I'm in Northfield, MN for my daughter's final indoor track meet of her career. We have been going to track meets for quite a number of years and this is the end of the inside meets. She is a thrower; the field event athletes tend to like indoor because the conditions are so controlled. The runners, especially the distance runners, prefer outdoors because the fresh air is easier for breathing; it is usually cooler and they only have to run half as many laps so it's easier on their legs, too. Haley has had a great track career. Today didn't go too well, but she has another event tomorrow. Since this is a two day event, I opted to get a hotel and stay over rather than driving back and forth. It's a full two hour drive here from our house which is doable back and forth each day, but what a luxury to grab a hotel and a run in a different city. After Haley's event today, I checked into the hotel, changed into my running clothes and set out to enjoy some daylight. Compared to my normal outdoor runs lately, I was short two important items...my headlight and my clickers (It's actually a little melty here!). My feet felt pretty light, but I'm not liking all the black marks the clickers have left on my pretty blue shoes :-( I set out to see the town and enjoy my freedom from the extra equipment. Northfield is the town where Jesse James and his gang was captured trying to rob the bank. I did not encounter any bandits wearing bandanas or trying to stick anybody up, but I did find some interesting sites. Carelton College has many beautiful buildings and neatly shoveled walks. I hope this wasn't the actual room available to rent although the rent is pretty reasonable. There were many historic looking homes and lots of them had huge icicles hanging after all the recent snow. There are guys on the roof behind me cleaning off the roof. From looking at this photo, I think it's not a good look for me to concentrate. Clueless probably looks more relaxed! My dad told me to watch out for this native of St. Olaf while I'm here... Six miles in the daylight made a nice afternoon. When I got back, I enjoyed a soak in the hot tub and grabbed some dinner. Tomorrow I'll head back over to St. Olaf for Day 2 of the track meet. The best part is sp ending time with this lovely young woman. I wish I could wear red lipstick as sassy as she does. The kids getting older has it's good points and not as good. I sure miss having them around to noisy up the house with their giggles. I do also enjoy spending time with them as young adults and am loving this little vacay with a track meet and the sites-seeing running tour. Happy running! Missee
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The four letter word most used this February in Minnesota... SNOW. We have had the snowiest February that I can remember. In fact, the weather forecasters in the Twin Cities say that we will be breaking snow records this year. Our schools have been closed for six snow days so far in 2019. This is the most snow days that I have ever had in my 18 years of teaching. Thankfully, our school district has implemented "Virtual Snow Days" or "E-Learning Days" in which students are given learning tasks/assignments to complete on these days. It helps to keep our students on track in the curriculum even when school is cancelled. How do we keep our running programs on track during these days? 1. We get outside when possible. Dress for the temperatures and be visible. In addition to wearing a reflective vest, I carry a flashlight. 2. Have alternative exercise available. Although I prefer to run outdoors, I enjoy our treadmill and Peleton bike for a great inside workout. (I am loving the Peleton cycling workouts lately!) 3. Sign up for a spring race. There is nothing more motivating than knowing that you have a race on your calendar. My running friend and I are signed up for the Fargo Half Marathon in May. 4. Dream of warmer running days ahead. This winter can't last forever. Stay Warm! Happy Running! Stephanie
I've now finished three weeks of my training program for the Earth Day Half Marathon coming up in about nine weeks. Each week, I'm doing two speed workouts (speed being a relative term), one long run and a couple of medium length easy runs. Charlie usually accompanies me on those and keeps them nice and easy for us. This week, my long run was already 12 miles with four of those being race pace. I debated for several days, checking weather reports, to decide if I should try that run outdoors or on the treadmill. Saturday morning arrived and it was -5 degrees with -14 windchill. That is on the cold end of my range, but within it, so I decided to venture outdoors armed with warm clothing and two new audio books downloaded from the library. The road conditions both on the roads and bike paths are still pretty icy and snow covered, so I opted to wear my clickers...our own term for shoe spikes. They make a clicking noise on pavement. Charlie ran the first three miles with me and then I took him home. At that point, I was still considering going back inside to finish my run, but put Charlie in and headed back out. I had already encountered one pair of runners with blinking lights on their vests happily waving and calling out "Good Morning!" and another duo of young guys on the path. If others were making it outside, I would, too. After leaving Charlie off at home, I encountered another pair of runners also appearing to be delighted to be out running. While I was enjoying my new mystery novel surrounding the murder of the leader of the local croquet group, I picked up the pace for a few miles aiming toward race pace. I accomplished two sub-9:00 miles and was happy with that because I was going into an icier stretch. I haven't run more than 10 miles since September or October, so combining a longer run, a couple of faster miles and cold temperatures was a great start to my Saturday morning. When I was getting back home, I met yet another group of runners, this time about six of them headed past my house. Suddenly, the lightbulb came on for me and I figured out why I was seeing so many runners out on a pretty borderline weather day...having a friend or group to run with makes all the difference. I was running solo, but didn't encounter another singleton out there; everyone else was in pairs or more. Had I had a partner for my run, I wouldn't have questioned for a minute if it was too cold or icy. Runners will put up with a lot of yuck from Mother Nature to chat with their running buddies. I remember one year doing marathon training, I was out of Gu gels to snack on along the way of a long run, so I looked around the house for an alternative and peeled a clementine orange and put it in a baggie in my pocket. By snack time, the orange was frozen! How cold must it have been for something close to my body to actually freeze?!? I definitely did not do that run alone. Once I finished my cold 12 miles, I indulged in a long hot shower and some tea before heading off to yoga to stretch my muscles and hopefully avoid too much soreness. I was quite thankful that the sub instructor has just returned from maternity leave and was teaching back to back classes. She announced that we would be doing gentle yoga as everyone there had either been running or doing barre class beforehand. Thank you, Dawn!
I hope you thought twice before letting any cold weather interrupt your weekend plans, especially if they involved getting together with others, because that makes all the difference. Happy President's Day to all the Presidents or anyone who would like to be President or has any advice for Presidents, LOL! Due to the snow days in January, we will be having school tomorrow, but I'll get out and run beforehand. Happy running--Missee I've been working on a quilt for almost a year and a half that I hung on the wall of our home today. The pattern is by Jen Kingwell and is called Gypsy Wife. I was first introduced to this pattern at our first time quilt camping experience at Camp Lebanon. (Only 6 weeks til spring quilt camp!) At our first camp experience, a group of women who had done the Gypsy Wife as a quilt-along brought in and displayed their quilts. We were given cookies and chai tea to enjoy while we strolled through admiring the quilts. They were gorgeous and each one was so unique. My first thought was that I could never tackle such a project, nor would I want to. By the time we left camp, I was kind of thinking maybe that would be fun...Patty from our quilt camp group did decide to tackle it and we admired her bravery and progress. Fast forward about eight months and our local quilt shop, Grubers, announced via their newsletter that they were hosting a Gypsy Wife quilt-along for 12 months meeting one Monday night per month. The leader was a Camp Lebanon instructor. I decided to join in and knew just where I would hang my finished quilt in a year's time. I looked at Pinterest and many other online pages for ideas of colors and settled on doing shades of red and white which I thought would look great on our muted yellow wall. I looked through my fabric stash and got some help from Mom with extra pieces of reds and whites. I bought a few fat quarters and showed up for class. Over the course of the year I bought a jelly roll (bunch of 2.5" strips) and a couple of other pieces, but not many considering the size of the quilt was 59" x 68". Jen Kingwell designs beautiful quilts; Jen Kingwell does not write beautiful pattern directions. The 25 or so women in the class spent the first class period, two hours, writing additional directions and corrections into our pattern books. That was in addition to spreadsheets and labels and tip sheets given to us in a three ring binder. One of our instructions was to go home and get ten 1-gallon ziploc bags and label them 1-10 to hold our quilt blocks. Each month we would be assigned to make several blocks along with instructions on which bag to put them in. Along the way, we also cut 63 different 1 1/2" strips and put those into bags. Later in the process, we laid those out in a pleasing arrangement and proceeded to cut them into shorter strips, attach sticky labels and put those into the bags as well. I enjoyed the monthly meetings. We brought our finished blocks in to show. It is amazing how doing the same blocks with different fabrics yield such different results. Some of the meetings were mainly show and tell and more instructions; others we had guest speakers on color, design and sometimes the shop owner would show new products. It was kind of a bummer when we got to spring and the shop owners decided we had enough monthly meetings to go ahead and finish our quilts, but I knew I was in a good enough spot to be able to finish. Early in the summer, I reached the point of being able to take out one bag at a time and assemble sections 1-10 of the quilt. Wow, I don't know how I would have accomplished that without my sticky labels to make sure I didn't transpose any strips or blocks. Then it was time to figure out how to quilt my finished top. We had talked about batting and quilting a little in class and I was intrigued with the Big Stitch method of hand quilting and attended a couple of sessions at the quilt shop for a tutorial and some practice. The Big Stitch method results in a home spun style which a little more rustic feeling. One of the rules for this type of quilting is there are no rules...not really my preference, but I could appreciate the creativity that ensues when there are no rules. It took many hours to hand stitch down the center of every strip and to accentuate the blocks, but I love the finished product. Here is a closer look at the hand quilting. Oh, remember how I said that I had a spot all picked out for my quilt before I even started it? Well, that wall was 12 inches too narrow, so I had to make a Plan B on that. Now I can find a new project for that wall. My Gypsy Wife experience could be compare to training for a marathon in a number of ways.
This is my view lately...treadmill with the iPad for amusement, a water bottle where the Pringles can should be and my Aftershokx headphones to play my audio books or Amazon Prime shows through from the iPad. I tried the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on my long run of 10 miles yesterday. The first couple episodes were pretty entertaining, so I'll probably try a few more next week.
Between the snow and the cold, hopefully everyone is getting at least a little running in until the weather improves. Charlie spent an afternoon at the groomers this week and wanted to show all the readers how they should carbo-load with their sweetheart before their next race. Happy Valentine's Day and speedy running--Missee Or maybe I already have??? Sometimes a change in routine makes me realize what has probably been going on all along. A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that I had one ankle that was sore like I'd been scraped but didn't think too much of it. It mostly healed, but continued to sometimes act up and sometimes I had blood marks on my socks. It took me a number of runs to figure it out how I was making myself bleed; this only happens when I have my spikes on my shoes. I have the same kind of grippers that Stephanie uses and photographed in a past blog post. It seems that my left foot must not follow a straight path when I run and that I occasionally kick myself lightly on the right ankle. My running shoes alone don't leave a mark, but when I've got the spikes on, the rubber from those must be more abrasive. Thankfully I'm not putting spike marks on my legs! One good point is that I don't need to wear a "Kick Me" sign; I can effectively kick myself. Now that I know that I'm scuffing my ankle with my other foot, I'll be trying to pay attention and perhaps clean up my form a bit...or get better callouses on my right ankle. MN has just escaped from the coldest weather we've had in 23 years. Schools all over the state were closed most of the week. My school did a late start on Monday for new snow, was closed Tuesday and Wednesday and did a late start on Thursday. Many schools were completely closed those four days. I was certainly thankful for the treadmill's arrival just a couple weeks ago. My patience and personality would have deteriorated pretty fast with that many days that were way too cold for outdoor running. Here is how we had to dress up to potty the dog... Charlie and I were pretty excited to run outdoors on Saturday and then Deb joined us on Sunday. This time was 30 minutes running and 30 minutes walking. That was super fun to be back to running with her. It's important to progress slowly after an injury, but oh so hard to do.
Try not to be kicking yourself, and watch out for that "Kick Me" sign so as not to invite others to take a swing either. 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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