Desert Heaven in Phoenix, AZ

The drive from Tucson to Phoenix was a piece of cake and took us just over two hours. The desert landscape was similar to what we’d seen coming into Tucson, with saguaro cacti scattered amidst dry sand. What was interesting though was how many tumbleweeds we saw that day. It was a particularly windy day (we seem to pick all the windy days to do our driving…it makes it more exciting that way) and because we were driving through dry, flat land, tumbleweeds had nothing to stop them from swirling around the highway. I’d seen tumbleweeds crossing roads before, in cartoons and silly movies, and kind of always thought that the size of these things was exaggerated for comedic effect. BUT NO. These massive tumbleweeds, the size of wine barrels, would fly right across traffic, with no obvious trajectory pattern aside from the direction of the wind gust.

Becoming Austinites

I can't believe we've already been in Austin for over two weeks! We've fallen into a routine here, made up of running, mountain biking, soccer playing, hiking, and city exploring. We've had amazing, GLORIOUS weather as well, holding steady in the mid 70s and lots and lots of sunshine. (70 degrees in January...EPIC!) It's hard to complain when everything comes together so well and works outs. In other words, life and Austin have been good to us.

Houston, TX

Houston is the fourth largest city in the US, right after New York, LA and Chicago. Last time we'd visited Texas we were just hours away in Austin and didn't make the drive to see the sprawling cosmopolitan city, so this time we decided to head there first. We had high hopes for Houston and were super excited for it to be our very first destination on this leg of our trip. Unfortunately, bad weather, bad RV park choice and LOTS and LOTS of traffic added quite a negative tone to our Houston experience.

Inspiration For The New Year

So how is everyone doing on following through with their New Year's resolutions? Me? Not so good. I didn't really go into the year with specific resolutions, but I did have some general life goals in mind. So far: eating healthy, Check! sticking to a regular running schedule, Fail....Well, in case you've been looking for some motivation on getting in shape this year, look no further than this epic blog.

Born To Run

Over the last couple of years I've been told numerous times that I should read "Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall. For whatever reason I imagined it to be a boring and dry book about proper running posture and training techniques, and refused to give it a try. So recently, on my trip the to library, I was perusing the non-fiction section and accidentally came across the book. I figured I had the time, so why not finally give it a try, so I added it to my check-out basket. On my way home I stopped by a cafe and cozied up in the corner with a cup of coffee. I was immediately captivated by McDougall's writing style, and only when I looked up from the book to refill my coffee, did I realise that I had been completely zoned out of my environment for the last two hours.

Cool Runnings

The other day I met a fellow running buddy at Lake Fayetteville for an early morning trail run around the lake. She had somehow coerced me to meet her there at 7:30 in the morning. After waking up and drinking my cup of coffee though, I felt great! I remembered this great feeling of accomplishment that I used to get from early morning runs. Running 6 miles in the morning, before anyone is out of bed (well, we did used to run at 5:30 in the morning, it was more applicable then), is one of joys I get to myself from running. I wasn't even sure I'd be able to do the full lap around the lake, as most recently running 3.5 miles on the treadmill had all but killed me, but it went beautifully.

Down Days in Vancouver, WA

We have been here in Vancouver Washington (just outside of Portland) for just over two weeks now. Living somewhere stationary has been a very nice change, and it has lived up to what we were hoping it would be. Portland being the very cool city that it is has certainly helped, but Vancouver has really turned out to be very nice as well.

My Mom, The Runner!

My mom recently discovered an interest for running. In March, she signed up for a Women Run Arkansas, a free training program with training groups in cities around the state. In this program she trained up from never having ran before to running up to 3 miles. And in May, on Mother’s Day weekend, she ran her very first 5k!

St. George Ironman

No we didn’t compete… nor would we want to… right now anyway ;-)

On our way toward Las Vegas, we saw signs for the St. George Ironman that was going on May 5^th.  Of course we had to stop in and marvel at these amazing athletes.  If you aren’t exactly sure of the iron distance, it consists of a 2.4 mile swim, followed by a 110 mile bike, then finished off with a 26.2 (marathon!) run.  Pro athletes can finish this in around 8 hours, while “normal” folks finished more in the 10 – 15 hour timeframe.  Many of these athletes train for 20 – 40 hours (a part time to full time job) a week for months leading up to iron distance events, in addition to the $700 price tag to participate in this event, so it takes a real commitment to do one of these race.

Some Down Time in Texas

We've taken some downtime here in Fredericksburg. Sky found a soccer league he can play with (he must have a nose for soccer..)

Sky playing soccer with a pick-up group

Out and About in Austin

We were very pleasantly surprised with Austin as a whole. I feel like we spent most of the days fruitfully exploring sites, and that there is still plenty of unexplored ground left. We had great access to the city by highway from the McKinney Falls state park, and contrary to what we’d heard, Austin’s road systems were not too congested and were pretty easy to get around on. 

Going Away Chug Run!

So our local running group decided they wanted to give Maria and I a send-off. We all like to run... and drink beer... so what better activity than to combine those two and race! I'm a decent runner and below average chugger, so if I stood a chance, I'd have to make up for it with my legs, rather than my throat and stomach.

The small crew before the start of the run.

An Early Morning Run Around Lake Fayetteville

I finally made it out to the 5:30 am girls group run this Wednesday, and was really happy I did as the weather was perfect and my IT didn't bother me too much. When I came home, I woke up Sky and he decided to go for his own run around the lake. Here is a good pic he took while crossing the levee in the morning haze.

Lake Fayetteville, in the morning haze.

Happy Lake Fayetteville Running,

M.

From One Life to Another

When imagining what my life would be like after leaving my 8-5 corporate job, one of the aspects I didn't think about was injury prevention for a heightened amount of daily activity. I guess one of the reasons I didn't think about it is because even when I was employed full time, I still exercised regularly, and completed my first marathon in December.

Since getting away from sitting down for 8 hours straight as of January 1st, we haven't done anything horribly taxing, we've just been constantly moving. The first few weeks we were packing up our stuff in preparation to move, then we were moving those items around, then cleaning our rental. As soon as we were done with that we gained access to our rental property where the tenants had just moved out, and got right to working on that. On top of this I tried to maintain my running, and I guess something had to give.

A Productive Day... Sort of

As has been previously mentioned by Maria, we put together a comprehensive list of 50+ items that need to be finished prior to the start of our voyage.  So this morning we rose early and started banging through some of the tougher items on the list.  Now this can be fun sometimes, when you have a large and monotonous task that you can fully immerse yourself and get lost in. Eight hours later and with three! items checked off the list, we were more emotionally exhausted than physically (we had been culling through 20+ years of accumulated knick-knacks, papers, and memories).

A Year of Personal Records in Running!

On a slightly different note, this year has been a great year of running for me! I keep a training log on www.runnersworld.com and if you are in the market for a training log, I would highly recommend this one. I had been lazy in documenting my daily miles the last month, and finally sat down to do so this morning. It turns out I am only 41 miles away from 1,000 miles for the year, and I've got 10 days to meet that goal! I've got a long run of 12 miles planned for this weekend with my running buddies and a Fun Run of 5 miles on Thursday at the local Fleet Feet store, but aside from that I'm on my own. I'll be bugging Skyler to run with me. :)