Monday, February 26, 2018

Almost Summer

We had a great day last week at the state park. 80 degrees!!!!!! Can’t wait till summer.

Sunday, February 18, 2018

Maple Syrup 

Today we headed to Oregon Ridge Nature Center to learn about maple syrup. 

First we waited at the sugar shack for our naturalist to take us on the hike.

We hiked over to a tree that had been tapped where our guide told us about how sap is collected:

Son was eyeing up the bucket. Holding the bucket is a coveted job that he was hoping to get:

We hiked over to another tree so we could tap it ourselves. Son still kept a close eye on that bucket:

This is how the tree looks when it’s collecting sap:

Everyone got a turn to use the drill:

We got to taste the sap:

Success! He was selected and was very proud of his duties:


Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Ultra

About a month ago I got an idea to start running again. I really haven’t run since I had my vein surgery sound the end of 2016. I stopped running for that, then we were selling the house and then we moved... and then I TRIED to run here once and omg the hills. Nothing but hills. But then I discovered the trails here and I started getting excited about running again. So the day I decided to run was also the day I signed up for an ultramarathon. 

Literally I went from doing nothing for over a year to signing up to run 31 miles! I’ve never run a marathon, just a half in 2016. I realized running is only appealing to me when done in nature with trees and dirt and wildlife. Most marathons are in cities with 10,000 people, on roads and blah blah blah. 

So that’s why an ultramarathon was on my radar. They are typically on trails and in the woods. Anyway, there are no couch to ultramarathon programs out there for just under 6 weeks, so I had no schedule to follow. I just trained on days I felt like running and ran as far as I felt like I could. My longest training run was 12 miles. So on race day, I had to run well over twice that amount.

I ran as fast as I could, which was slow. It was muddy and raining. I fell twice and put holes in my favorite pants. Around four hours in my hands were so swollen that I got extremely worried. I ate two Gu packets an hour and drank a bottle of water an hour also. I also had a banana and a few figs along the way.

 It took me 6 hours and 40 minutes. I beat my goal of 7 hours and did something I once thought was impossible. 

It felt pretty good to complete a goal. I haven’t set many personal goals lately... busy doing things for the kids mostly...

Anyway here I am at the finish line. I had a few tears of joy...

My watch shorted me half a mile and I forgot to stop it at the end:


So now I’m taking a break for a week and planning my next race. I’m so thankful to everyone who helped me accomplish my goal.

Daddy Daughter Dance

Monday, February 5, 2018

Fort McHenry

We have been studying the Star Spangled Banner so we took a quick trip to Fort McHenry: