That Time I Ran My First 5k

Last July my cousin-in-law (is that the actual term? I do I just call her my cousin? Or it is it do I say my cousin’s wife) posted something on Facebook about how she had just signed up to a 5k. I asked her asked her a little bit about it and found out it was going to be a nighttime race and she was signed up with my cousins. 

The more I started thinking about it, the more I wanted to do it. Not only was it a nighttime race, but it was GLOW IN THE DARK and it was on Friday the 13^th! It just sounded so awesome!!

I talked to my mom about it and convinced her to do it with me. I originally didn’t tell my cousins we had signed up….. I sort of felt like I was crashing their family time and I didn’t want to impose!

I Googled a couch to 5k program and started going out on the Jordan River Parkway almost every day. I was slow…. SUPER slow….. I felt like little old ladies with walkers could keep up with me!!!

 But I forced myself to keep going.

The program was a 9 week deal. And there were only about 6 weeks until the race. I was SO afraid that I wouldn’t be able to do it. My original goal was to run the whole race…. but then I realized that probably wasn’t as important as just running what I could and making it to the end.

I kept telling everyone about the race because it was going to be awesome! My sister in law signed up to run with us and so did my aunt.

We eventually told my cousins we would be running with them and I am SO glad we did. It turned out to be a blast!! There were 8 of us running and it was great to have other people cheering you on!

 

Everyone was really creative with their glow sticks! I even tried weaving them into my hair! The coolest part was probably our customized shirts!!

That's right!! WHAM!!!!!

 

Hayley and I were "HA"

The race began and I was so nervous, but also extremely excited.

I started to run…..

And I kept running….

And I even passed people!!

Before race day, I think my longest running streak had been a little over a mile.

On race day, I ran a mile and a half without stopping!
It’s pretty awesome what adrenaline will do!

For the last mile and a half I did a walk then run combo, but I made sure to save enough energy so I could sprint across the finish line!

It was an awesome feeling!! I had finished my first 5k!! I hadn’t run the whole thing, but I had run longer than I ever had before and I FINISHED!!

Me!! Crossing the finish line of my very first race!!

They gave out awards and my amazing mom was a medal in her age bracket!! Way to go!!

And my cousin and sister in law won in their age division!!

 

I was definitely on a running high!!!

I wanted to do more!! 

 

The Aftermath

After the Color Me Rad race, I went home to ice my left ankle and right knee. I kept ice on them all day and even put a brace on my ankle! Later that night, when I took the brace off, I was stunned to see that my ankle was even more swollen than it had been at the race!

I stayed off of it Sunday, hoping that would fix what ever the problem was! I would ice my ankle, while keeping a heating pad on my knee. Then I’d swap them.

It was Sunday that I started to get pretty worried about my knee. It was horribly painful to go up and down the stairs….. to the point that it almost brought me to tears! But I figured if I could still walk on it, it couldn’t be that bad!!

On Monday my parents convinced me to stay home and make an appointment with an orthopedic specialist. I didn’t want to go the doctor because they were starting to feel a lot better. I figured I go in, they’d tell me I twisted my ankle and bruised my knee and send me on my way….. feeling like an idiot for paying $35 for that assessment!

But I went anyway, and I waited in the stupid doctor’s office FOREVER!! And by forever I mean it was seriously almost two hours before I saw the doctor!! When I finally met with her, she moved my knee all over the place and pushed on my ankle. I felt stupid, because they really were aching any more and I felt like I was wasting her time.

Then she sent me back for x-rays.

That’s when it got bad.

My left ankle was fractured……not good.

Then she showed me my right knee cap.

I’m no orthopedic expert, but it was pretty easy to see that

a piece of my knee cap had been chipped off….

Bad…. really bad.

And the appointment went downhill from there.

She put my in a huge stupid walking boot and told me to keep weight off of it for two weeks. It was that or put a hard cast on it for four weeks!

Then she started talking about locked knee braces. In my head I kept trying to picture how a locked knee brace would work out when I couldn’t put weight on my left leg and had to use crutches. Luckily, she decided a neoprene brace would work, giving me the ability to still bed my knee.

Like so many times during the race, I could feel the tears coming.

But I didn’t want to cry in front of this lady….. so I bit my lip and nodded as she gave me the rest of my instructions, which included no running for four weeks.

I made it all the way home before I completely lost it.

My Disneyland race was only eight weeks away and I wouldn’t be able to run for four of them. Which meant the chances of me actual running the race were slim to none.

Major meltdown!

I cried for a long time….

For the money I felt like I wasted……

For the unfairness of my stupid weak ankle……

For the fact that I had injured BOTH legs…..

My grandparents were at my house when I finally made it home from the doctor, which ended up being a really good thing. My dad and my grandpa gave me a blessing and I felt slightly better.

I realized I would have to be patient…..

And I would have to work really hard for four weeks…..

So now the countdown is on!! 

Being patient is tough!! 

If only walking weren't so hard!

Color Me Rad

My third 5k!!! 

I’d seen advertisements and pictures from people who had run the Color Me Rad race before and I thought it looked awesome!

When I signed up with my mom and my cousins, we did it under the team name M&M (Macks&Markus’), awesome right??

I was especially excited for this race because I knew I would be able to run the whole entire thing! My first two 5ks were a blast, but I did a lot of walking and I couldn’t wait to watch all of my hard work pay off!

Race day finally came and I was prepared with hot pink running capris, purple sunglasses and, of course, a white t-shirt! 

 

We parked downtown and started walking the one mile between the car and the starting line. We talked excitedly and decided we would all run together since it wasn’t time.

We were almost to the starting area….20, 30 feet maybe!

Then it happened…..

One minute I was up.

The next minutes I was down.

And I went down hard.

As a sprained ankle expert, I knew this wasn’t just a “walk it off” kind of injury. Not to mention my skinned knee and the scratches all over my arm from falling into a thorn bush.

My fantastic cousin had ibuprofen in her bag so I took some and decided to “man up”.

I limped the rest of the way to the starting area and found the first aid booth, hoping they’d have an ace bandage.

No such luck! I did get a nice big band-aid though for my bleeding knee!!

We were part of the 8:20 wave so we had a while before we started running. We took some pictures….

 And then made our way to the starting line.

It was then that I was very VERY unsure about running the race. My ankle AND my knee were throbbing. No… more like aching!

I could feel that it was pretty bad. Every step hurt and it took a lot of self control not to break into tears! 

But the music was blasting, colors were flying, adrenaline was pumping and everyone around me looked like they were having such a good time! Not to mention I had already paid for the race and my t-shirt was still white! So I resolved then and there to finish the race!

 

They counted us down and as soon as my toes touched the starting line, I started to run! For a brief moment I thought I could do it….. I thought I could run the whole race with my twisted ankle and skinned knee!

But after a few blocks I knew that would not be possible… and I had to walk.

We hadn’t even reached the first color station and I was in agony. And not only that, I was walking….. My goal had been to run the entire race and I couldn’t do it, even I wanted to!! Again, I was holding back my tears!

Luckily I have the world’s most fantastic mom! Instead of taking off and finishing the race in no time, she walked with me… The.Whole.Way! I was so grateful for her!!

We were pelted with green, orange, purple and yellow and the longer I went, the better I felt. As the end got closer I decided I wanted to come across the finish line running! It wasn’t very far, but I did it!

I had made it through the whole race!! Sprained ankle, bum knee, burning scratches and all!!

What I Did For Earth Day

A few weeks ago I noticed a bird that always seemed to fly away from somewhere really quickly whenever I walked out of or towards my door. Birds kind of make me nervous and it would freak me out whenever it happened. I also started to notice a bunch of sticks all over my patio area. But it has been so windy lately that I figured they had just blown in. About two weeks ago, after the bird scared me to death while walking in the house, I did a little investigating and realized a starling was building a nest inside the dryer vent. The twigs that were scattered all over the patio were ones that were to large to fit in the vent.

What the heck do you do when a bird starts building its nest in your vent? 

A few days later, my mom came over to visit my grandma and I told her about the bird situation. We went outside to look in the vent, but it’s pretty high up! So we got a kitchen chair but that really wasn't enough height. So we grabbed a step stool my grandma had, balanced it on top of a flower pot, and my mom climbed up.

It was kind of hard for her to see in the vent but she pulled out some twigs and said she would probably need to come over another day, with the shop vac, to get everything out.

Fast forward to last Thursday….. I noticed the bird was back. And I could see sticks poking out of the vent so I knew the bird was rebuilding. I called my mom and she and my dad planned to come over the following Monday to clean it out and put something up to prevent it from getting back in.

So Monday, Earth Day, my dad climbed up on the put and was shocked by the inside of the vent. It was completely full of twigs!! He took a picture and pulled the first handful out.

 I stopped him and asked if there were any eggs in the nest. He told me it was too early for eggs and kept pulling out more and more stuff. After a couple handfuls he turned around and said to me “We have to clean this vent out. This is a fire hazard”. In my head I was thinking “Yeah…… I know we do…….” He put his hand back in the vent and pulled out two small turquoise eggs….. still warm. I held them in my hands as he reached in and grabbed two more eggs. I took them inside, put them in a bowl filled with washcloths and stuck them under a lamp.

My dad pulled out tons of stuff from that vent! I wish this picture did it justice!!
It also doesn't show how much he had to suck up with the vacuum!!!

He said the bird had built up a wall inside the vent, to keep too much hot air from getting through. He made a comment about how my grandma’s dryer was probably acting funny because it wasn't getting any air flow. It was crazy because just a few days earlier, my grandma had asked me if I thought it was taking a lot longer for clothes to get dry. She thought one of the heating coils was going out, when all along it was the bird’s nest.
My dad is very smart and he built a short of cage contraption around the vent so the bird can’t get back in.

 I feel kind of bad about it….. At one point, we had gone inside to look at the eggs and when my dad got back up to vacuum it out, the bird flew out. Poor mama bird!! We destroyed her
nest and took her eggs!!
I felt really bad about the eggs! I tried to keep them warm under the lamp, but after everything was done and cleaned up, when we picked them up, they were cold. So what did I do on Earth Day??? I killed some of Mother Nature’s creatures. Jeez!!! I really did feel bad! I even considered calling IFA to see if they would take them!! But then we shut off all the lights in the house and my dad held a flashlight under each egg and all you could see was a yolk. Phew!! No fully formed baby birds ready to hatch any day!!

That Moment When You Panic

I got on my computer tonight to upload some pictures to my posts and hit a snag....

I cant find the pictures I'm looking for.....

I've checked all my flash drives.....

Sorted through my CDs......

Checked my old laptop.......

Checked my desktop computer......


And nothing.......


This is the moment when you panic because 8 months worth of pictures have disappeared.....


Posts coming....... who knows when.......

My Insta-Life

Do you use Instagram?
I LOVE it!!

Here is an almost wordless update on my life, through the eye of my Instagram account!!

Too Long

Wow, I didn't realize just how long it’s been since my last post!!
I was horrible about blogging last year because my computer was dying, which made typing posts
and adding pictures miserable!
 And then I moved into my grandma’s basement and didn't have the Internet for a few months.
Then I finally got the Internet, but my new excuse was that my pictures were on so many different flash drives and CDs I didn't know where to start!

My goal was to get back on track the first of the year…..
So much for that!

I have almost a year worth of stories and it feels overwhelming!
And my pictures are still all over the place!!
Plus, I am pretty sure the one or two people that may have actually read my blog have long given
up on the hopes of a new post!

But I have to remind myself this is my online journal!
And one day when I have infinite amounts of free time, I will turn my blog into a hard bound book
so I have a copy.

I decided that rather than try to go back and post things in chronological order, it would be much
easier to post things in groups. So you can expect to see groups of posts about running and
vacations, and birthday and holidays for the next little while!! One day I’ll be up to date!