Are You Living It?

Stolen from Seth’s trip to the Enchantments in June. Looking forward to getting closer to the goats myself!

This weekend I’m headed to Mazama to check in at the cabin and then on Monday, Chris, Johnny, Chloe and I are headed up into the Enchantments for a week long trip of exploring the North Cascades. Should be amazing! Can’t wait to snap photos and document our adventures….

As I sit at my desk and spend time surfing the blogs I enjoy reading, listening to the mellow tunes of Cold Play, I can’t help but reminisce. A year ago - with all of the planets aligning - oblivious to outside forces about to rock my world. Life was so easy. I was growing older with my soul mate - encouraging one another to pursue life to the fullest.

I was feeling VERY sorry for myself this morning after a night of being harassed by my hip, my 4-year old, and my head…resulting in little to no quality sleep. As much as I love the balls i’m juggling, there are a lot of them. And I can’t get quality workouts in to clear my head without it being clouded right back up with hip pain (ok - I could swim my butt off, but - no offense to the swimmers out there - it just doesn’t do the same job for me as good bikes and runs).

I don’t care if I never run another race the rest of my life.

That was the thought that struck me running tonight. Crickets chirped in the fields surrounding me, the meadows glowing in the sunset. I was FLYING down the dirt road of Appleton Farms, floating along almost effortlessly (I’d learn later from gmaps that I’d done the 4.1 miles at an 8:00 pace - without even trying) except for my calves which were screaming uncle by that point, 3.5 miles into a 4 mile run.

Please, Chris Isaak (we all need to warm up
This is the life, my MacDonald
I like you so much better when you’re naked, Ida Maria
Panic Switch, Silversun pickups
Sound of Madness, Shinedown
Bleed It Out, Linkin Park
Let it Rock, Kevin Rudolf
Wrong, Depeche Mode
Sober, Pink
Dammit, Blink 182
I Don’t Care, Apoclyptica
No You Girls, Franz Ferdinand
Decode, Paramour
Tamacun, Rodrigo y Gabriela
Flannigan’s Ball, Dropkicks
Heartless, the Fray

For some reason all I can think about today is that one day I woke up in January to snow on the ground and had the walk into the gym. I suppose you could say we paid our dues. Now it’s nearing 100 degrees and supposed to stay there a few days in a row. I’ve got a paddle board reserved for mid-day and am smoking the 15.5 pound salmon I caught in the sound the other night. Life is good….

But in the midst of our heat wave - I am hoping and praying our forests don’t explode into an epic fire. Lightening strikes have started several fires in the Baker/Snoqualmie forests…. check out this link for aerial photos on the area in question.

See…what you THINK will be a heel strike, becomes a forefoot strike when you are the greatest distance runner of all time

Heel striking in shoes (foot lands in front of the body…although at 5 minute miles what looks like a heel strike often ends up being a forefoot strike under the body because they are moving so fast)

Barefoot Running (forefoot strike beneath the body)

I’ve gotten a bunch of questions regarding the barefoot running thing and how it relates to evolution running and chi running, etc. so I thought I’d answer them all in one post.

Everytime I visit Chris Bagg’s blog (which is grammatically without parallel and shames me for my lack of wit and intellect) I laugh at his banner so I thought I’d share it in case you’d never visited:

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