I hope you’ve been following along with me on Instagram as I’m MUCH better about sharing and conversing on there – definitely better than once every other month.

Training has been going fairly well. I celebrated my 30th birthday earlier this month with a trip to Disneyland and a cruise to Ensenada. I skipped a long run, ate all the churros and drank all the tequila. Worth it. Pre-trip, I was down 12 pounds from January and feeling better than ever. While I’m still struggling to get fully back on a diet plan, I’m at the gym every day and running when I’m not. I’m finally over double digit mileage, running further than 10 miles for the first time since Marathon #1 in 2016. It felt great to accomplish, but was a challenge to complete. I’m doing much better with strength training on my own than I ever have before and can see a real change in the shape of my body, even if the scale isn’t showing that. I’m more confident about my mid-section than ever before and I think I’ve finally shook off all of the gym self-consciousness I previously had. Dead-lifts next to a super fit bikini competitor? No problem. Bench rows next to a hot dude? I’m hotter (joking… you get the point).

What I’ve noticed this training go around is that I’m no longer nervous about those long training runs. I know my body, I know I’ve done it before, I know I can do it again. My biggest obstacle is just to keep my focus, lace up my shoes and get going. Seriously – some days the hardest part is just getting out the door. Yesterday, it took me two hours post-alarm to finally get the ball rolling… or the feet moving rather. I did everything from Candy Crush to laundry to telling my dog how handsome he is (an every day thing of course).

One thing I need to do is to take back control of my nutrition and my carb-loads. The last two long runs, I enjoyed some delicious BBQ from a local restaurant, but woke up with such a sour stomach that I completely messed with my run. On my 10-miler, I had to call my boyfriend to come pick me up and take me to the nearest bathroom. Yesterday, part of the delay was to let my stomach settle so I didn’t have to do that again. While I’ll still eat delicious tri-tip burritos from the restaurant I won’t mention, it’ll have to be when I’ve got no place to go. Or… actually… all the places to go, no miles to run.

The chronological order of this post is all over the place and for that I apologize. Also over the weekend, I tried out my first trampoline class at EZ Air. It was so much fun, it didn’t even feel like a workout! And we were doing BURPEES on TRAMPOLINES! The most challenging part for me was lifting my body out of a foam pit and onto a balance beam. It really tested my upper body strength but made me feel macho by the completion. I’m excited to check out their next class on April 14 and hope that my local friends will join me in on the fun.

Next up, I’ve got a half marathon! I’m super excited to be traveling back to San Francisco in 12 days for the Rock n Roll Half Marathon. SF was the location of my very first half so I’m sure it’ll be an emotional race for me as I think back to the runner I was then and the runner I am now. I was bummed that race didn’t go over the Golden Gate Bridge, nor could we even see it from the course (because, fog) but this time, we get to go over and back on the iconic monument and hear some rockin’ bands along the way. Anyone out there racing with me?