, even if they are one-night stands 😉😋 An overnight camping trip was the perfect way to ring in summer break! Thanks, San Rafael Valley, for sharing the breathtaking views of the Wedge, throwing rocks over cliffs, finding pictographs, and crossing Utah’s last suspension bridge.

May 29, 2019:

Saturday was the season finale for the symphony as well as Michal’s and my final birthday tickets. 

We started with a lime cheesecake at emulsions and fillings on Provo center st. 

We’re old pros at navigating our way to city creek mall now, and made it with plenty of time to get a couple pre-performance photos of Abravanel Hall. 

Mahler’s first symphony is a mashup of Jewish folk music and funeral marches. One minute the brass section is blasting and the next minute you’re listening to fiddler on the roof. Mahler suffered from childhood trauma and manic depression and his music shows it. The combination of different musical genres felt disjointed to us and the instruments were playing at their maximum volume at points, uncomfortably loud. That said, hearing the performance live was incredible. There is simply no way a recorded version of Mahler’s 1st could ever capture its dynamics. 

Beethoven’s work paved the way for what Mahler did. Compared to Beethoven, Mahler sounded like rock music. As we were crossing the street to our car a motorcycle was at a red light blasting Metallica. The dots were easy to connect, Mahler paved the way for Metallica. 

I’ve loved going to the symphony with my beautiful wife.