Hiking, Marathoning, and More

Let’s do this in point form because I’m really tired and finding it hard to think right good straight.

1) In a little less than three weeks, I am going to Nepal to hike to Everest Base Camp with my dad and older brother. While this has resulted in some serious cramming of assignments and exams and case studies and anxiety at leaving my kids for three weeks, I am starting to get really, really excited. I’ve been hiking with a weighted backpack and lifting weights and lunging and squatting and planking for the past four months in prep for this.

2) A local Halifax runner/blogger is running a series where she profiles other local runners. She contacted me a few weeks ago, and if you’re interested, my interview went up yesterday.

3) My three year old has been sick for a couple days. Unfortunately, this lands smack dab in the busiest week of my entire term. We’ve been hanging out at home for a couple of days, and I’ve been trying to get some assignments and marking for my TA gig done between loads of laundry and being mauled by a fevered pre-schooler. It has proven to be… less than efficient. At least I’m caught up on the laundry though!

4) I went for my first “Just for the Hell of It” run in way too long on Sunday. It was an “easy” 7k run that was mostly downhill (which is not small feat in Halifax!). It sucked! My legs were tired and my head was distracted and man, just when you think you’ve got this running thing down, you get humbled by an easy run on a beautiful day.

5) I’ve decided to sign up for the Montreal Rock and Roll Marathon in September. It’s the first of the Rock and Roll series to come to Canada and I’m going to be doing it through Team in Training. I’ll be coaching the TNT team while training for my own run, so depending on how all that running goes, I may or may not be trying for a PB (that 4:15 is still haunting me…).

6) One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to embrace the mornings. I’m uh, not a morning person. Like, at all. But my kids are and my husband is and my day starts at 6:15 whether I like it or not. So I decided to start liking it. While I haven’t been a ray of sunshine every single morning for the past three months, I have consistently been much more pleasant (even if it requires chugging a cup of coffee as soon as I get downstairs). So this week I decided to start truly embracing the morning and instead of whining about how I don’t have enough time to exercise, I would wake up 25 minutes earlier and work out in the living room. Monday was my first foray into the early morning living room workout and while I absolutely hated every single minute of it, the look of surprise on my husband’s face when he came downstairs after his shower and saw me lunging in the living room at 6:05am was enough to keep me going. While I still am not particularly fond of the world before 7am, I figure if I just fake it til I make it, maybe one day, I’ll be one of those really annoying people who are just happy in the mornings.