Spring Activities and Marathon Training

Springtime is fun. It's been such a beautiful spring in Colorado Springs this year. It's actually been warm and we have been able to spend a lot of time outside. Hooray for spring! I love the longer days, the school activities, the outside exercise, kids playing out back with friends, and green grass. 

 TCA has a lot of theme days where the kids can dress up. This was immigration day for Katelyn. Luckily for us, a good friend loaned us this outfit from Denmark. Sometimes she has to go in her uniform, like for India day. And next week is Greece day. Not sure what to do for that one.

 She had a lot of fun. They spent the whole day making passports, traveling to Ellis Island, taking the Citizenship test, and doing all sorts of other things. 

 I need to get better pictures of Katelyn at the gym. She spends A LOT of time there. This is how she wakes up and goes to bed most nights. She has to ice different parts of her legs and she limps around moaning about how sore she is, which I am sure she is. The last two weeks we've had to dope her with Ibuprofen. She's getting pushed really hard. Both girls do gymnastics. I drive there 7 times a week so this is a BIG part of our spring activities. When they are not at the gym they are doing tumbling tricks on the trampoline, handstands, and whatever else they feel like. Katelyn's gym program is more rigorous, which is why she ends up like this on the floor.

 While there is always room for improvement, we read the Book of Mormon while we eat breakfast. Hans and I usually read to them in the interest of time, but Ashley has picked up some of the reading if she has gotten up early enough to be done eating. For the last several years we have been making the kids pancakes every single morning for breakfast. They are spoiled. 

My winter has been consumed with preparing for this spring race. This is the only picture we have of me at the marathon. I was so happy to be finished. I spent from January to April running at least 30 miles every week. It was an awful training for me and I vowed to never run a spring marathon ever again. I felt sluggish, tired, slow, and miserable. Some long runs I would feel tired at 1 mile in, which is never a good sign. I was lucky enough in February to find a Saturday running friend and she got me through most of the runs. We ran every portion of the Santa Fe trail. We ran from El Pomar north 10 miles and back. This was by far our scariest run. We passed dozens of homeless men sleeping under overpasses in a very remote area. We never did that again, which was fine with me since it was the most miserable 20 miles EVER. We ran from America the beautiful Park and our most frequented was from Palmer Lake to Woodmen Road or Costco on Nevada. I could force myself to stay with Kristi for an hour and then she would take off and I'd wonder why in the world I had lost my speed. I always finished though. My body survived the training pretty well. I had to do serious foam rolling on my IT bands to stay healthy and went to physical therapy with a Lifetime friend several times as well. She did dry needling on me. Dry needling was helpful, but painful. I had tendonitis in two tendons in both feet. I guess it's because my calf muscles were too tight. I limped around for awhile and didn't really run too much during my taper. Luckily it all helped and I didn't feel too much pain running the actual marathon. About 4 days before the marathon I finally got into see the doctor who did some testing and called me to tell me he didn't know how in the world I was getting out of bed in the morning, let alone marathon training. He said he was impressed, but surprised that it took me this long to see a doctor. My iron levels were beyond low. They are supposed to be well over 30 for females at our altitude and mine was 4. I was also anemic. He started me on prescription iron pills but said they wouldn't start helping for at least a month and most likely 3 months. I was so relieved to have a reason for all the crazy fatigue I'd been having for well over a year. I think I was more relieved to have a reason my running had gotten so pathetic. I always felt like I was running through mud and had to force myself out the door. I am so glad it is all over.