I have decided to challenge myself this year – not only did I sign up and complete my 1st 15K trail run, but I signed up for a duathlon, triathlon – and I signed up for the Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati next May with my sister! 🙂
Year: 2016
Ironmaster’s 15k Trail Run/Hike 2016
The Ironmaster’s Challenge is a 50K or a 15K trail run or hike at Pine Grove Furnace State Park – I like hiking and I like running so why not try out a trail run and see how it goes?
HAPPY EARTH DAY!
Earth Day is such a great day to celebrate – you don’t need to decorate, send cards or buy presents – actually NOT doing any of these things is best! 🙂
Ocean to Bay bike ride
Every time I think of Delaware I think of this scene from Wayne’s World:
Yup – so for the 2nd year I headed down to Delaware to take part in the Bethany Beach Ocean to Bay bike ride. I was a little nervous as the weather channel was calling for up to 40mph winds – not something I really felt like riding 30 miles in, but after watching the documentary The Man Who Cycled The World I figured if Mark Beaumont could ride his bike through the desert in a crazy sandstorm I could probably tough it out for a few hours – plus I already paid for the place we were staying. 🙂
Hershey 10k 2016- COMPLETE!
HERSHEY PARK HAPPPY……so today was the Hershey 10k – except instead of smelling like chocolate – it smelled more like worms as it was raining like crazy when we got there and drizzled for the entire run. It wasn’t bad though – it actually felt nice as I warmed up from running and kept the pollen down so I didn’t have to worry about allergies!
This race ALMOST didn’t happen for me as on Tuesday I realized I couldn’t find my confirmation email. I went on the website and sure enough I couldn’t find my registration info – I was freaking out. Usually this race sells out fairly early so I was really worried I wasn’t going to get a spot. I have no idea what happened – either when I registered it didn’t go through correctly or I thought I registered and actually didn’t. This was at 10:00am and registration closed noon that day – how crazy that I just happened to be looking and realized this!! So I registered right away and managed to secure my spot and get a confirmation email. WHEW (Also for my 15k coming up at the end of this month I couldn’t find that confirmation email either – I managed to contact someone involved with the event who confirmed I was registered and good to go – yikes! I really need to make an email folder with all these emails – which is what I was trying to do when I realized I didn’t have these 2)
Skunk-A-Licious
Don’t stand, Don’t stand so, Don’t stand so close to me – I kept hearing Sting singing this song as I went out in public right after getting sprayed by a skunk to get some things to combat the stinky smell – I’m pretty sure Sting didn’t write this song about being sprayed by a skunk, but still….
So it’s been 2 weeks since Jo and I got sprayed by a skunk….and everything still stinks. Definitely not as bad, but the smell is just everywhere.
After my last blog post I ran to the grocery store to get hydrogen peroxide and baking soda to make the mixture everyone assured me would work. I also ran to the pet store to get special shampoo and spray to get rid of the skunk scent – I was gonna try EVERYTHING!! Almost everything I read online said the tomato juice doesn’t work and it makes a huge mess so I skipped that. (Dogs tend to shake off when they get wet and I read more than one horror story online about people putting tomato juice on their dog and then having to clean up the colossal mess after they shook it off. I decided pretty quickly I didn’t want to deal with that mess also.) As I was picking up everything to make the mix people around me kept saying “EW!” and/or “What’s that smell?!?” yeah it’s, me… 
When I got home JoJo was still waiting for me in her quarantined area of the bathroom. I mixed up 1 quart hydrogen peroxide, 1 cup baking soda, and a bit of dawn dish soap – put on some rubber gloves and scrubbed JoJo down. After I rinsed her off, I put the dog de-skunk shampoo, scrubbed her down waited the recommended 5 mins and rinsed her off again. Everything I used on Jo I used on myself as well – except putting the hydrogen peroxide in my hair after I got a message from my hairdresser strongly advising me to not do it. She suggested putting vinegar in my hair and letting that sit. We put bowls of vinegar all over the house as that is supposed to absorb the smell. It is quite amazing how the smell just permeates through everything – gets in every little crack, even closed closet doors to stink up all our clothes – I am not kidding when I say it is everywhere.
Not My Usual Morning Routine…
Skunks are extremely active in my area this time of year – and JoJo and I got a not so pleasant reminder about that early this morning….
I was letting Jo out, opening the door to the back deck and BAM – the door hit something…what the??? I look and in the dim light I see a fluffy black body, tail straight in the air – the smell hit me before my sleepy brain could register what was going on – and also unfortunately before I could grab Jo… she burst through the door excitedly to meet the new visitor, and doing what every dog does when meeting someone new – went up to sniff it’s butt…
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The Sensory Trail and the Sunflower Cemetery
SUPERBOWL SUNDAYYYYYY!!!! As I know absolutely NOTHING about football (is that un-American?) I decided I would much rather spend the day outside. I called up a friend, grabbed JoJo and off we went to explore Blue Marsh Lake. There are many trails around the lake, but the map is very basic and doesn’t have a lot of the connecting trails on it. I love kayaking at Blue Marsh, but am not very familiar with the hiking trails so we decided to be adventurous, pick a trail and see where it would take us. We drove around almost the entire lake before we found a spot where we could park – a lot was blocked off for some reason or had a ton of snow piled up in the parking areas. We finally found a place to park and according to the map there was a loop trail near by called the Sensory Trail. We walked over to check it out and saw the trail was only 1/4 mile long – bummer! So we did the loop twice and sort of explored around the area a bit but it didn’t take us long at all. We hopped back in the car – determined to go for a longer hike than that and found a parking pull off that was clear of snow. We got out and started hiking, following the tracks of others. The snow is only a few inches deep now as we had a warm spell and most of the snow from the blizzard has melted away (no snowshoes needed for this trip!) We wandered around the trails and came to some fields – we started around the perimeter of one and came to an area covered with dried up sunflowers – I hiked part of a nearby trail in the summer that had TONS of blooming sunflowers – I never knew they were there before and it was so amazing to see.
Backpacking Dreams
So it’s 4:30 am as I’m typing this….I just woke up from a weird/ funny dream.
In the dream JoJo and I were backpacking somewhere and it started to rain like crazy. I pulled out an umbrella (?? I don’t have a backpacking umbrella- I know some people do, but I do not) and try to hold it up over me as I hike along. I couldn’t hold the umbrella over me and use my trekking poles at the same time so I decided to set up camp and wait out the rain.
FINALLY got to use my Snowshoes!!
Over the weekend I FINALLY was able to test out my new snowshoes. The snow was PERFECT – I was able to float right on top of about 2 feet of snow while Kevin, who doesn’t have any, sunk in – up to his knees at some spots! We were visiting his parents so Joey and I went for a walk in their woods. It was so beautiful – the only tracks were those of wildlife so it was very easy to walk around on the mostly undisturbed snow. I have to say it was sort of fun to take my snowshoes off and see how far I sunk in without them! 🙂
blisters and bug bites 