Selfishly + Showing Off + My Favorite Running Lessons.

Can you believe it is the last day of August?!  I swear this month just flew by and I am officially ten (give or take a few days) weeks away from having this baby now.

6 miles with walking breaks and then it was straight to the fields for soccer games.

We got home from soccer and Brooke made us all our second breakfast of pancakes.  Her interest in cooking is my favorite.

And then we picked raspberries from my sister’s garden.

The rest of my Saturday was all about celebrating Megan!  I couldn’t be happier for her and her husband.  They are perfect for each other.   Selfishly, I’m very happy that she married a runner because now they run together all of the time and Andrew and I will join them for their mountain adventures after this pregnancy.

Her reception had the best food ever.  Andrew and I kept going back for more and more.

There were also tables of desserts and ice cream cones too.

I already want to relive the night again…

Our Sunday morning started out slow and when we finally got outside to go for a walk my body said no way to that idea because it was way too hot.  So we hung out in the front yard in the shade while the girls ran around with Beretta.   Skye missed our Sunday walk as you can tell.

Beretta showed off her new favorite hobby… She pulls Andrew on his skateboard now.

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I thought I would share a few running lessons that I’ve had over the years that are true to me… they might be true for you and they might not be true for you but I’d love to hear some things you’ve learned about this sport over the miles!

*Celebrate everything.  Right after my  half-marathon PR last year I started thinking about WHAT IF I just ran 24 seconds faster so that I could finally break 1:20.  I was bugged that I didn’t just run 2 seconds faster per mile to hit that goal.  I decided to stop my thoughts there and remember that I gave everything I had and it was time to just focus on celebrating the PR.  We can always think… what if and think we should have done more but it is a lot more fun to celebrate right where you are now.  No matter how big or how small those accomplishments we hit are, celebrate celebrate celebrate and pat yourself on the back.

*You can fool yourself into thinking that your legs aren’t that tired during a race.  You can fool yourself into hitting your dream paces even if your brain is telling you to slow down…. BUT you CANNOT fool poor racing nutrition.  I can’t tell you how many times it took for me to learn this lesson but it finally happened.  I remember in 2011 I ate candy on the way to the start of a half marathon and felt like death during the race.  I remember MANY marathons where I started fueling at mile 15 and pretty much had to crawl the last 6 miles.  BUT what I really remember is the races where I fueled properly and while I was tired at the end, I never felt that depleted/zero glycogen/want to die feeling during the race.  I now go into half-marathons and marathons eating 600+ calories in the morning and fueling regularly throughout the race (starting at about 30 minutes in and then continuing every 30-40 minutes).  Fueling properly has been a game changer for my running and I’m so glad I now know how much more enjoyable long runs/marathons are now that I’m eating enough.  We don’t expect our cars to run without gas so why in the world would we expect our bodies to run without calories during a race?!

*Races, times, performance have nothing to do with our self worth.  Sure they can fill us with confidence when we have a good one or bum us out for a day because we worked so hard for something and missed our goal BUT the time on the clock can’t determine how we should feel about ourselves.

*There is always another race (or another 1039 races).  I remember back in 2011 being so devastated that I wasn’t going to be able to run Boston because of stress fractures.  I remember in 2015 also feeling so down about the fact I couldn’t run the marathon I had trained so hard for because of health issues.  What I’ve learned through both experiences is that there is always another race.  There is always another training cycle.  You might miss out on some races every now (AKA ALL OF 2020!!!) and then because that’s just how life works but there will always be another race for you to do!  Those goals will happen but sometimes they just don’t happen the years or at the races we expect them to happen.

*Get out of your comfort zone more.  I’m the type of runner that naturally chooses convenience (aka running pretty much the same thing every single day during pregnancy) over experience but my training cycle last year (my coach and the people I would run with) really pushed me out of that comfort zone and they have helped me experience places/things that I normally wouldn’t do on my own.  IE go run up Timpanogos when I have trails that I know really well two seconds away from me.

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Tell me about any of your favorite running lessons?

Dog owners—>  Tell me your dog’s favorite hobbies please!

If you have had a wedding reception/dinner etc—> What food did you have there?

How have you gotten out of your comfort zone this year?