Saturday was a fun day of watching high school kids run at the Mega Meet. For as many times as we've attended this meet, we have had most every kind of weather. This year, the weather was probably the most variable I've seen and the first time I've ever seen a course evacuated and then resumed. The heavy rain we experienced while sitting in Stephanie's car made the course a wetter, muddier experience than we'd expected. We made the best of it enjoying some snacks and chatting. Stephanie had crawled into the 3rd row of her SUV and commented that "It's really hot back here." Her husband wondered aloud, "Do you think it's hotter back there than anywhere else?" He then turned on the AC; I'll admit, it was also pretty warm in the second row, and I would have opened my window if it wasn't raining so hard. Dad thought maybe we could try the sun roof, which we did not! It was fun to watch all the runners and cheer for my niece and nephew. My niece even consented to a selfie together. Teenagers generally find the other adults in the lives cooler than their parents...sorry Stephanie. By the time she ran, the rain had picked up again. Our feet had been wet so long, I was wondering if my feet would be wrinkled like prunes forever. There were thoughts that perhaps my wet feet would rot into a bad case of trench foot! I did bring extra socks, but figured there was no point in putting dry socks back into wet shoes. My shoes were so soaked that they were still wet on Sunday. I have been carrying around some dollar store ponchos for several years, especially to races, knowing that someday they'd come in handy. We sat on one and I wore another. Stephanie's were nicer ponchos, but mine worked for what I needed and I'll be putting them on my list to get a few more before the Maine (Half) Marathon in only two weeks. Notice that we also had our sunglasses handy! The umbrella was a freebie at a food show. If it would have gotten lost or damaged, no bid deal :-) When I got home, this is what my step counter read: so I took Charlie around the block to be sure to get past 30,000 steps on the day! Before going to the meet, I got up early to get a two hour run in the books. It was already 72 degrees and 95% humidity at 5:00. The run was pretty slow and sluggish, but we got it done. I am really liking these long runs by time instead of distance especially when the weather doesn't always cooperate. It was a fun day and now I'm looking forward to a race of my own less than two weeks away. I've been checking the weather already and early forecasts call for a high of 61, low of 43 with variable cloudiness. That sounds absolutely perfect. Everybody keep your feet dry, no one needs trench foot. Happy running--Missee
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My children competed in the Milaca Mega Meet yesterday. The Mega Meet is the largest single day high school cross country meet in the world. According to their website, they host an average of 150 schools and more than 5,900 runners. The meet also draws large numbers of spectators. Missee and my parents joined us in cheering on the runners. The weather did not cooperate for this year's meet. Within minutes of me taking the above photo, instructions were given for everyone to clear the course, as a storm was moving into the area. My parents, Missee, my husband, and I gathered up our gear and headed to our car to wait out the storm, while my children took cover in a bus. Due to the rain delay, my son's eighth grade race and the boy's 7th grade races (both 3200m) were cancelled. Seventh and eighth grade boys were invited to join the boys' 9th grade 5K race instead. My son opted to participate in the race. My daughter's 5K race was near the end of the race schedule. By the time she ran, we had more rain which meant more mud on the course. I was proud of her strength and determination!
It was a fun day to watch running with my family! I was glad that Grandma, Grandpa, and Missee were there with us! Happy Running! -Stephanie When running solo or out walking Charlie, I prefer an audiobook or a podcast. Last week, I heard two podcast episodes that had me laughing out loud. It was like running with a good friend and hearing the antics of their week. The first was an episode of Another Mother Runner. The guest were Lauren Fleshman and Jesse Thomas, a married couple who are both professional athletes and creators of Picky Bars. The part of the show I most enjoyed was their description of living in Bend, Oregon and their abundance of roundabouts. The city where I live also has a lot of roundabouts and while I love them, or at least the way they allow traffic to flow, visitors find them confusing and frustrating. Maybe this would help... Lauren and Pete on the podcast expressed that people in Oregon must signal out of the roundabouts. We don't signal in MN, but I'll admit, I've been trying to pay attention while I'm going around to see if signaling would help. I'm quite sure that giant stop light would be bad, bad, bad in a roundabout! The second podcast I listened to was with Minnesotan Carrie Tellefson. The title of her podcast is C Tolle Run. On many episodes, Carrie and the guest go for a run along the Mississippi River in St. Paul. This week's guest was Parker Stinson who is the 2019 25K US Champion (15.5 miles). He had lots of tales about racing professionally as well as at Oregon. When asked about how he started running, he talked about running with his dad and sister, then begging his dad to let him run cross country. His dad told him that cross country was for "people who aren't good at anything else." Since Parker is the 25K US Champion, I'd say he is plenty good at running and good thing he kept begging to run! This weekend is the Milaca Mega Meet which is the world's largest single day cross country meet in the world. Stephanie's kids are running and I'm hoping to go watch them. My boys ran in the meet from 2008 through 2017. It's a fun meet where there are separate races for grades 7,8,9 and 10 plus JV and four divisions of varsity races. My oldest, Blake, earned ribbons and medals several years. David earned some individual ribbons and even a trophy when he was 4th as a 9th grader. But more impressive was his faithful group of running friends who managed to win their team division as 7th, 8th, and 9th graders, then on varsity in 10th and 11th grades. When they were seniors, their coach opted them up to the largest division to get more prepared for State and while they did not win, they put on an impressive performance. I'm really missing not being a cross country mom if you can't tell :-) . I especially miss Taco Night on the eve of the Mega Meet. We hosted supper with lots of tacos, fruit and all the fixings. It was always fun to have the guys around on a day they weren't nervous about their running. Here's one last piece of Mega Meet nostalgia with David's senior year race. It was a super hot and sweaty day, but he ran excellent. We were already blogging then...check out our archives from Mega Meets past. If you are looking for a good podcast for running, driving or cleaning the house, I hope you'll give Another Mother Runner or C Tolle Run a try. I find them entertaining. If you have a good suggestion for a podcast for me to try, please put it in the Comments. Happy running! Missee
Those who read our blog often may have noticed that we do all sorts of runs for all sorts of reasons...and that our reasons may be very different than what motivates you to run, walk, bike or however you like to move. Yesterday, my training plan called for 1:45 run with no particular goal of pace or distance. I was joined by two running friends who are not currently training for any particular event, but had their own reasons to do a long run. I haven't run with this particular trio since back in November when Deb had a foot surgery which took her away from running for a few months. By the time she returned to running, Marian was too uncomfortable in her pregnancy to keep running. Well, fast forward to September and Deb's foot is good to go and Marian's sweet little boy is four months old. Deb has run up to 10 miles a few times in late summer, so she was game to do the whole 1:45 hoping to stretch 10 miles to 11 and change. Since Marian was concerned that her pace might not be fast enough, Deb and I added three spurts of speed in the first hour so that we might be a little tired when we picked her up to go the last 45 minutes or if not tired, have satisfied any "need for speed." The first hour went great and we met up with Marian at my house as planned. Our town has a brand new high school that is a mile or two north of our house, so we thought it would be fun to go out and look around at the new surroundings at running speed. The new school did not disappoint. We were able to admire the layout of the buildings and grounds. The building is 300,000 square feet, so I'm glad I don't have to vacuum that! My husband works in the new building; a quick tour of the outside puts a visual to what he describes in the evening. On the way back, I noted that we had nine minutes to go. When Marian asked, "and then we get to walk?" we talked about how we are adults who can walk whenever we want, but since our goal was 1:45, we were CHOOSING to run nine more minutes :-) . For the record, these three adult ladies did choose to finish what they had started. The run was super fun and went so fast. Later, as I was pondering the enjoyable time, I thought it was interesting that we each had something different that we wanted or needed from the run and hopefully everyone got it. I truly think they did... 1. Deb got in more than 11 miles which is the furthest since her foot surgery. Hurrah! 2. Marian finished her longest run since baby was born in May. She finished the planned amount strong and the pace isn't as difficult as in the first few runs this summer. Super! 3. I ran the whole 1:45 on my training plan, got in a couple spurts of speed to test my legs and had a great time running with two lovely ladies. Yeah! In the original movie Mary Poppins, Mary pulls out a measuring tape and measures the children. The results were not in inches or centimeters, but in pointing out some of the growth areas for the kids. When she measured herself, she got this result: I'm quite confident that if my Garmin was as magical as this tape measure, I'd have gotten a "practically perfect in every way" on my screen for our run yesterday. Even the weather was lovely. Have some practically perfect runs this week--happy running! Missee
Sometimes I notice things while out and about that make me wonder how did that ever happen. It reminds me of an old C+C Music Factory song....Things That Make You Go Hmmm. I saw a couple of these "Hmmmm" items in the past week. How did a person lose one shoe, a mile north of town, and have it land nicely on a bench next to the bike repair station? It seemed to be a nice, newer looking shoe, so I hope its owner came back for it. However, a couple days after this discovery, I saw this one... Some unfortunate soul somehow walked right out of this insole right along the bike bath and right next to a fire hydrant. Dogs do indeed like to pee on hydrants, so I do hope that the lost insole got reunited with its shoe before it got "marked" by the local canines. It's pretty common to see things like gloves and pacifiers along the bike path, but it would seem pretty unlikely for an adult to lose a shoe or a piece of a shoe and still make it home in any successful fashion. I'd love to know the backstory on either of these items or even how the story ended. Things that make me go hmmmm...keep life interesting. I can mosey on for miles wondering how things like this end up. Probably 99% of the time, the story I come up with in my head is way more interesting than the truth. Tuesday is the first day of school in my district. I work in foodservice although I do not cook anything. My job entails making sure the food is planned, secured, cooked, served and documented properly following regulations on the federal, state and local levels. Some days it's very enjoyable and other days it can be pretty exhausting. However, I look around the building and notice that there are upsides and downsides to every job everywhere. I concur with Stephanie that all of us who work in schools will need a week or two to adjust to the schedule again after the summer. I am really starting to look forward to my next half marathon in 5 weeks. Last night I watched the race course on www.viewtherace.com and was feeling really happy that I chose to concentrate on the half marathon instead of the full. It is an out and back course that starts with two miles the commentator calls "perfectly flat" along the bay. The next three are almost flat, followed by a five mile climb for the full marathon. I will be looking for a cone about 1.65 miles into this section at which time I will turn back and give a big wave to the brave souls who will be tackling 13 miles of rolling and progressively steeper hills before getting back to anything flatter. It was fun to see the course online so I'll know what to expect. According to the race website, they have a runner tracking app that goes with my cell phone so that family and friends can follow my progress on their phones via my phone as long as I carry it with me. I do plan to do that so that I can listen to music if I feel like it--of course with my Aftershokx so that I can hear spectators and visit with other runners along the way. More info on the running tracker when the date gets closer.
Happy first day of school to everyone headed back to school. I will be volunteering at a cross country meet this week at the school where I work. I love the kids' energy and enthusiasm. They love seeing familiar faces out cheering for them as they compete. Happy running everyone! Missee It has been a long time since my last post. Thank you to Missee for keeping the blog going while I was away! Summer vacation is over and I am back to teaching full-time. Our district started school for students on Monday, August 26. We have a Flexible Learning Year. This means that we start before Labor Day and I love it! Once fall sport seasons start, summer is pretty well done anyway. The start of a school year is one of the most exciting times of the year. It is also one of the most exhausting times for teachers. The first four days of school also included two cross country meets for my children. They each got two races under their belts and did awesome! Grandma and Grandpa traveled hours to watch both meets. Thanks to Grandpa for taking the photos. My only job at a meet is to cheer for the runners. I appreciate that he is able to cheer and be the photographer. On a separate note, I bought a wall decal for my classroom when I was teaching in our middle school. I ended up transferring back to the elementary school and never used the decal. I recently decided to hang it up in my exercise room. I think it looks great! Have a good day! Happy Running! -Stephanie
Last weekend we went to Duluth to see two of our kids who currently live there. One is a working guy and the other is a brand new pharmacy student. It is always enjoyable to see them successfully "adulting" which apparently is a relatively new term meaning doing what adults do to make their live move smoothly. They are both doing a great job with a few random calls or texts home to figure things out. Blake lives with a great aunt and uncle and Haley lives in a no-pets apartment, so my husband, Charlie and I stayed with my in-laws. They also have a Sheltie, but Charlie pretty effectively ignores him; actually, he overtly turns his head the other way to indicate that he is not interested in rough-housing or whatever else Paddy wants to do with him. Since I had a 1:45 run scheduled for Saturday, Haley and I decided to make it an adventure. I took off running at 7:00am; she picked up Charlie at 8:00 and we all met up down near the lake at 8:45 for some tea and fun down by Lake Superior. My run started out great except that is was uphill for the first 1.25 miles. However, at the end of the hill was a good spot for a photo, right in front of Haley's new workplace. I knew that from here to the finish, the general direction was downhill. I didn't want to get to Canal Park too quickly and have to circle around, so I headed a bit further north. I could always see the lake, so I knew where I was going. Sometimes you really can't get there from here, though. Here was my scenery at around an hour. I was beginning to doubt that there was a good route down to the lake and opted to backtrack a bit. You can see from my map, that if I'd have hung on about 2 more blocks, there was indeed a road down to Superior Street that heads downtown. Pretty soon, I was enjoying familiar terrain on or near the route I ran a couple months ago during the Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon. When I got this far, I new the end was in sight. However, I was almost done when I saw this sign and did not find it amusing in the least. I only wanted to find Caribou Coffee...who cares about Thunder Bay? Later, Haley explained that these are all of Duluth's sister cities. The best part was finding these two! We enjoyed a sunny outdoor table with some chai tea and snacks before a leisurely walk along Lake Superior all together. Caribou Coffee had a nice sign in their front door. I am a person who is not necessarily "for" or "against" a lot of different groups of folks who sometimes feel persecuted by society. I live my life with the attitude of live and let live as best we can. To me this sign was all about that. There are people who run but don't feel like they belong because they are too old, slow, fat or whatever. If you run, you are a runner! All people are welcome to be runners. I can't wait to see Brittany Runs a Marathon which is supposed to be more about body image and self-acceptance than running. The previews look fantastic. I also want to see Overcomer even though I have not seen previews yet--who would miss a cross country movie?!? Have a great week whether you get in a lot of running, or watch a running movie or two. Happy running--Missee
P.S. I will definitely see both these movies and post some reviews. We took up weekly movies as a good Empty Nester activity, but we always go on Bargain Night :-) Even though my boys have graduated from high school, I still can feel the anticipation of what today is...first day of cross country! (For the record, I had my first cross country practice in 1985.) There was always some apprehension on the opening day along with anticipation and usually a lot of sweat since August is generally muggy and often warm. The team my boys ran on had a 300 mile challenge each summer. The kids got approximately 10 weeks from the end of track until the start of cross country to run 300 miles for boys or 250 for girls. For accomplishing this feat, the runners were rewarded with a special t-shirt and a pizza buffet one afternoon the first week of practice. The t-shirts were always the same design, but new colors selected by the captains and everyone's name on the back who had EVER earned a shirt, not just this year's guys. I was never too good at getting a photo on the first day of school due to working in another district and leaving for work early, but I always got the shot of the fellas with their blue (always blue) training log. This one popped up on my Facebook today. Blake was a senior and David was an 8th grader. In order to encourage younger runners, 7th or 8th graders who made 100 miles were also included in the pizza but not shirts. Both the boys earned 5 shirts with just the pizza as 7th graders. We felt that 300 miles was an awful lot for 12 year olds. They both had nice CC running careers with 2 trips each to State, so I think it worked out well! Don't worry, the little guy grew and is now almost as tall as his brother...it took him about 14 years to get taller than Blake's shoulder.
My niece and nephew (Stephanie's kids) are starting practice today. They were on a challenge to finish at least 200 miles this summer and the last time I checked, they were on track to finish that and earn t-shirts. Those summer miles are critical to getting the season off to a good start. Kids who haven't been running during the summer are still encouraged to come out, but do lose some training time getting themselves into shape the first couple of weeks. They can still have a great season, but might miss their potential by a few seconds per mile. When I'm done posting, my next stop is to check on the CC races for my niece and nephew's team to see when I can catch a race. I had so much fun watching them last year. My nephew had a season-best race and when I told him how glad I was that I got to see it, he said that I may have contributed to it! I'm quite sure the hard work was all his, but it made me happy that he appreciated my cheering. Watching young runners is a great motivation for all runners. It's refreshing to see their raw love for the sport and their teammates. Cross country is one sport where no one gets cut; junior varsity races are nearly always unlimited so everyone gets "playing time." Those who are able to put together a lot of hard work, some talent and a little luck to stay injury-free earn a spot on the varsity teams and sometimes have a little more pressure, but those are the runners who are ready for the challenge. Good luck to all the cross country runners at all levels. Happy first day of practice and happy running! Missee A new school year is just around the corner and I have school on the brain. I am an elementary teacher. For eight years, I taught kindergarten. One activity that my kindergarteners did was called "Read the Room." Students would get a clipboard, blank paper, and a pencil. They would move about the room writing down any words that they encountered on the walls, books, clothing, etc. on their clipboard. The objective of the activity was to show students that words are all around us and to marvel at how many of those words the students already could read. As I was running, I thought about how much there is to read on my run. I decided to "Read my Run." Here is what I found. I loved this sign! What fabulous motivation for runners, on both sides! Yesterday, I came to a box with some exciting words on it. Any guesses as to what was in that box?
Here are some hints... 1. Although there are six items in the box, for best results use two at at a time. 2. You can save money if you buy the previous year's model. 3. Wearing just the right ones will make your runs more enjoyable. Happy Running! -Stephanie ps. Did you guess that three pairs of running shoes were in the box? My family of four each got new running shoes this week (all Brooks). My shoes came in a separate box a couple of days ago. What a fun shipping box from Road Runner Sports! There are activities that can be done either in a group or alone. Sometimes one method might be preferred over another. Running is one of those. You can definitely run alone but other times with one or more other people whether that is a race situation or getting together with friends. These days, I'm lucky to have three different friends that run with me a total of 3-4 days per week. I just finished Week 3 of my training program for the Maine (Half) Marathon. The plan has several faster runs during the week which tax my legs and my brain to concentrate during the hard parts, one longer day that is by minutes instead of miles (also taxing my brain) and a couple of lighter runs. So far I'm really enjoying this plan and feeling like the speed work is helping me feel stronger. I've also been taking a Yoga Sculpt class once a week with some light weights that seems to be toning my arms and working my balance in addition to my regular Yoga classes. I have two kids engaged to be married next summer. Mom had the brilliant idea that we (Mom, Stephanie and me) should join forces and quilt Christmas tree skirts for each couple to give as bridal shower gifts and planned to sew them at Quilt Camp in October. We have a bunch of time yet, but we were very excited to get going on the project. Mom and I spent an afternoon this spring looking through patterns and fabrics and chose two we liked. After selecting patterns and fabrics, I took them all home and cut the fabric before our sewing day. Due to timing with her kids' summer activities, last Thursday turned out to be an optimal "sewing day." After sewing, we all agreed that we would have had a tough time getting either of these done on our own much less sewing two of them in one day without too much frustration. Here are the completed tops. Once they are quilted, we will cut a hole in the center for the tree and a slit so that it can be easily slipped around the young couple's first Christmas tree and for many years afterward. I think they both will be beautiful. We decided not to try to pick who gets which ones but to wrap them up and blindly put a card on each one. Everyone will be surprised! We will have 3 more to make eventually for the other 3 cousins...I'm not sure if we will reuse either of these patterns or look for different ones. Just like running, quilting can be a solitary or group activity. I like to sew alone, working on a group project like the tree skirts, in a group working on the same project like a class or in a group working on individual projects. "Sew" many ways to do the same but different things. When we go to camp at Camp Lebanon, we see all of these approaches going on amongst the campers. There was some angst when registration opened for fall because our group of quilt campers was initially aced out from our first choice weekend. Who would think a quilt camp would fill up in only a few hours?!? The camp director called Mom later in the afternoon and got us into the weekend we wanted. Yeah!!! Now, what to sew since we've got the tree skirts under control? It's now about six weeks since my last half marathon. The larger races often take photos that you can buy. I've done this race enough times to have a good idea where I'd see the photographer. Remember, I was making an effort to really cruise and was feeling strong at Mile 12 when I encountered the cameras. I made an effort to smile and appear to be fast and strong. Here is what I got: When I saw this, I thought I looked fresh and fast and noticed that I can see some muscle definition in my shoulders and legs. I'm not grimacing, frowning or even noticeably sweaty. If only I'd have had my eyes open, I might have purchased this one! I was bummed about the closed eyes, but glad to see that I was otherwise looking alright.
What other things do you like to do that can be done solo or in groups? Which do you prefer or is a combination the right balance for you? If it's been hot and humid where you are, try to stay cool, drink extra water and enjoy the heat for now because it will start cooling off all too soon. Happy running! Missee |
AuthorMissee and Stephanie are two Minnesota sisters and moms who love to run. We are not experts in running, parenting or anything else, but we do have years of experiences that may be helpful or entertaining to others. Archives
May 2020
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