Well, if you hadn’t already seen, I survived my trail race! I’m not sure if I somehow added on mileage or if my watch glitched, but I ended up with 17 miles instead of 15.5 Sooo not sure what happened there! HA! But, I survived! Let’s rewind…
Friday morning, I woke up with the most horrendous migraine. I had never had a migraine until I was working on my dissertation last year, and I think from staring at my computer all day every day during that time, I started getting migraines. I got some glasses to help with it and I try to wear them every day at school. I definitely forgot to wear them for most of Thursday and I spent the day looking at my computer, so I think that’s what what caused the migraine Friday morning. I took some medicine hoping it would help, but I had to take a second dose around noon because the first dose didn’t do anything. I tried eating breakfast to see if having some food in my system would help, but nothing really worked.
I spent the morning in bed, trying to get the migraine to go away. I got up and tried to clean the house a little in the dark, but that didn’t go too well. I had lunch later on in the day. A little bit after lunch, my migraine started to turn into a slight headache. I was very thankful for that.
My family from Iowa was in town to spend time with my Grandma. My Mom and her sister went to a funeral home to get some of the things planned that my Grandma wants at her funeral. It’s not easy to talk about those things, but we have told my Grandma that we are all at peace with whatever happens. I think that has helped her find a little bit of comfort. She was definitely a lot weaker this weekend. I think she is back to taking morphine for pain, so we are just loving on her and enjoying time together. While my Mom and Aunt were at the funeral home, I went over to my Grandma’s to help my sister take care of her for a couple of hours. After we spent some time there, we went to dinner with my Dad’s parents, who were in town from Florida. We are supposed to be going to Florida over Thanksgiving to spend some time with them. It was so nice getting to see them. We took them to The Pitch for pizza and wine.
Jake left super early Saturday morning for a mountain bike race, and I slept in with the girls. It was so wonderful to wake up without a migraine. I had breakfast and coffee, then started getting things ready for my race on Sunday.
I knew I wouldn’t feel like meal prepping on Sunday after my race, so I got started on that Saturday morning. We are having breakfast tacos this week. These are tacos not burritos because I filled them too full and couldn’t roll them like a burrito. HA! These have turkey sausage, eggs, spinach, and pepper jack cheese. I cooked all of the filling, rolled these in the tacos, then put them in the oven to bake for a little bit. That way the cheese could melt and really hold them together.
I forgot to get a picture of Jake’s lunches, but we are having buffalo chicken for lunch. I cooked a bunch of chicken breasts and shredded them, then put Frank’s hot sauce on them. I’m having mine over spinach, topped with goat cheese, and Jake is having his on Hawaiian rolls. I think this will be delicious.
A wild Saturday night…I was in my pajamas by 4 PM. I was not upset about it. I have had a sore shoulder for the past couple of weeks, I’m not sure what I did to it, so I keep icing and using BioFreeze.
I got this text from Jake on his drive home. This is why we belong together.
When I got our groceries on Saturday, I realized I had ordered a lot of food for the week. I made a big Mexican bake for my Grandma’s house, but I still had a lot of food, so I threw a bunch of stuff in the crockpot to make a roast. Jake and I had that Saturday night when he got home. I used to not like roast, but now I just douse it in ketchup and I love it.
This is the stout that Jake brought home for me. It is delicious! It’s the perfect amount of sweet. I am not a sweet beer fan, so I really like this.
We were watching our show and Jake kept falling asleep. He raced pretty hard all day Saturday. I woke him up and told him that I was going to stop our show so that he wouldn’t miss out, and he told me that he wouldn’t fall asleep again and will pay attention. I took this picture literally 30 seconds after he told me that.
Race ready on Sunday morning! I was super nervous for this race, which isn’t usually the case. I knew I wasn’t going to be racing it, just because of how my foot/ankle has been, but I was definitely nervous because it was going to be a lot of time on trail and I hadn’t done that in awhile. I was thankful these babes were running it, too.
Since I wasn’t really racing, I didn’t have much of a goal, other than I wanted to beat my time from 2017. I am not a competitive person, so I can’t see someone in a race and want to beat them. I have just never worked that way. I am however, super competitive with myself. I knew I wanted to beat my previous time, so that was my goal all day. I felt flat the entire race. I don’t know if it was just from being nervous about being on trail, or what, but I did not have a good racing day mentally. I felt like I had no gas in the tank from the moment we started. It’s hard to push yourself when you feel that way. BUT, I will try to focus on the positives – I improved my overall time by about three minutes!
Dogwood has a lot of hills, and some of the uphills, you just have to power hike because you would waste so much energy trying to run them. The good thing about that is you can make up a lot of time on the downhills. The issue with that for me is that the downhills are where I am the most nervous. I seem to sprain my ankle the most when I am running downhill. I was struggling with making up time since I couldn’t run the downhills like I normally would. Around mile 7, I attempted to lengthen my stride on a downhill to make up some time, and immediately tweaked my ankle. Ugh. I’m thankful I had it taped, I think that saved it from being a bad sprain, but I was definitely bummed. I knew if I tweaked it again, I would probably pull out of the race because it wasn’t worth it to me to injure myself. I was able to walk a little bit and then run, and the pain kind of went away, so I was able to finish the race. It definitely bummed me out though, because I know my ankle is still pretty sketchy.
I was SO happy to cross the finish line after this race.
These two…
SO glad to be finished!
I was feeling kind of sick after the race, so I loaded up a plate with all kinds of goodness and chowed down. It helped a little!
After we got back into town, a bunch of us met up at Brew Co. for lunch. It hit the spot after our morning races! I got the fish and chips (substituted for sweet potato bites). It was delicious.
After lunch, we came home and napped, then went to my Grandma’s to spend some time with my family. Lu loves nap time.
We grabbed dinner on our way home from Freddy’s. It was my first experience with Freddy’s! I love when places offer mini options – this chocolate malt was the perfect size.
I did not like the melt as well as Steak ‘n’ Shakes Frisco Melt. I did LOVE the cheese curds. SO good.
I am definitely pretty sore today. My ankle is not happy. I’ve been icing and using BioFreeze, and I will do my foot therapies when I get home today. Other than that, I feel pretty good! I will probably do a short run Tuesday or Wednesday. I’ve got a month to heal up and get ready for Back 40 in December!
Happy Monday, friends!