Tough Mudder

Hi all. First, I need to give a huge congrats to my official IronWoman cousin Stephanie for crushing her first (and last? If she's not insane?) full Ironman. She came in 11th in her category and ran the marathon in 3:37, which is slightly mind-numbing. Now, read on for me whining about 4 miles. Not sure how we're related sometimes.

Saturday was my first "long" run of this training session and I clocked 5 miles on the ol' hamster wheel in 51:43. I definitely could have thrown in a few more miles, which is a good sign, but I decided not to push it. I got extremely sick of running last year and I don't want to take any chances. I took the time to ice afterwards, which I really need to get into the habit of doing.

 

(note to self: vacuum)

Saturday afternoon we set off in search of running sunglasses (really holding myself back from calling these "runglasses," like a tool.) and AV had the great last minute idea of checking out Nordstrom Rack. He's gotten several awesome pairs there on the cheap. After finding diddly in the women's section, I started searching the men's section. And found these bug-eyed bad boys!

 

Disregard how dorky I look in the pic. These are awesome! They're Nike Road Machines and are game-changers. I wore them this morning and most of the time couldn't tell I was even wearing them. More on this morning in a minute.

We ended Saturday by catching "A Most Wanted Man," which we both agreed started out slowly but ended up being great. PSH truly was one of the best.

Sunday the regular instructor for my favorite afternoon yoga class was back from vacation and she killed us. I attempted side-crow for the first time in my life, and to be honest I think it's going to be easier for me to get a hold of than regular ol' crow. (Not that I'm excelling at either pose by any stretch of the imagination.) It was an awesome (AND SWEATY) hour and I'm always glad to end the weekend on a yoga high.

Back to this morning. I set off on a 4 miler and felt OK. I got insanely frustrated about .75 miles in when I had to stop and walk through a gigantic mud puddle in the middle of the trail. For as much as the City of Scottsdale brags about being bike- and hike-friendly and focused on outdoor fitness, you'd think they'd be able to figure out a proper drainage system on the gigantic 11-mile greenbelt. It was so frustrating. I don't care at all about getting my shoes dirty, but I do care about having to traverse up a hill of grass and mud just to get my right foot completely sucked into a mud puddle and have to stop. 

(Yes, this is how babyish I was being this morning)

But I shook it off and told myself to shut up and completed 4.05 in 43:07. I'll take it.