Running

Sometime in my second year of living in California there was a girl in our ward named Maria who started a work out group.  We started off by doing something called couch to 5k.  Every week you would run for 20 minutes but you would run for 1 minute and walk for two minutes.  You did this several times a week.  Then the next week the running went up and the walking went down.  Just a little over a month or so I was running 3 miles without stopping.  It was wonderful!  I loved it.  We lived in the perfect place to run because we lived around a lake and if I went out my front door and run to the corner and went all the way around the lake back to my front door it was like doing a 5k.  Every chance I got I would go run.  Our work out group would get together 3 times a week normally.  We would do lots of cardio and about once a week we would run.  Then we started meeting at the kids school and running to the house we worked out at and then running back to the school.  Did I mention it is really freaking hot in the high dessert!  haha  Sometimes it was awful.  Then it is really windy there too.  Sometimes my ears would get so achy.  I usually shoved toilet paper in them.  Any ways.  The first run I did was a 5k mud run.  We trained really hard for it and I had NO idea what I was in for until we got there and started running.  HOLY COW it was SOOOOO hard!  By far the worse one I have done to date.  Not only was it super challenging because about every 100 yards or so they had some kind of obstacle you had to do but when I had about a mile left I fell on a rock and hurt myself.  I sliced up my hand and arm and busted up my thigh.  I had the HUGEST bruise!!  They only way to see it fully would be if I took a picture naked and since that wasn't going to happen I tried to get some close up ones.  I had bruises every where though.  I even had some on my ribs!  Here are some pictures from that run.  Sorry the quality sucks but I stole these off of my friends Facebook page :-)

Here we are before the race started all nice and clean and still smiling! haha

Here we are just starting the race.  Right as you cross the start line they have firemen hosing you down!  Did I mention this was in late August and it was probably 100 degrees when we raced?

Notice the smile is gone?  haha

This is my friend Amanda and I crossing the finish line.  She fell too and busted up her knees and hand really bad.  We were the klutzy ones of the group apparently.

Here we are shooing off our injuries

This is me with Natalie and Maria, my work out girls.

And here is my arm…I had dirt all in my cuts.  For about a week I would scrap the dirt off of the cuts while watching TV.

And here is my thigh….it had a huge lump under the skin…it was so gross….

For my next running adventure I signed up to do a Monster Mash Halloween 5k but then I broke my toe so I didn't get to do it.  That was a bummer.  So my next one ended up being another 5k mud run.  I was a little nervous since the last one was so awful but this one ended up being a piece of cake!  We decided we wanted to make t-shirts and put something funny on them.  We decided on "Sister Wives"  Because all of my friends at church call each other this.  We knew some people would not like this but we decided we didn't care.  haha  And on top of that to make it even worse on the back of our shirts we wrote "We share EVERYTHING"  haha  We also had capes which I was not a fan of and will never wear again while racing.  Here's the before pictures

Then we have some during pictures.  Amanda and Chrissy were way ahead of us this time and so Chrissy took pictures of Carol and I along the way.  She was carrying a water proof camera.  

 That's me at the bottom of the huge net we had to climb.  I totally accidentally kicked someone while climbing it.  Opps

 Gotta love having muffin top in your high socks!  haha  My calves are huge

After this we treated ourselves to In N Out.  It was so much fun!

The next race I did was another 5k.  I haven't worked my way up yet to anything longer then that.  One of these days I am hoping I can.  The next was a color run that Amanda and I did by ourselves.  That was fun too.  A totally new experience for me.  Again my friend and I made shirts.  Her's said, "I'm with Awesome" And mine said on the front "Who needs boobs" and the back said "When you have a butt like this"  heehee

Fun fun FUN!  And lastly just a couple of days before moving to Texas I did one last mud run.  It is ironic because it is the same mud run that I started with.  The one that was SOOOO hard.  However this time it was perfect!  I am assuming they got complaints about their being way too many obstacles because they had about half of the amount this time and it was perfect.  There were a few things I didn't like.  They had several fire pits you had to jump over which wasn't bad but then they had a huge slide you had to go down that put you straight into a huge pile of dirty water.  I got so much up my nose it was gross!  But I preferred this one to the first one any day!

Here are our before pictures 

And the after pictures…

It was very fun times!  I miss my California running girls!  It's not quite the same without them.

I'm hoping to do many more races in my days….Crossing my fingers