Weekly Mileage

River was proud of himself for crossing the stream on the boulders, all by himself :)

I had another productive week, and I managed to do it while chauffeuring Sunshine to nature camp every morning. Mr M picked her up in the afternoons, which allowed me to have the uninterrupted time I needed to make good progress on the beds. I’d started one of the beds on Saturday, so on Monday I brought the matching bed to the same point, then finished them in tandem.

Well, I finished them on Tuesday, but you know what I mean J

Wednesday I started on the second set of beds, and finished them Friday afternoon.

another view of those boulders- from what I read, the water can get very close to the top, if not actually cover the top of them

I’m quite pleased with myself for sticking to it and not taking forever to finish them. I started painting the kitchen cupboards forever ago, and while I finally finished the doors and got them back on, that was only for half the lower cupboards. The other half and the uppers all still need to be started. Someday….

the view upstream while standing on the boulders

Anyway, six days of hard work and they were ready to go back upstairs.

Saturday we moved the kids' bedrooms around, putting Sunshine in the smaller room and the boys in the larger room (I'll do a post on their rooms and the beds later), and I even hung artwork on the walls. I've been putting it off for way too long, but I also had stacks of stuff that needed to be hung, so I bit the bullet and did it. Putting holes in the walls makes me so nervous... I've used command hooks in the past, but I don't think they're always the best option, and I didn't use them in the bedrooms.

such a peaceful trail- we'll have to come back to this one when it's not so hot and humid

All the busyness meant I didn’t get my mileage in, though the boys and I did go on a hike one morning after dropping Sunshine off. We went to a reservoir near Sunshine’s camp and started hiking towards a waterfall. The water level was really low though, and it was a bit longer than I thought River could handle, so we only went part way before turning around. We’ll do it another time when there’s more water and Mr M can help jolly River along.

I’d planned a second hike Friday morning at a park that’s a bit further than we usually go for a hike, but that was on the way home from Sunshine’s camp. Unfortunately, River was under the weather, so we skipped it so he could rest.

a fellow hiker offered to take our picture, so here's a rare non-selfie photo of me hiking with the kiddos. Ocean has a great smile, but River was making faces in all of them- maybe he thinks he's smiling? he's at that age...

Weekly mileage

Thursday:1.60 miles hiking with the boys

            Total mileage: 1.60 miles

362.45 miles towards #365milechallenge (so close to hitting the mark!)

hike #28 toward #52hikechallenge

Sunday Funny

Ocean's version of the Desitin Kid: toothpaste.

Sunshine and River never spread stuff on themselves, but Ocean is proving both resourceful and mischievous, which always leads to interesting results. At least he was in the bathtub (where the toothpaste happened to be, along with other items waiting to be put away after our road trip), and the toothpaste washed off easily, leaving him minty fresh.

And it could have been worse: I'd confiscated a tube of BenGay earlier that day. He would not have enjoyed that experience ;)                         (the fuzziness is due to a smudged lens on my phone- boo!)

Weekly Mileage

Sunshine caught a firefly!

This week has been a very productive one.

It all started with unearthing the treadmill.

The guest room in the basement has been the dumping ground for stuff I planned to get rid of as I worked on decluttering the house this past spring. More stuff got added to the piles when I had to pull all our camping and emergency preparedness gear out of the closet under the stairs back in May. We had a bad infestation of weevils in a bag of rice that I never got around to properly storing. Ick.

weevils- so gross- and this wasn't even the worst of them

Anyway, when we got home from our road trip I really needed to spend time on the treadmill again, but it had stuff piled all over it. I put everything back in the closet under the stairs (I'd left everything out so I could do a final check to make sure we'd interrupted the life cycle of the weevils and they were really gone), and then kept going. After sorting random items into “ebay”, “paperback swap”, and “yard sale” piles, I turned my attention to the boxes and bins of papers. 

Some of the papers were old bills I could discard, but there was also piles of items to sort for scrapbooking: pictures, cards, old pamphlets and papers from trips, etc. When it was all said and done, I’d consolidated paperwork to keep, papers and pics to scrapbook, and papers to get rid of. Four boxes of papers to get rid of. We had four boxes of papers already in the shed, so I think we have enough to call a document disposal company to come and get it all and shred it for us (I'd planned on burning the papers in the fire pit, but burning paper is messy and takes a long time, so shredding is the better option for us).

this is what it looked like back at the end of April- it was much, much more crowded by the time I tackled it. most of what's in the pic was all the papers that had to be sorted. so much paper!

I also filled a large box with trash, an even larger trash bag with garbage, and a huge cardboard box with other cardboard boxes.

Once the guest room and bathroom were clear, I moved on to the rest of the basement for more decluttering, sorting, and discarding.

By that time, the basement was finally feeling almost clean and tidy. Until the boys dumped out the bins of trucks and train tracks and LEGOs again J

All the sorting and decluttering took me four days, in which I didn’t get on the treadmill, though I did lots of walking that I didn’t track. Friday I walked a bit more than four miles on the treadmill while listing books on ebay and paperbackswap.com. Great use of time! Saturday I did more of the same, and now I only have a few items left to list.

I also finally finished upholstering a chair that I bought about three years ago. It sat in its ugliness for a good while before I got started on it last winter. I was making good progress and just had the back to put on and the last of the trim to attach, when Ocean fell and cut his cheek on the metal teeth used to attach the back. It threw me off my stride and I had no desire to finish it, so I threw a blanket over the back and pushed it against a wall to prevent a repeat. The scar on Ocean’s face has faded significantly, though I still feel terrible that it happened. Pics to come- I need to dig out the before pics from my external hard drive.

In the interest of getting rid of things we don’t need, I decided to finally finish the chair so I could sell it at the yard sale. I’d thought it was going to take awhile to finish, which was another reason I put it off, but in the end I was able to finish it in just a couple hours.

Saturday I also finally got around to painting one of the kid’s beds, but I’ll do a separate post about that.

Weekly mileage

Friday: 4.2 treadmill walk

Saturday: 3.2 treadmill walk

            Total mileage: 7.4 miles

360.85 miles towards #365milechallenge (so close to hitting the mark!)

Sunday Funny

After dinner at St Mary Campground in Glacier NP we went for a walk around the campground. River started doing this funny hoppy-skippy thing that I managed to get pictures of. The quality isn't great because he was moving, but I think they're hilarious.

Thoughts on Finishing My 40 by 40 Goal

I started my 40 by 40 goal at the end of June 2015, when I turned 38.
I completed my 40 by 40 goal two years later, by running a half marathon on my 40th birthday.

Being an overachiever made it too easy to run more than I'd originally planned, so I actually did 50 races in that time.

I'd originally planned on a wider variety of distances and types of races, but had to scale back when Mr M's work schedule got crazy busy. Despite that, I managed to complete a decent variety of races. I'd hoped to do a duathlon or triathlon, a relay (like Ragnar), an international race, a road marathon, and maybe a bike race, but I think those are the only ones I really missed out on.

Overall, I enjoyed completing this goal. It was definitely one of my more ambitious goals, and it took a lot of time, effort, and money, but I do feel that it was worth it. Not that it was all sunshine and roses, because it wasn't. It was exhausting and stressful and a lot of work.

I did get a bit burned out at one point, which is why I hit #40 early: I kind of wanted to be done. But then there were more races I still wanted to run, so I kept going. And then I had to run enough races to get to an even number, because ocd.

I've mentioned it before, but one issue I did run into was that I felt the races interfered with my training so that my times didn't improve for most of the time I was working on my goal. To be fair, I was pregnant or nursing for the first 19 months, and that definitely had an impact on my speed. Ocean stopped nursing back in January, my race schedule has tapered off, and my times have started to improve. Coincidence? I think not.

Purposely signing up for races in a variety of locations and distances forced me out of my comfort zone on many occasions, which is good for me. I don't anticipate making and completing a similar goal, which means I won't be running lots and lots of races anytime soon. Expanding my horizons has helped me find new favorite races, along with races I don't need to run again.

50 races: distances
2 x 1 mile
2 x 2 miles
1 x 4k
34 x 5k
1 x 3.5 miles
2 x 4 miles
1 x 4.8 miles
1 x 10k
2 x 13.1 miles
1 x 13.6 miles
1 x 26.2 miles
1 x 10k kayak
1 x race volunteer

50 races: circumstances, surfaces, etc
pregnant, wearing a kilt, pushing the jogger with one boy, pushing the jogger with both boys, with all three kiddos, wearing a costume, in 20* temps

mixed surface, road, trail, in a corn maze, virtual, cross country, mud run, obstacle run, glow run, kayak race, in a vineyard, predict your time, color run, same race/new course, uphill, in an orchard, in a quarry, out of state

1st in age group, walked an entire race, volunteered at a water stop in a race, 2 races in 12 hours (different days), evening race, 2 races in the same day, 2nd in age group, spent the night in a hotel before a race, ran an entire race (several times), registered with a paper form I mailed in, ran a race for the 7th time in a row, ran a 5k PR, ran a race for the 6th time in a row/1st time by myself/PR for the course, camped before a race

Sunshine's first solo race, River's first race that he ran (not just rode in the jogger)

50 races = 202.4 miles run and walked + 6.2 miles kayaked

	Date	Event	Distance	Event Type
1.	July 2015	4th of July 5k	5k	Pregnant
2.	August	4 Mile Fun Run	4 miles	Road Race
3.	September	All Terrain	5k	Mixed surface
4.	October	Hill Valley Half	13.1 miles	Virtual half marathon
5.	October	Corn Maze 5k	5k	Corn Maze, 1st in age group
6.	October	Kilted Trail 5k	5k	Kilted race
7.	November	Trail Half	13.6 miles	Trail Half, last finisher
8.	November	Turkey Trot	5k	Road Race
9.	December	Veteran’s 5k	5k	Mixed surface
10.	December	Army Virtual Marathon	26.23 miles	Virtual marathon
11.	January 2016	New Year’s Day 5k	5k	Road race
12.	February	Frostbite 5k	5k	Cross country race
13.	February	Mud Run	4.8 miles	Mud run
14.	March	4k Walk	4k	Walk
15.	March	March 5k	5k	Road race
16.	March	Pi Day Virtual 5k	5k	Virtual 5k Walk
17.	March	10 mile race	Not applicable	Water stop volunteer
18.	March	Obstacle Race	5k	Obstacle run
19.	April	Glow Run	5k	Glow Run, 1st of 2 races in 12 hours
20.	April	April 5k	5k	Pushing jogger, 2nd of 2 races in 12 hours
21.	April	Evening Run	5k	Evening run
22.	May	10k Kayak Race	10k	Kayak race
23.	May	May 5k	5k	1st of 2 races in same day
24.	May	Evening CC Race	5k	Evening cross country, 2nd of 2 races in same day
25.	June	June 5k	5k	Pushing jogger, 1st of 2 races in same day
26.	June	1 Mile Glow Run	1 mile	Pushing jogger with both boys, 2nd of 2 races in same day, glow run
27.	June	Vineyard 5k	5k	Vineyard run
28.	July	July 5k	5k	Road race
29.	August	Predict Your Time 5k	5k	Predict your time
30.	August	August 5k	5k	Road race
31.	August	NPS 100th Virtual 10k	10k	Virtual 10k run
32.	August	4 Mile Run	4 miles	Road race
33.	September	Labor Day 5k	5k	With all 3 kiddos
34.	September	1 Mile Color Run	1 mile	Color run, Sunshine’s first solo race, River’s first race
35.	September	3.5 Mile Trail Run	3.5 miles	Trail run
36.	October	Run Long & Prosper Virtual 5k	5k	Virtual 5k run
37.	October	Flat Trail 5k	5k	Travel to race, trail run, ran w/o stopping, 2nd in age group
38.	October	Halloween Trail 5k	5k	Trail run, in costume, in a vineyard
39.	November	Two Mile Road Race	2 miles	2 miles, road race
40.	November	Two Mile Cross Country Race	2 miles	2 miles, cross country race, paper entry form
41.	November	Turkey Trot	5k	All 3 kiddos, 7th year in a row running this race
42.	December	December 5k	5k	5k road race, new course, temps in the 20s
43.	December	New Year’s Eve 5k	5k	5k glow run
44.	March 2017	March 5k	5k	Road race, PR
45.	April	April 5k	5k	Uphill
46.	May	Orchard run	5k	In an orchard
47.	May	Quarry	5k	In a quarry
48.	June	June 5k	5k	6th year in a row running this race, 1st time by myself
49.	June	Utah 5k	5k	Out of state 5k
50.	June	Glacier Half marathon	13.1 miles	Road half