Snow Day!

Posted in Adventures at Home, Bailey by Annie T

It snowed again today!! The snow started falling at 7:30AM and didn’t stop until another 3-4 inches were heaped atop the snow that we got on Sunday. Yay snow! Matt took a “snow day” (aka spent some quality time with his early Christmas present, an Xbox One) and I went into work for a few hours and enjoyed a productive morning in the nearly empty office. Once the roads were plowed I came home to play with Bailey in the snow. Did I mentioned that I LOVE snow??!!

Bailey loves the snow, too. Here are some photos from this afternoon… see the one where I totally whacked her in the head with a giant snowball? Oops!!

Bailey in the snow

Snowy Tree in the Front Yard

Yay snow!

Snow Day!

Snowy Branches

Bonk!!! Snowball to the face!

She’s ready for me to throw the snowball…

Stalking under the pine trees

Patrolling the yard

Bailey’s making a funny face.

Bailey

I shoveled the whole driveway!

Frolicking in the snow

After playing with Bailey I shoveled the whole driveway… talk about a work out! Now I just have to find the strength to get up off of this comfy couch and go run my daily mile(s) for the Runner’s World Holiday Streak. Today will be day 163 of my streak, woohoo!

Did you have a snow day today? How did you spend your day?

28Nov2013

Turkey Trot 5K

Posted in Race Recaps by Annie T

Happy Thanksgiving! Matt and I kicked off our holiday weekend at 8:45am with the Seven Summits 5K Turkey Trot in Chesterbrook, PA. Well actually we didn’t end up kicking anything off at 8:45 because the race started extremely late… What I really should say is that we stood around with 595 other runners for 30 minutes in the windy 29°F weather before kicking our weekend off at 9:15! 🙂 The cold wait obviously didn’t slow Matt down… he was one of the top 100 finishers and his 23:53 finishing time was a 28 second personal best!

My race wasn’t too shabby, either. I finished in 25:23 which was good enough for 56th female (out of 317). Overall, I’m happy with that because of the wind and frigid temps, but I have to admit that my goal going into the race was to run sub-25 so I’m a tiny bit sad that I didn’t do that. Not too sad though, because I still came within a mere 7 seconds of my personal best! Plus, now I feel that much more determined to run even faster in our next 5K on December 15th!!

Here are my RunKeeper stats for the race. Probably my most even-paced race so far… I was attempting to go out nice and steady and maintain an 8:00-ish pace for the entire race (which would have given me my desired sub-25 time) but I couldn’t quite keep that pace up. In my next race I think I’ll go back to the strategy of going out more aggressively in the first mile and finishing with whatever I have left.

As I mentioned before there were several hundred people in the race so after we finished we didn’t stick around. Instead we hopped in the car, cranked up the heat, and went out for bagels and coffee. Oh, but we were well disciplined and did run a little cool down in the bagel shop’s parking lot before going in to eat. I’m sure the people in the shop thought we were nuts! Here I am on the drive home with my coffee. I was very happy to be done running and ready to start the Thanksgiving festivities!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!!

Miles since last post: 27.2
Days since last post: 7
Average Daily Miles since July 18th: 4.79
TOTAL MILES: 641.2

Related Posts:
• Let’s Go Streaking! (11/21/13)
• Trinity Presbyterian 5K (11/2/13)
• Oy Vey 5K (10/27/13)
• Fueled Up & Fired Up 5K (10/19/13)
• Limping my Way to 400 Miles (10/3/13)
• Run-A-Muck 5K (9/22/13)
• The Challenge Begins: 100 Mile iPad Mini Challenge (7/23/13)

21Nov2013

Let’s Go Streaking!!

Posted in Challenges, Race Recaps by Annie T

Join me for a Holiday streak by completing a mile a day
from Thanksgiving to New Year’s!

364 days ago I decided it was time to get off the couch and start exercising. I publicly committed to a challenge that seemed pretty manageable… all I had to do was walk, run, elliptical, or otherwise move myself one mile every day between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. This challenge really motivated me and I soon learned that it’s actually very easy to squeeze a single mile into my daily routine!

I first read about streaking on a friends blog (thanks Jocelyn!) where I learned that Holiday Streaking is an official Runner’s World challenge. The concept is simple: commit to your mile-a-day and then, once you get into a routine, you’ll be hooked and you will do anything to complete your mile and keep your streak going! The streak is also conveniently timed for the holiday season when we’re all probably drinking and eating a little more than usual so the regular exercise really pays off.

Last year I liked streaking so much that I decided to keep going for 205 consecutive days before taking a break for our honeymoon. I started back up on July 1st and I’m currently on day 144 of my new streak. My second streak acted as sort of a gateway to even more mileage when we got a treadmill in mid-July and I think I’m now officially addicted to running!

Matt and I will be kicking off our Thanksgiving festivities with the Seven Summits 5K Turkey Trot on Thursday morning. I’m really looking forward to the race AND to all of the mashed potatoes and stuffing that I will victoriously eat afterwards. Yum!

Will you streak with me from Thanksgiving to New Year’s?
Declare your intent in the comments below!

Since this is a running post I can’t end without noting my latest running tally… 600 miles is history!

Miles since last post: 90.8
Days since last post: 19
Average Daily Miles since July 18th: 4.83
TOTAL MILES: 614

3Jul2013

July Update: A new streak begins and the garden keeps on growing!

Posted in Adventures at Home, Challenges by Annie T

Matt and I are home after spending 10 days in beautiful St. Lucia and a few days in Western Maryland for the DockDogs Regional Championships. I’ll post honeymoon photos and the dockdogs recap soon, but in the meantime I have some updates!

After 205 consecutive days my mile-a-day streak ended the day before our honeymoon began (June 13th). I initially thought I would keep on streaking while in St. Lucia but for the first week we were staying in the rainforest on top of a mountain at the end of a precariously washed out dirt road so running a mile a day wasn’t really feasible. Oh well! 🙂 As of July 1st I have started a new streak. We’ll see if I can beat 205 days… I’ll reach that goal on January 21, 2014.

In other news, we had record rainfall in June and as a result my vegetable garden has been growing like crazy! Check out this photo that I took today… a comparison shot from my May 10th gardening post is below.

Quite a difference, right? When we got home from St. Lucia I was shocked to see how much the parsley, thyme and tomatoes had grown and I was overwhelmed by the enormous zucchini plants!! (I think my basil was overwhelmed too… it’s now living in the shadow of those large-leafed behemoths!) Here are some other photos of my garden and back yard flowers from today.

Purple Hosta Flowers

Baby Green Tomatoes!

Pink Zinnia

Mmm… Basil

Shasta Daisy

Mint

Monster Zucchini Plants

While I was wandering around with my camera this afternoon I was surprised to spot a white-tailed deer in the front yard. It is quite common for us to see deer in our area (usually in other peoples’ yards or dashing across the road!) but it is very, VERY rare to see a deer in our yard because Bailey has made it her life mission to stalk and chase any and all wildlife that comes within her invisible fence boundary.

I guess the neighborhood deer herd realized that Bailey was not at home for most of June and as a result they are now making themselves comfortable in the front yard. Luckily Bailey was on her game this afternoon and as soon as this deer made a move Bailey (who must have been stalking it from a different angle as I snapped away with the camera) came blasting over, chased it away, and then proceeded to roll and rub in the deer’s scent for a good 30 seconds. Good dog, Bailey (even if you do smell now…)