Last weekend I was scrolling through Twitter on my phone, as Barry drove us home from the rodeo. I came across an article posted by Runner’s World that had a compilation of motivational posters. You know I’m a sucker for these. Earlier this year I even made a bunch of my own motivational posters.

Of course, I had to choose my favorite from the Runner’s World ones and now I’m going to share them with you! This first one is so true. For me, it is especially true of my first full marathon:

Running is as much a physical challenge as it is a mental challenge. At times, I think the mental part can carry more weight:

One thing I love about running is that the rest of the world often melts away during a run. It doesn’t matter if I have a million things to do when I get back from a run. While I’m out there on the trail, time just ceases to exist:

If I hadn’t ever started running and doing races, I may not have seen all the towns and the trails they have to offer. As I get more into trail running, I’m discovering even more adventures:

Through running and through this blog, I have made some amazing connections and friends both online and in real life. There’s nothing like sharing miles of conversation with a friend on a beautiful Saturday morning.

Some days you lack motivation (hopefully not today with all of these great posters!). On those days, I try and think about how good it feels when a run is in the books:

The next quote from Kara Goucher is good to keep in mind when you’re training for a big race. Often, training for a half or full marathon, or other endurance events, involves weeks of training. It’s rare that you’re able to follow that beautiful training plan to a T. But that’s alright. It’s important to train smart, listen to your body, and realize that minor setbacks are not going to ruin everything:

Finally, I leave you with this nugget. For whatever reason, I have dubbed 2014 as my “race palooza” year. Barring injuries or other catastrophes, I intend to run any and all races that my heart desires. I’m off to a good start so far. I love running races because I get a rush whether my goal is to PR or just to finish. I love the atmosphere, the community, and the amazing opportunity to explore new places on foot. Plus, having a race on the calendar often gives my training a sense of purpose.

I hope you’re feeling motivated after all of that! The slideshow on Runner’s World has 95 total, so you can definitely get your fill of motivation there. Now get out there and kick some butt!

Do you like clicking through motivational posters like these?
Who is racing this weekend? Good luck!!

This past weekend we headed up to the central part of Virginia to attend the first Saturday night summer rodeo of the season. The horse farm where my best friend rides plays host to the rodeo on the second Saturday of every month, from May through September. We always like to try to make it out to a few each year.

The main event at the rodeo is the bull riding. But they also have mutton busting and barrel racing. If you’re not familiar with rodeo, here is how the announcer described mutton busting this past weekend: “during the intermission, we will strap our children to livestock purely for our entertainment!” So there you go, it’s kids riding sheep and it’s hilarious. Barrel racing is women racing on horses around barrels in a clover leaf pattern, fastest time wins. But we go to the rodeo for the bull riding.

The rules of bull riding are fairly simple: stay on the bull for 8 seconds, hang on with one hand and keep your free hand in the air (no touching the bull with that hand). Oh, and run like hell the second he bucks you off, because he’s coming for you.

Cowboys receive a score up to 100 points for an 8 second ride. At this rodeo, two judges each have 50 points to award. The points are combined to give a final ride score, and the score is based on how the bull performed (how high did he kick, how did he spin) and how the cowboy controlled the bull (by sitting in the center of the bull, using his spurs to control the bull, etc.).

This rodeo has an initial round where all the riders go once, and then they hold a short round for the top six scorers. If you don’t have at least six cowboys score (meaning they stayed on at least 8 seconds), then the top six are determined by who stayed on the longest. But before things get started, they introduce all of the cowboys, say a prayer, and sing the National Anthem.

When Barry and I first got there, we wandered around a bit before deciding to sit in the stands. This was the first time I had sat in the stands, since we usually sit over in the VIP area where you can stand right up against the fence. We had a nice view, although it wasn’t a great spot for pictures.

The rodeo has a mix of professionals and amateurs (there was one boy, and a few cowboys in their teens).This year there were only two cowboys that had a successful ride during the first round. So they pulled another four who had the next longest rides for the short round.

During the intermission they had the previously mentioned mutton busting and barrel racing. As that was going on, Barry and I made our way over to the VIP area and met up with my best friend, who had gotten there about three-fourths of the way through the first round. We had a much better (i.e. closer) view from this side. Although, you have to make sure you’re always paying attention, because the bulls will occasionally go after anyone standing along the fence.

It’s really hard to get decent pictures once the sun goes down and the arena lights come on, but I tried. It also started raining steadily during the short round. I wasn’t worried about my camera, since it’s waterproof, but it added to the challenge of getting a good photo. The white blur in the center of the below photo is a bull with a cowboy on his back. Case in point.

Despite the rain, we had a great time. I meant to get a picture with Barry and with Laura, but I failed. Next time! We stayed at a campground for the weekend, and the dogs held down the fort there while we were at the rodeo.

On Sunday afternoon, we hit the road to head home. Hank entertained me on the way home by finding a position in the backseat of the truck that made him look as big as possible.

He succeeded. He even slept that way for a while, with his chin on the top of the head rest. Scout and Hank both have strange ways of sleeping in the truck when we travel, but they seem to think it’s comfortable.

Overall, it was a good weekend that flew by too fast, as fun weekends often do. Hopefully we will get back up to Oakland Heights for another rodeo later this season. We are also planning on checking out the rodeo at the New River Valley Fair again this summer.

Have you ever been to a rodeo? Would you ever ride a bull?
If you have pets, do they travel well?

Thank you for all of Hank’s birthday wishes yesterday! I promise I passed each one of them along to him. He loves when I talk to him, so there was a lot of tail wagging. Hank enjoyed an evening game of birthday fetch in the backyard, and then he and Scout got to have puppy ice creams on the back deck. Pretty rad birthday if I do say so myself.

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This past week was on the lighter side, mileage-wise. But I guess it’s a good idea to back off a bit after having two challenging races on back-to-back weekends. This week I am three weeks out from the Conquer the Cove 25K trail race. If all goes as planned, I will do two of my weekday runs on trails, and do a longer trail run on Saturday morning.

Monday- Rest day. This was a planned rest day, after racing on Saturday and running with Kim on Sunday. Then I also worked until 8 PM, so it was a definite rest day.

Tuesday- 5 mile treadmill run. Sven (the treadmill, if you’re new around here) and I got in a fight because he would not stop making a squeaking noise. Barry and I could not locate the noise, so Sven is in the doghouse until further notice.

Wednesday- Rest day.

Thursday- 3 mile run on the roads around our house. I didn’t feel all that great on this run. It was in the mid-80’s outside and I think the heat kind of zapped my energy.

Friday- 8 mile long run on trails at Pandaps Pond. I decided to get my long run in before the weekend, since we had weekend travel plans. It worked out well, since I had a short workday, although it was very hot since I was running mid-afternoon.

Saturday- Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred, level 1 workout. I snuck this workout in when I got up in the morning, before we hit the road for the rodeo. The dogs were very tired from watching me work out, and had to sleep the whole way to the campground.

They have odd ways of sleeping in the truck…

Sunday- Rest.

Total Miles: 16 miles

My weekly workout round up is coming tomorrow, because I have something more important for today.

Today Hank turns 4 years old! I cannot believe we have had him that long. We got him on July 4, 2010 when he was just a 7 week old puppy. He was 19 pounds, which is actually kind of big in general for a puppy, but was tiny compared to the 125 pounds of dog he is today. (Barry had no idea how big he was going to get, but I knew 🙂 )

Hank had a big third year. He went camping approximately seven times, where he did basically the same thing each time.

He also got skunked…. twice.

Hank experienced his first loss, when we had to say goodbye to Toby. Toby was Hank’s first buddy.

He helped raise chicks, keeping a close eye on them in their brooding box in the garage and helping to build their coop.

Once they moved outside, he plotted how to get up close and personal with them again. He finally got into the chicken coop. Luckily no chickens were harmed.

Hank found a buddy (Nana) to hang out with on the couch at Thanksgiving.

He also demonstrated his ability to scratch his chin like a cow. He’s pretty sure he actually is a cow and not a dog.

Hank encouraged me while I did sit up’s and other various ab/core moves by standing over me and breathing heavily. When he wasn’t enthusiastically standing over me, he was sleeping because apparently watching someone else work out is really tough.

Hank played in the snow numerous times. Our first snow was mid-October 2013 and the last snow of this winter was mid-April 2014.

He visited Santa Clause for the third time.

He attempted to reassert himself as the dominant dog in the house, but Scout held on to that role.

Hank rode around in the truck, one of his most favorite things to do. He also went on walks in the woods, another one of this favorite things.

He committed murder of a duck, but luckily they don’t put dogs in jail for killing innocent stuffed dog toys.

He cheered on the Hokies, even though we had a rough football season.

He took a vacation at Myrtle Beach and played in the ocean.

He also played in a flood, when excessive amounts of rain created a river through our backyard.

He got tied up in a barbed wire fence after going under both our chain link fence and the barbed wire fence into the cattle field, and then trying to get back.

Finally, he attempted to set a world record for most naps in a calendar year. Unfortunately, he fell a bit short. But he plans to make another attempt at the record this year.

After all the things he did during year 3, I cannot wait to see what he gets into this year. I’m hoping for some more camping trips, another family beach vacation, and hopefully no more skunks!

If you have pets, do you have a ridiculous number of pictures of them?
I realized I did when I put this post together.

This weekend we are headed to the rodeo! We are going to stay at the same campground that we did last year. For those of you who’ve been around since last spring, you’ll remember this is the campground where I nearly lost my mind. I had 10 miles to do, and only a quarter-mile loop to do it on. In the spirit of not going crazy, I decided to do my long run this afternoon. It worked out well, since I had a short workday today.

I decided to head over to Pandapas Pond to run on the Poverty Creek Trail System. I’m planning to focus more on trails for the next month, in order to prepare for the Conquer the Cove 25K. Plus I finally decided to invest in a pair of trail shoes, and I wanted to take them for their maiden voyage!

Aren’t they pretty? I ended up deciding to go with the Hoka One One Stinson Trail, which are the trail counterpart to the Stinson Tarmacs I already run in. I didn’t notice a big difference in how the two feel, but overall I felt like I had better traction in the trail shoes. Kind of the point, right? I’m really happy with them so far.

Today I planned to run an out and back on Horse Nettle Trail, which is roughly 3 miles long and goes up Brush Mountain. The Conquer the Cove has a 3 mile climb from miles 7-10 and I need to be as ready as I can be for that.

Horse Nettle Trail starts very gently, on a wide, smooth path, and lulls you into a false sense of security. Then you start climbing for about a mile and a half before coming out onto a gravel road, which I think may have been a fire service road.

The gravel road had rolling hills, but they were pretty big rolling hills! I had to take frequent walk breaks on this road, as well as on the climb up Brush Mountain. It actually took me about 45 minutes to cover the first 3 miles. I’m hoping to improve on my climbing abilities on trails before my race in June.

Just before I got to the top of Brush Mountain, I passed the fire communications tower. There was a nice view from there, but it was a bit hard to capture.

I finally reached the top, and then the trail dipped back down on the other side of the mountain. I had to do a short out and back on the Jacob’s Ladder Trail in order to hit 3 miles before turning around to head back the way I came.

On the way back it was mainly all downhill and I was significantly faster (relatively speaking) on the way back. One thing I am really proud of is that I never walked during the last five miles. There weren’t any really tough climbs, but there were still a number of hills.

As I made my way down the mountain, there were a few spots that provided me an opportunity to make my trail shoes look like real trail shoes. A little mud and dirt and wet 🙂

Once I got back down to the bottom of Horse Nettle, 6 miles in, I headed towards the pond and wetlands area to do a loop. It was really hot running around the pond, though, because there was hardly any shade and it was 90 degrees.

I ran with my (somewhat) new Nathan hydration vest today. I think it was my fourth of fifth time running with it and so far I really like it. It can hold two liters of water, and I think I drank about three-fourths of it during my run today due to the heat.

If you want to read more about the hydration vest, check out Logan’s great review! After I finished my loop around the pond and wetlands area, I headed over to the Poverty Creek Trail.

I had less than a mile to go and was ready to wrap things up. My legs were feeling very heavy and tired, but luckily the first part of Poverty Creek just has very gentle rolling hills.

I finished back at the parking lot with a little over 8 miles for today’s long run. The elevation profile for this run looks pretty neat. Going up Brush Mountain and back down kind of makes a heart shape. 🙂

So now my long run is in the books and I won’t have to worry about it while we’re at the campground. My sanity will remain intact!

What are your weekend plans?
If you run/walk/hike trails, do you have trail-specific shoes?