Ran my longest distance!

I am almost alway seeing one kind of creature or another when I am on the trail. If getting out and running or walking does not else, it keeps me in tune with the outdoors and all the different life in nature. Our world really is beautiful if you just look around and notice. :)

I've has several good runs lately. My longest being 8 miles. That's the longest I have run as of yet. I don't really know whether or not I should be working on extending my distance, or maybe increasing my speed. I did do some fartlek runs and I love them! Those are when my muscles really feel it. The long runs tire me out, but the speed work runs really challenge my body. I am anxious to do more of those.

I walked three miles early this morning and three miles this evening. I plan to do a speed run tomorrow morning if the weather allows, probably another three miles. We have had several inches of rain today and all of those little drainage ditches and nooks and crannies for water drain off are deep and rushing like crazy right now. I like it! It's cool to be on the trail and hear what sounds like a waterfall all around you.

Here are some photos from some of my runs/ walks, the last couple of weeks....

P.s. I'm not very good with positioning photos, especially when posting from my iPad!

Stealing Photos

So I haven't been writing but I have been keeping up with my running. As much as I am able to that is. There was a day last week that I was sick. I don't know what was wrong, I got up early and walked my trail with the intention of running later that afternoon. While I was walking, I started feeling chilled and the more I felt chilled, the more my body started to ache. When I got home I took my temp and sure enough, I had a fever of 100.4. No big deal, but I sure felt wiped out. I at first suspected the fever and feeling crumby could have been from my Rebif injection that I had given myself the night before. But usually, taking Tylenol or Ibuprofen takes care of that and it didn't this time. And I was just so weak and exhausted. I really think I just may have had a mild viral illness. I don't know, it's a mystery.

This is a photo my daughter just sent me from her walk she took this evening. So beautiful! I worked last night and have tonight and tomorrow night off. I wanted to get up today and either run or walk, but it didn't work out. I will go for a run early tomorrow. And maybe get another fast run, or walk in Tuesday morning as well. I've been trying to increase my distance for my long runs. I'm up to seven miles now. Not much compared to some, but I'm still happy about it. I really need to follow some sort of training plan even though I'm not training for anything. I know there are a lot of books out there. I'll have to research this more.... 

What a week/weekend

Well this last week I was due to work three nights in a row, from Monday - Wednesday. Wednesday I woke up with such a terrible headache that I called in sick. I don't call in sick very often, and especially for a headache, but this one was a doozy and the medication that I take for these bad headaches knock me out for sometimes a full day.

Which is what happened. I basically woke for a few minutes at a time on Wednesday and then stayed sleeping until Thursday morning. I was still feeling groggy but I made myself get up early Thursday morning for a run and ended up running 6.5 miles! That is a lot for me, my long runs consist of 5 miles max. It made me want to try and boost my goal to something like 10 miles for my long run. We will see. I really feel like by the time I am at mile 4 or 5, I could just keep going. I kind of wanted to keep going but I started feeling like I was going to need fuel and since I didn't have anything with me, I called it a day.

Our youngest kitty Frederick, that was born to a feral mama last summer on our property (we adopted Fred and took him to the vet for vaccines and then neutering when he was old enough) had been showing signs of some kind of gastrointestinal distress for the last couple of days off and on. I didn't get too concerned until by Friday morning, he was unable to keep anything inside his little body at all and it was apparent that he was very sick. I took him to the clinic that did his vaccines and surgery and after palpation to his abdomen, there was worry that he might have an obstruction. He needed an xray and their facility did not have radiography there. So I was sent on to another clinic. The other clinic did the xray and although there wasn't any sign of an obvious foreign object, his intestines did not look placed the way they should and then I was referred to another animal clinic, this one with emergency services such as ultrasound and specialty surgery. That is where he needed to stay, to rule out obstruction, pancreatitis, or other illnesses that could be causing him to be so sick.
$2000.00 later and he is home today, still feeling a bit under the weather but hopefully, on his way to being his old self. It wasn't an obstruction and they aren't totally sure what happened but I'm still worried because after that much money, how can I even afford to take him back if he starts getting worse again? But we sure are happy he is home. Here are a few photos of him at the hospital last night when we went to visit him.

We did have a little time to have fun on Saturday at an event called "Swinefest" which featured several wineries from Iowa, as well as several different restaurants and chefs that created lots of yummy dishes using pork. The ticket price was 40.00 in advance or 45.00 at the start of the event. It was my husband and I and one of my daughters and her boyfriend. On admission you are given a wine glass along with a coupon for one bottle of wine of your choice. You could then visit the booths and eat and drink wine, without paying for anything else unless you wanted to purchase more bottle of wine. Which we did. We ended up bringing home 7! bottles of wine which was including our 2 free bottles.
It was so much fun sampling all of the different types of wine and that they were all local wineries made it special too. The food was delicious and we definitely ate more than if we would have just went out to dinner somewhere. It was so much fun and everyone was so friendly and we have a lot of different ideas now of places to go and things to do. The different wineries all have all sorts of fun events that go on throughout the year, especially the summer months. We will not ever have any excuses to be bored!

My hubby and I

My daughter Laci and I

I don't have any photos with her handsome boyfriend from the event! Not purposely leaving him out!

Maybe this week I will have some photos with him in it. There is an event every Wednesday evening during the summer at the local zoo called "zoo brew" 

There is usually live music and they serve alcohol and food. It's an adults only event. I have tickets and hopefully everyone will be able to make it this week!

The next three nights

The next three nights I am working twelve hour shifts at the hospital. There are hard on a person, let me tell you. I will basically leave my home at shortly after 6pm, and won't return until the next morning at about 8am. Sometimes later. This pretty much decides for me that I won't get any work outs in. Someone people can do it, but not me. My routine is to come home, wash my face, brush my teeth and get into jammies. Maybe try to read but that doesn't last long until I am nodding off. Then I am up and have just enough time to drink a cup of coffee, shower and get ready, eat, and then it's time to go back to work. I love my job, but depressing! Especially when I am doing that for three nights in a row. 

So anyway, I decided to have an early morning run since it won't be until Thursday when I get run again. The weather was so nice! It was a little cloudy and a cool and breezy 64 degrees. It was perfect! It what so overcast that I had to check radar a couple of times to make sure it wasn't getting ready to storm. But nope, there wasn't anything in the forecast. I wish it was like is every early morning!

I did see a couple of new mushroom sprouting up:

I know there is nothing exciting about mushrooms (or maybe these are toadstools - probably poisonous!) but they strike my eye and there is something I feel to be beautiful in noticing yet different things in nature, no matter how insignificant they may seem. 

I need a dslr (?) camera. Did I tell you about my hobbies? I have many. Many that I start and then lose interest in. That's why I am putting off on getting a camera. They are expensive and I need to know if I am going to be committed to using it before I invest in one.

I'll go into more detail on my hobbies someday. Some of them are (were) very interesting! Have a great day!! :)

A Run and Ride

 A couple of views from this morning's run. I did 3 miles this morning.

The temp was 69 or 70 degrees when I started this morning at 6:30. It was just so terribly humid. I'm glad I started early.

I also met this guy crossing the trail. He was not so happy to meet me. He was hissing and trying to snap at me. I didn't bother him too long. I just wanted to take his photo and then I was on my way.

After I got back from my run, I ate some yogurt while my husband was hooking our bikes up to the bike rack on the car. We rode just about 9 miles on a popular bike trail. It was almost 80 degrees by then and still super humid but we were mostly in the shade so it felt tolerable and actually wasn't bad at all. 

I really wanted to take photos, but I didn't this time. The bike trail was a little bit busy - not crowded at all, but if you stopped for anything, before you knew it there were people going past you. So I didn't feel like I could stop and take photos. At one point we were in an amazing tree tunnel - it was so cool! Even though the sun was out and blazing, it was actually a little dark in the tree tunnel. We also ran across another snapping turtle crossing the road. This one was three times as big as the one in the above photo. I wonder what was going on that I happened to see this twice in one morning and in different areas?

I'm going to back to that trail, and maybe during the week when it might not be so busy. There were lots of incredible photo opportunities! Hope your weekend was great, now have a great week as well!