This weekend, for once, I wasn’t going up to the mountains; instead, I was staying in town for some special events I had been planning for a while. I was excited!
Friday was a busy day for me at work, made even busier when I saw a steal of a deal on a sectional outdoor sofa on Facebook Marketplace and dropped everything to immediately pick it up. Patio furniture is one of those COVID products that has become impossible to find; every store is completely sold out / backordered, and I’ve been reluctant to order online sight unseen because patio furniture can vary so much in quality. Meanwhile, on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, the competition is fierce for any outdoor furniture. In this case, I happened to see the set within 5 minutes of it being posted; when I messaged, the woman said she had already received 50 messages and was going to increase the price. I said I would pay the new price and could be there within 10 minutes, cash in hand, and she agreed. Whew! It took me two trips to get it all in my little SUV, but I’m thrilled with the set and even more excited that I managed to actually get it 🙂
When I got back from that little errand, I had to really focus to get as much work done as possible – and I was able to crank a solid amount of stuff out. This was critical, as I had my calendar blocked to wrap up early. At 4:30pm, my friend Chris was unknowingly going to be coming by my house for a special surprise!
Chris had turned 40 the week before, but she and her family were self-isolating for two weeks after a vacation, so couldn’t celebrate on the actual day. Prior to COVID, we were really excited about going on a bicycle brewery tour for her birthday (renting one of those vehicles where everyone pedals), but once COVID struck, we knew she was disappointed that it would be hard to celebrate the big 4-0. So several of us started brainstorming back in May, and came up with the idea of putting together a neighborhood bicycling scavenger hunt – Chris and her family would get clues and bike to each of our homes, where we’d have some sort of game / challenge to complete in order to get the next clue. Once the scavenger hunt was done, we wanted to take her to a spa for some “girl time” with us, but with that not being possible, we settled on the next best thing – a sunset picnic on the hillside with her favorite foods (pizza and cannolis) and drinks (lemon drop martinis and champagne). We had been planning this for so long, and I was thrilled the day was finally here!
My house was the second stop on the route, and I was anxiously awaiting the text that Chris and her family were on their way. This was the longest ride of the scavenger hunt, and I was really impressed and surprised to see that they made record time coming all the way up the hill! We headed to my backyard for some ice water to help them recover, and a special 80s game for Chris: the joust from American Gladiators!
Remember when Adam and I dressed up as American Gladiators for Bolder Boulder? I have had those helmets and pugil sticks in my garage for all these years, and when we were trying to come up with games for Chris and her family, I knew this was the perfect opportunity to put them to use. I had the kids battle each other, then Chris and Mark faced off, and then it came to the final countdown – and Chris won! We hung out for a few minutes more (the kids really wanted to keep playing joust, which I took as a win), and then I gave Chris the clue that sent them all off to the next house. We said goodbye, with Chris still having no idea she’d be seeing me again soon 🙂
I got another hour of work done while Chris headed to a few more houses, and then I was off to “Makeout Point”, the hillside spot we had chosen for our sunset picnic. Someone had jokingly said it’s where all the high school kids go to make out with each other, and we had jokingly been calling it that name for weeks. On my way there, one of the other ladies texted that she was there already and there were two high schoolers who looked taken aback to see her. So I guess we were surprising more people than just Chris! Too funny.
Kate drove Chris around for a while to stall while we waited for everyone to arrive and get set up (there was unfortunately a delay with the pizza), but then the night went off without a hitch. I typically hang out with Chris one-on-one, or with her family, but both Friday night and the time we had spent planning gave me a lot of appreciation for her other best friends – what an awesome group! I had such a wonderful night chit chatting with everyone, sipping champagne, and watching the sun set. I really hope we can get this group together again in the future, rather than just for this special occasion.
Unfortunately, while I had planned a long trail run in the morning, I woke up not feeling so great – and once again remembered that the combo of drinks and dessert is not my friend. Ever since I started cutting back on sugar in March, I’ve realized that when I do have a decent amount of sugar, I tend to feel super crappy. So far, I haven’t learned my lesson in order to steer clear of too much sugar, but Saturday morning was definitely a wakeup call! Instead of trail running, I knocked out some chores around the house when I first woke up, and then headed down to my gym to do Jess Sims’ Saturday 60 bootcamp at 11, followed by some weights and yoga. I felt a million times better after that workout!
I knocked out some more chores and errands in the afternoon, and then got ready for a few friends to come over – my friends Heather, Heather, and Kirk were meeting at my house, then all heading over to Old Town Louisville for dinner at my favorite brewery, Twelve Degrees. I haven’t been to Twelve Degrees all summer, since I’ve been avoiding dining out due to COVID, but they supposedly had a good outdoor patio setup that was reasonably safe (or as safe as dining in public can get). Heather R absolutely loves Twelve Degrees too, so it was an easy sell for both of us to get Kirk and Heather to come try it with us!
As it turned out, Twelve Degrees’ patio wasn’t huge, and there weren’t any tables available when we arrived. However, the bartender told us that we could use the patio of the diner next door; we would just have to come to the bar to order (though servers would still bring our food to our tables). That worked! It ended up being a really lovely night with my friends, and I felt reasonably comfortable sitting outside with them (though I knew it was risky that we weren’t ourselves sitting six feet apart from each other). I still don’t really want to take the risk of going out to restaurants often, even outside, but this was a nice treat!
The next morning, I made my second attempt at hitting the trails for a run. I drove over to Coalton Trailhead and started running, but within 30 seconds, I could tell the smoke was going to get to me. I made it a quarter mile down the trail before deciding it was really stupid of me to be out there breathing in the smoke when I have a treadmill at home – so I turned around and headed back. When I got to the trailhead, I bumped into my friend Karlin just heading out for her own run, and I felt guilty explaining that I decided it wasn’t a good idea because of the smoke. I think all of the choices I’m making around COVID have made me paranoid of seeming judgmental anytime I choose something different from my friends :/
When I got home, I headed down to my gym, and hopped on the treadmill for a 45 minute Matt Wilpers progression run that had been highly recommended. But it was tough! We did ten minute sets where you kept the speed the same for the entire 10 minutes, but every two minutes you alternated between flat road and incline of either 3 or 4%. Then, for each ten minute set, you increased the pace to get faster. I made the mistake of starting far too fast, and then just did my best to hold the pace for sets 3 and 4… no increases were possible.
I am realizing that I’ve gotten a lot slower this summer, as I’ve done longer distance and no sprints. It is frustrating to me that I can’t be good at both! I really enjoy the peace and calm of a long slow mountain trail run, but I feel powerful when I do a solid round of intervals on the treadmill. And, I feel really out of shape when I can’t hit the paces I want 🙁 The Bolder Boulder rescheduled their 10K for Labor Day weekend (now virtual as well), and I thought it would be fun to PR again. But now, after not even breaking 6 miles in this 45 minute class, I know there’s no way… I would be happy with myself if I finished 10K under 50 minutes. My hope is that I can keep up the long distance running for another month or two, then in November or so, switch my winter focus to short distance / speed.
Anyway, I had originally been worried I wouldn’t finish my trail run by 10:30am, but now with just doing a 45 minute class, I had plenty of time – so I had some lemon poppyseed and yellow squash baked oatmeal and caught up on email for a bit. Can’t really share a recipe for this one – I’ve been making Budget Bytes’ baked oatmeal quite a bit lately, and riffed on the banana recipe by swapping summer squash for the bananas, then I used lemon juice, vanilla, and poppyseeds as the flavoring / spices. It’s really good! I love lemon flavored things.
So why was I so set on finishing at 10:30am? Well, I realized I was coming up on my 250th strength class, and wanted to do it live in case I could get an instructor shoutout. So, I decided I’d do Selena’s 20 minute lower body class – the perfect complement to my run. This wasn’t my favorite strength class, but I was just proud of myself for hitting the 250 class milestone. I have really been trying to get diligent about doing at least 10 minutes of strength work every day, and it’s becoming habitual – which is great!
I wrapped up my workout with a yoga flow, as part of my goal to do yoga every day in August. I have really been enjoying this challenge! I picked a 30 minute lower body focused yoga class with Kristin McGee, and really enjoyed it – a good combo of stretching and strengthening. I am so thrilled by how much I’m enjoying Peloton yoga! I like that the classes move pretty quickly, and (at least with the instructors I’m taking), there isn’t much woo woo stuff. Plus, the savasana is always only one minute, which I think is reasonable; I really dislike yoga classes where they have you just lie there for several minutes.
One pro tip: Peloton doesn’t have their experience optimized across platforms, and I learned that the Roku app has a “body focus” search feature for yoga that no other version of the Peloton app has. Basically – you can search all the classes for shoulders, hamstrings, glutes, etc, and then see the classes that are tagged with those specific body focuses, even if it isn’t in the title. It is so helpful, and I ended up buying a Roku stick from someone on Craigslist for $15 specifically to be able to search the yoga classes for this.
I had a Zoom lunch date with my friend Kelly, which was a lot of fun! We had planned to meet up in person, but all the smoke from the fires was making it too painful to be outside, so we swapped for Zoom. And then… my afternoon kind of got lost, and I didn’t get much done. Grr! I was mad at myself for loafing around instead of being productive, especially since I had a date in Boulder Sunday night and didn’t have time then to catch up.
The weekends feel far too short these days; I’m realizing I need to get back to scheduling my time a bit better, like I did when I was on the road and my time at home was limited. There is just not enough time for everything I want to do!
Well, you’ll just have to order up those 36-hour days required for all those unfulfilled wants or realize that you already pack a punch into most days, and stop berating yourself for “time-wasted.” Down time has its mind-clearing benefits, too!! Love you!
If I had ONE wish, it would the ability to stop time and make any day as long as I wanted 😉