7 month check in??

I had this idea to do a mid-year check in on all the goals I set at the beginning of the year (and the other day I listened to a podcast with Chalene Johnson on push goals and how to be successful at setting and maintaining goals that reminded me again), but now it’s August, so it’s kind of less a mid-year check in and more….a mid-year plus a little more check in.  The good news is I’ve been doing productive sorts of things in the meantime!  Mostly!  But anyway!

• Practice yoga more regularly – I started the year off REALLY strong with this, going 2-3 times a week and just loving it.  I still love yoga (especially a really awesome juicy hot vinyasa class with enormously loud music where I can just lose myself in my body), but…..it’s summer, and being in a 100 degree room full of other sweaty bodies is just harder to find the motivation for right now.  BUT I’ve still been going around once a week, and putting in a lot of work on the “flashier” aspects – after months of trying, I finally nailed getting up into & holding bound headstand without any sort of wall! (Actually my first successful bound handstand with no wall happened on a precarious cliff edge at Mesa Verde in Colorado….

• Incorporate more strength training – YES!!  I’ve been going to barbell-based group fitness classes two days a week, which have been fabulous, even though they use simple iron grip equipment & not full size bars – I’ve definitely seen large strength improvements. My squats, chest & back have gone up exponentially and I’m slowly dragging my biceps along as well.  I just started a new boot camp program and let me tell you what, outdoor tire flips & prowler pushes ALL DAY make you feel pretty bad ass.  My new goal is to get into my gym’s Alpha Training (similar to Crossfit, with Olympic lifting & WOD-style workouts) by the end of the year!

• Read 50 books – I’m at 36! Definitely on track to finish 50+ by the end of the year.  Reading is something I haven’t done that much of in the past couple years, and it has felt REALLY good to get back into it.  I’ve been carving out an hour or so at night to do nothing but read from the comfort of my bed (I’ve even in the past week been starting to leave my phone OUTSIDE the bedroom charging through the night, which I never thought I’d be able to do…) and it’s such a nice way to wind down at the end of the day.

• Get more done – I’d say this is about 75/25.  I HAVE been doing much better at planning out my days to make the  most of my time, and I’ve gotten a lot of things done that I’ve been wanting to/planning on and at forcing myself to just get up and accomplish a task, but there are still those 5-10 minute jobs that I just can’t find it in my not to procrastinate on…

• Write more – PFFT. Moving on.  

• Run at least 6 races – I’ve done 3 so far (The Color Vibe, Hightail to Ale, & Insane Inflatable 5K) and have another one scheduled tonight (Glow in the Park!), so I’m almost there J  Looking at a Halloween race as well as maybe something closer to winter (Hot Chocolate 5k in Columbus is a possibility). I actually really like running when it’s colder out!

• Brew one batch a month – I’ve kept CLOSE to this. I’ve also gotten a lot more scientific in my brewing & started doing a much better job monitoring the process & my efficiencies, which I think has made a pretty substantial difference in overall quantity.  I’ve made a few really quality brews this year, and I’m pretty excited about this barleywine that I’ve got fermenting away right now, as well as the watermelon gose that’s currently in the works!  The second half of this goal was to seriously look in to an apprenticeship or volunteering at a brewery, which I have NOT put time and effort into yet, but I have one lead (a friend is head brewer at a brewery that is expanding) and one potential lead (a brewery run by a guy in my homebrew club is slated to open in a couple months), so the possibilities are out there….  

Bon bon bons & beers beers beers <3

•  Go camping for the first time ever! – YES!!  This happened and it was fabulous!  I went out to Colorado over my birthday and was treated to some glorious company, incredible beer, mountains to die for and also an army of Scottie dogs (no, really).  Despite the fact that it happened over a month ago, I still want to write about the experience so maybe someday…

Overall I think I’ve made some pretty decent progress – obviously there’s some things I’ve skimped out on, but 2015 has been MUCH more good than bad when it comes to personal improvement, and there’s still 5 months left!

ziplining in the dark

Last summer I did a glow-themed night 5k at Camp Dearborn and it was wonderful - not only did it feel great to run at night when it was a little cooler, but the environment at the park was fabulous. Campers with glow necklaces and sparklers say outside of their trailers with Christmas lights strung along them and cheered us on as we did two laps around the gorgeous evening scenery & I PRed my 5k time by over a minute!

The point of the story is that a bunch of friends and I have been talking about going to Adventure Park ropes course & ziplining for a long time & last Friday they were having a special "glow night", I remembered how fabulous that run was, and we were sold.

Suited up and ready to go (we thought).

Adventure Park calls itself an "aerial forest park," which is actually a pretty apt description. The park has 20 different "trails" of platforms in the trees connected by various arrangements of ropes, cables, wood and ziplines that form bridges between platforms. It all looks like a fun easy romp through an obstacle course, but IT IS NOT.

Coworker bonding time!

Being the badasses we are, after getting
our harnesses and going through the safety briefing, we decided immediately to start with the mid-level course, which put us 10 feet up in the air to begin and lulled us into an incredibly false sense of security about degree of difficulty. Fresh off of some pretty basic (though challenging) rope bridges & some awesome ziplines through the trees, we decided to conquer the next harder course (actually we tried to skip to an even harder one, but were chastised by some employees).

The second course took me and two of my brave friends 20 feet up in the air and began with a deceptively easy bridge, ladder, and zipline...and then immediately went crazy. Let me tell you, being short is NOT an advantage at a ropes course. At one point I got tangled up between my cable clips and the cables holding the platform up, swaying back and forth 20 feet above the ground and 10 feet away from a platform, had to back up to right the situation and finish crossing super awkwardly and oh yeah, the park lights died right in the middle of all this!! My lucky friends were safely back on the previous platform, as only one person is allowed on an obstacle at a time, while I clung for dear life to a tiny cable and inched my way forward until I finally made it to the next platform (but not before two more mini light failures!).

We did all (well, the six of us who opted to try it) make it through the blue course & were rewarded with a 20-foot free jump/repel at the end - once you convinced yourself it was okay to jump off of a platform that high off the ground into the pitch black, it was a grand old time.

I opted to leave my phone in my car (because I definitely saw myself dropping it from 20 feet up and being faced with hundreds of dollars in replacement fees), but we did grab a couple pictures as we were walking around before it got dark out.

We never made it to those impossible looking triangles, but we'll get you next time, double black!!

At times the course felt like it was never going to end, and I found myself dreading the next obstacle - but my friends & I pushed each other to finish, and honestly despite how I felt at the time, the adrenaline rush was amazing, and it was a really cool experience to find new ways to push my body's limits. It was crazy how much of the challenge was all mental - the biggest challenge of all was having to force your mind to override when your body says no.   It was so easy to forget that when you jumped on a platform onto the zipline, you'd be sitting in your harness - the whole time my brain was screaming at me that there was nooooo way I had the upper body strength to hang on for the whole length of the rope.  But in retrospect, I had so much fun!  We're all still talking about the trials and tribulations of the zipline, and planning to go back and conquer the black and double black courses. And, to top it off, it was a serious no joke upper body workout. I was feeling it for days!!

(And of course, afterwards we chose to reward our weary bodies with a pineapple/feta/jalapeno pizza and a night of watching Little Shop of Horrors like the bunch of nerds we are - so all is well that ends well.)

the happiest 5k take 2!

Team Fit Britches 2014!

I have a turbulent history with 5ks - first I was all about them, then I decided I only liked silly themed races that didn't require me to just flat out run, then I realized they make me 400% miserable and swore them off in favor of exercise I actually enjoy, and now it seems like the tides are slowly turning. 

A few months ago a friend of mine and I decided we wanted to do a theme race & I suggested, based on my past experience last summer, The Color Run. (This may also have been influenced by the fact that doing the Toledo race meant we could go to the zoo & to Maumee Bay Brewery afterward.) We recruited some friends and ended up with a group of 6 & the team name "Fit Britches." (Thanks, autocorrect.)

Getting up at 4:30am to head down to Toledo made for an interesting drive...

At the starting line with my ladies, Alisha & Emily - shout to to Alisha for the super cute idea to amend her shirt to state "Fit" Britches, haha.

A pre-color shot of us with the classiest of all backgrounds...

It was a beautiful sunny day, but early enough that there was a touch of chill, so it was perfect running weather. I've been doing a lot of pacing work at the gym lately - I learned a huge part of my problem with running is my tendency to shoot out the gate way too hard and burn out before a mile is even up, so I've been doing a lot of steady paced runs at around 5.5-6 mph on the treadmill, and you guys, did it ever help.  I broke away from the group and ran a comfortable race in which I never thought I was going to die or hated my life, in about a half hour - despite stopping to get coated in paint every kilometer. And I felt GREAT. I couldn't believe how actually pleasant running 3.1 miles was!

An epic attempt to be coated in every color possible.

Of course the after party was phenomenal as usual - that's something the Color Run has always done right. Between the DJs and the dancing and the Zumba and the color packet throwing, it's by far the best post-race celebration I've been to yet (and that includes the ones with beer!).  It was also really lovely that the weather was a little cooler than my previous Color Run - the color looks much better when it's not caked all over your body with sweat ;)

Rest assured, Color Run, I will be back in 2015!