Stories from my iPhone + 2 AMAZING People.

Thank you thank you thank you for all of the incredibly sweet comments yesterday.  I loved each one and feel so lucky to be a part of this incredible community.  It sure is crazy how much life has changed from when I first started blogging and I love that I get to keep sharing it all with you.

This bump has showed up this time much sooner than it did with Brooke and Skye:)

The timing of starting to run with my sister during this time has been perfect.  Our paces are the same (we usually range between 8:45-9:20) and I made her promise she can’t get any faster throughout my pregnancy;)

Haven’t done a garmin shot in a while.

My family is thrilled that smells don’t bother me as much as they had been and they can now enjoy eggs in the mornings:)

Skye likes to pretend she is reading the morning newspaper as she eats breakfast.

We were able to go to the school’s drive-thru for Brooke to pick up everything from the year and to say goodbye to her teacher.  We loved her teacher so much this year and really hope that Knox is able to have her this next school year.

My niece came over to watch the girls while we went to a doctor’s appointment.   I already feel out of breath all day from being pregnant and then add a mask and I don’t know how so many of you wear masks for extended periods of time.  You are amazing.

I have a female doctor this time and I absolutely love her so much.  She does an ultrasound for us at each appointment and makes us feel like she has the whole day to answer any questions we have and talk to us.   I’m grateful that in the future if I do go into labor while Andrew is at work, I can just drop off the kid’s with my sister and Andrew can just pop up a few floors to come be with me ha.

Parks have opened up here (as long as we practice social distancing there) and it has made my kid’s lives.

Just a few pictures from my phone:

*Skye said about 20 times on Sunday, ‘mama, RUN’ and it melted my heart.

*Anybody remember this friend of mine?  When I lived in California she and I were very good friends (she had a little girl named Brooklyn just 2 weeks older than Brooke so we did all of that first time mom stuff together). She was on Shark Tank last week for DreamLand Baby.  She inspires me in so many ways.

PS for a few weeks there even reading made me too sick to do so the amount of television I watched is unreal.

*After weeks (ehhh months) of my sister dropping off meals and having us over for meals we made them a big dinner on Sunday and had them over.  We also had hamburgers and hot dogs because my nephew refuses to believe a salad bar could be a meal ha.   Fresh foods/veggies/fruit have sounded better to me than anything.  Also, roasted sweet potatoes in olive oil and salt make perfect croutons.

*Andrew made these rolls too and they were the best homemade rolls I’ve ever had.

*Everyone here is so beyond happy that it is officially summer.

—————————————————————————————————————

These next two people are incredible.  They told me in the comments about the amazing things they have been doing and I asked them if I could share them here too and they said yes:

Alex shared this with me on Saturday:  “I ended up finishing the 600K ultra that I was doing. I finished yesterday at about 5 pm. I finished 2nd overall, and I ended with 43 miles yesterday. I will give a quick breakdown of mileage/day and potentially some insight on my thought process through the runs. I will say though, this race started last Thursday, May 7th. I signed up for on May 6th, and kind of signed up as a after thought since I just ran a marathon on April 26th. If I had a running coach, they would probably be yelling at me right now for running such a big race and not letting my legs recover. I came out injury free though (I am very lucky). Sorry for the rambling I’ll break down mileage/days now.

Thursday 7th- 38 miles. I ran 4 miles that morning at 7:35 pace. At this point I didn’t know how seriously I was taking the competition, but then ran/walked 34 miles for the rest of the day.

Friday 8th – 29 miles. It was raining and the rain killed my phone :( I spent half the day replacing my dead phone :(

Saturday 9th – 60 miles. I had to get back into the competition. I was behind 16 miles starting this morning, ran 15, then was up for about 15 hours straight running and walking the last 44 miles.

Sunday 10th – 35 miles. I woke up this morning 15 miles behind, and my motivation was just killed. I felt utterly defeated and sorry for myself this entire day. I was in second and I didn’t think I could catch up.

Monday 11th – 43 miles. I snapped out of being a sad angry version of myself, and decided I was going to give this race my absolute all even if I didn’t win.

Tuesday 12th – 43 miles.

Wednesday 13th – 40 miles.

Thursday 14th – 50 miles. THIS DAY WAS TERRIBLE IT WAS 85 DEGREES OUTSIDE AND NO CLOUDS AGHHHHHHHH!!!!

Friday 15th – 43 miles. Also it was 85 again, but all I could think about was finishing.

Prior to this race, the longest I had ever run in a day was a marathon. My general strategy was to run about 8 miles, some days it was 15 miles, and these were my normal morning training runs. My pace was generally between 7:40 to 8:30 minutes/mile. The rest of the day I genuinely had no clue what I was doing. I would run walk for the majority of the miles, but I have never done that type of running before so I was truly winging it. I had watched youtube videos of people doing ultras before though and knew they ate a lot of candy so that is what I did. I have a serious sweet tooth so eating a full bag of gummy bears or a full bag of bite sized chocolate was so easy for me hahaha. I had never fueled like that before and running while eating solid food was so weird! Fortunately, I never had a day of stomach issues or anything like that. I really never had any issues with my legs too, and my feet were fine except for the blisters. I think the best thing that came out of this though is that the guy who won and I are friends now. He is an extremely nice person and I am so honored/ glad to have met him, even though he beat me hahaha.

Sorry for the extremely long post, I just thought I would give anyone interested an overview/recap. I ran 4 miles this morning just to make sure I still had some energy left in me. I ran 4 miles at 7:27 pace so I guess I got faster from doing all of this (??????). Its been a wild journey since I started running in June of last year. I started losing weight May 28th of last year, and so this is like a big send off from being over 300 pounds.

I hope you have a wonderful day, and I hope everyone stays safe out there!!! (Sorry if this incoherent, I don’t have the energy to proofread.)”

He started couch to 5k last June and look what he has accomplished, so inspiring!

On Saturday, Karen shared with me: “I’m only doing one thing today: running 3.21 miles every 3 hours from 0300 to 2100 to honor my two kids with Trisomy 21 (Down syndrome).  I’ve done 6 legs already and only 1 left in less than an hour.  So excited to complete this challenge.  It’s the longest distance I’ve run in a day since doing the St. George marathon in 2016.

She did it! Absolutely amazing.  “I am so happy to have been able to honor my kids in this way – doing something I love for those I love.”

—————————————————————————————————————

How hot is too hot for you to run outside in?

Any other Shark Tank fans?  Who is your favorite Shark or your favorite product you’ve seen on there?

When did you start running… I’d love to hear your answer!

What are you most looking forward to opening up again now where you live?