Quickie

I just wanted to post this article that I came across on active.com about nutrition. It is kind of relevant to my last post and I found it interesting. A few years ago I bought one of those little books with nutritional information for everything under the sun and kept track of what I ate for a few weeks. It was enlightening and maybe I should try again for a week or two (it takes a lot of time and is kind of annoying).
Anywho, here is the article:
http://www.active.com/nutrition/Articles/Maintain-Your-Lean_-Mean-Racing-Machine.htm

Back to work!

Random: Training, serving, insecurities

TGIF!! This week has moved along fairly quickly. Right now I am at work but having the usual computer problems, so I'll just take a "little" break. So, my training is coming along pretty well. I am happy that I haven't missed a workout in the past two weeks. It is kind of tiring though! Chris would say I just need more sleep ... which is probably true! Wednesday I swam 3500 yards, which is almost 2 miles! It was really good, but probably the most I want to swim at one time before going to work. I love swimming. :) Yesterday I ran a loop that I really enjoy - I head straight for the foothills from my house, run by the football stadium, and then run south and do a loop around Pineridge Reservoir. It is nice b/c it is mostly on trails (little muddy though), and is probably somewhere around 4 to 4-1/2 miles. Running felt good, my knees didn't feel wonderful but they didn't hurt either. I am glad I am mostly back in the swing of running! I'm supposed to run 8 miles tomorrow!!

Gosh, I feel like there is a lot on my mind but I don't know what to write about. Well, to be honest, I haven't done much after watching that movie on Sunday. I love that Chris has such a passion for serving others! It is a blessing to be married to him! When I was little, I would sit in church and hear the priest talk about people who completely devoted their lives to God and others. I would think, "Wow, I want to do that! But, I should finish high school first ..." Then in college I would think, "Well, I really need a degree." Now I think, "Giving it all up for service would be great, but I want to be a teacher and have a PhD and live a comfortable life." But sometimes I still feel this nagging to do something extreme! I really felt this way after Chris and I went to Gulfport to help with hurricane relief two years ago. In reality, it would be great if I would just find something to be involved in a few hours a week here in Fort Collins. Sometimes I just want to have a deeper life and not just live for me and Chris. So get on it Anna!!

Well, that is one train of thought. What else. You know one thing I really hate - having a negative body image! I mean really, why should I, I work out a lot!! To me the greatest part about being active is that I can do pretty much whatever I want to. Got some spare time and it's a nice day - great let's go ride for 50 miles! When summertime comes along, almost any hiking or backpacking trip I would want to do is within my ability. I should be proud of what my body does for me, but sometimes I am too critical! I am really bad about comparing myself to other people, too. What is up with that? I just have to love me for me. Isn't that a song?

OK, I just sent an email to a woman at my church who is a kind of volunteer coordinator I guess. Maybe she can help me find somewhere to get involved (whether at the church or in the community). :)

This was really random. Well, now I am going to think of some work to do. I'm thinking today will be a short day! Thanks for reading!

Back to "normal"

Well Chris is back and finally healthy again. He was really sick last week and so I didn't really have time to blog - between all the usual busyness of life plus taking care of him. I am really glad he is better because I was a little worried, and now we have finally been able to start talking about his trip. I think I will be hearing stories for a long time as he thinks of or remembers them, and I'm looking forward to it!

Life for me has been good since I decided I'm not going to work too much. Working 40 hours a week is just right! We had a really nice weekend. Friday night was our friend, Jeramy's birthday, so we went out to dinner. I was exhausted though from getting up at 5:15 two mornings in a row to train, so we didn't stay long. Saturday was a nice day, and I went on a 40 mile bike ride with Jeramy and Kim. We are getting more and more nice days, and I am starting to get that "all I want to do is ride my bike" feeling. It's nice! Saturday night Chris and I saw I am Legend with Jeramy and Christine. It was CREEPY!!! Sunday Rob and Mollie's baby, Kelty, was baptized, and then we went to their house for brunch. I spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning and went on a short run, so it was a good, productive day!

Sunday night Chris and I saw a free movie at the CSU student center called "The Devil Came on Horseback." If you ever have a chance to see it, I would highly recommend it, even though it was really hard to watch. It is about a marine who went to Sudan to monitor the cease fire, but ended up working in Darfur. There the Sudanese government is basically funding/training these soldiers (the Janjaweeb - or devil on horseback) to kill the African villagers in Darfur. Since 2003, 400,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million have been displaced. He wasn't there with any kind of weapon and so he couldn't do anything about all of the violence he saw, but he had a camera and took a ton of pictures, some of them really graphic. Now he's trying to raise awareness and do something about the genocide. So I need to do something, too, because I don't think you can just watch something like that and be like, "Man that sucks ... oh well, life is good in America." It is really terrible.

Anyway, that is a morbid way to end the blog. But overall it was a good weekend. And now it is already Tuesday - woohoo! I think that's enough for now. Thanks for reading. :)

Running away from home - Part 2

Wednesday morning I woke up and was immediately so excited about snowboarding!! I had breakfast at a great little place in Winter Park called the Mountain Rose (sausage - yum!), and then got to the Mary Jane parking lot around 9:00. It was almost empty! I bought my lift ticket and hopped on the Super Gauge lift ... I was so pumped up I just couldn't stop smiling. It had snowed about 6 inches two days before and there was still lots of fluffy stuff for me to play in. I was a little worried about my first run because it had been about 11 months since I last snowboarded, but it came back very quickly. By my second run I was searching out some moguls to test myself on.

I had a great time on the bumps! They were mostly forgiving because of all the snow. I spent most of the day on blue/blacks and blacks - a big feat for me! It just felt so good to glide through the powder! It was exhausting though, I had to stop 2 or 3 times on each run to catch my breath. But it was okay because a lot of the time I was the only one around. Amazing!!

The only thing missing was Chris. Going by myself was nice because I could do whatever I wanted, but I think snowboarding is more fun with someone else. It's great to get to the bottom of a run and be like "Did you see that fall?" or "wow, that was awesome!" or "motherhuckin!" (just kidding). I really hope we can go up one weekend!! Speaking of Chris, he gets back tonight and I can't wait to see him!

Anyway, I rode until about 3:30, when my legs just couldn't take anymore. I was exhausted but supremely happy. What a wonderful adventure, and what a blessing to be able to enjoy it! Oh, and now I have the bug again ... snowboarding is the best!! :)

Running away from home - Part 1

I think in my last post I mentioned that I need some alone time. Well, I got it! Monday was an annoying day at work because I found out that the computer I need won't be up for at least a week. So I decided to run away from home!!

I reserved a bed at a hostel in Winter Park for Tuesday night and went to REI to get a guide book for hikes in Grand County and a couple other things. Tuesday morning I left my house at 6:15 AM and headed for the mountains, with a car full of snowboarding and snowshoeing gear. Woohoo!! Unfortunately, I hit Denver just in time for rush hour traffic and had to wait at the base of Berthoud Pass for about 20 minutes while they did avalanche blasting, so I didn't get to my destination until about 11.

I decided to do a hike up toward Devil's Thumb, a supposedly prominent mountain/rock formation on the western side of the Continental Divide (I never saw it b/c of clouds). The road to the trailhead was shut down to cars, so I huffed it 2.6 miles before even getting on the trail! But it was beautiful so I didn't mind too much, and it was easy hiking. Once I got to the trail there were some snowmobile tracks that I was following, but then I got to a sign that pointed me in the exact opposite direction of the tracks. So I headed into the fresh snow, but it didn't last long b/c it was about hip deep!! That's when I discovered the beauty of my new book and my GPS.

A little side note on the GPS. My mom gave it to me about 7 years ago because she was worried about me getting lost, and I haven't really used it much. I am kind of anti-technology when I'm in the woods and up until now I've felt like it was a waste of money. But I still bring it when I'm snowshoeing so I can mark the car as a waypoint, just in case. Anyway ... I realized that my book has the latitude and longitude of a handfull of waypoints on each trail. So I plugged those into my GPS and realized that the snowmobile tracks were actually going in the right direction. Yay!!! For some reason, this was really exciting for me. I think maybe because my work has been making me feel frustrated and incapable of doing anything right, it just felt really good to figure something out and have fun doing it. Silly, I know, but it is the small victories in life that keep us sane.

About a mile later I came to a huge clearing, at least a quarter mile long, with 12,000-13,000 foot peaks behind it. It was gorgeous and peaceful and snowy and wonderful!! I kept following the snowmobile tracks up a valley and was climbing pretty good, but eventually ran out of time and had to turn around. I think I got to somewhere around 10,500 feet and was on the trail for at least 2.5 miles - so overall a 10 mile hike! That is a lot in snowshoes!! It was a wonderful day.

The hostel I stayed in (Rocky Mountain Inn and Hostel) was great. I had the female dorm room all to myself. There was a huge kitchen and common area, and lots of neat people to talk to. There were a few families and a wide range of ages. I realized just how lucky I am to live so close to the mountains as I was talking to people who had traveled from Arizona, New York, and France.

Naked Wild Basin Yoga (not in that order)

Yes, you read my title right - I said naked! Now that I have your attention, I'll get to that part at the end of this post. Today I went snowshoeing with Rachel and Matt Bishop from the Wild Basin trailhead, just south of Rocky Mountain NP. We hiked on the Finch Lake trail to a really nice overlook of the mountains - most notably 13,911 ft Mt Meeker. The first mile of trail was along a road and so really easy. Then it went up hill along a ridge to the east, before switching back sharply to the southwest. We eventually made our way to a drainage, which we followed for "only" .9 miles - but it was pretty steep and all fresh snow, so it was pretty challenging! But the view at the top of the trail was well worth it.

I was very happy to be out in the mountains today. There was a nice mixture of sublime tree-lined views and dramatic mountain views. Sometimes it is nice to remember why living in Colorado is the best, and to have time to not think about anything except where to step next, how peaceful the sound of the wind through the trees is, and how close God feels when I am in nature. Overall it was about 3.3 miles each way. I've never been to this area before, but it seems to hold a lot of promise for future hikes for any season.

The hike was also the perfect distance. We got an early start and were hiking by 9:20, but we were done around 2:00. So I got home before 4:00 and had time to relax (even though I should be working on the newsletter). I watched a little of the superbowl, but then went to a 'restorative' yoga class at 7:00 - it was wonderful! Have I mentioned yet that I am really enjoying yoga lately? I might be getting hooked!

The class ended with about 10-15 minutes of basically laying in some very comfortable poses. I was completely relaxed by the end. I left the gym and was driving through campus and heard some yelling ... and then saw two guys running by my car completely naked!!! Ahh!!!! Crazy college kids!! Maybe they are Giants fans?? Who knows.

Well, that was my Sunday. I am feeling kind of lazy as the week begins. My motivation is pretty low because it seems no matter how hard I work, something always goes wrong with my research to set me back. I am starting to feel like what is the point of working hard. The latest set-back occurred last Tuesday, when I discovered that I was going to have to re-run my models, and just as I was realizing this the disk with all my code went down. So I couldn't work on the bug last week. Hopefully everything is up and running for tomorrow! See ... it is hard to want to work when things always go wrong!! But, I am sure I will wake up tomorrow morning ready to work hard! (HA)

Also, I am missing Chris!! He has been gone for over a week, and I kind of want this week to be over so I can see him on Friday. I think all of these things are making me want some alone time over the next few days. I know that Chris is going to come back from Nigeria a little changed, and I want to be receptive of whatever new ambitions this trip has spurred in him. Another reason for the alone time is I feel like I should take advantage of having an empty house. In some ways, it is really nice to be able to do whatever I want.

Anywho ... I have now rambled enough. Thanks for reading and have a good night!