My running partners get me. They both have had these amazing hand made shirts made for me over the years. Robin had shirts made for our race that got canceled. This is SO true!
Watching his races. He would only watch his good races and that is a step in the right direction as he use to not want to watch any of it at all. BTW, we put absolutely no pressure on him to win, to just do his best yet he puts a ton of internal pressure on himself. I am starting to see hues of me in him. This is not good :)
Night run thanks to hubby's schedule right now and not wanting to run on the mill. Chasing the sunset and the meteors.
School starts in three weeks. Time to start the 2nd grade review. Glad that we had reading help all summer and an amazing tutor. He really has turned a corner with his confidence on his second grade skills and I am SUPER proud.
Night running = lots of bugs that fly directly into your eyeballs. This means safety glass running until the crops are harvested on our running route.
Not sure why I have such a goofy look on my face, but first group gravel bike ride! We did 6 out and 6 back on a road I had not been on and had fun. Rockin Robin went with me so I wasn't all by myself ar the back. The group keeps a 10-12 mph pace and I can't quite hit that on gravel, but they were very kind to check in with us and not leave us behind. A few times when the gravel was packed down, I was able to manage the 10 mph limit. I feel like we will be going on more of these bikes rides, especially if we are only running 4 days a week. Both Rockin Robin and I have certain bike rides on our bucket list like the Dirty Kanza and Bike Across Kansas. I also now have bike jerseys. Rockin Robin's brother in law passed away suddenly and he was an avid biker. He was a smaller man, so some of his gear fits me and some fits Rockin Robin. I am glad we can honor his memory by wearing his gear on our rides.
With no long run planned on Saturday and no car races, Andrew and I planned an adventure. First we went to a local dairy that provides our area with the best milk. They make their own ice cream onsite and it is heavenly.
They weren't doing tours but we could go see the babies and talk about cows (something my little city slicker kiddo knows nothing about).
Next we went over to Milford Lake to the nature center. We didn't know if it would be open due to Covid, but it thankfully was and lucky for us, there were little to no people there when we got there. They had a butterfly garden that was magical.
The insects seemed very use to people, so you could get super close to get pictures. They also had a fish hatchery with outdoor runs, but you could only see in the water of one of the runs to see actual fish. Next, we visited the center itself. They had all kind of animal/reptile/insect exhibits like the roach house below.
The roach house was FULL of roaches and it was super cool. Whomever made this was super creative. Here is a close up of one of the very armored roaches.
There was also an outdoor exhibit of raptors including a kestrel, a barn and barred owl, and a golden and bald eagle. There was a super cute playground we did not let Andrew get on (major angst about that one from the kiddo) and a nature trail that went down to the water and around to some bee hives and back to the center. The few people that was there were wearing masks and being very careful to stay apart. We ended our visit to Milford by heading over to the lake and the tubes to watch people catch fish and got to see a guy catch a HUGE catfish.
We ended up back in Manhattan at the Manhattan Brewery. This is a new tasting room opened up by several past KSU football players. They brew their own beer there and they have tasty and unusual snacks. You can order food from other local downtown eateries and bring in and eat if you want to. Again, tables were super spaced out, you wore you mask in and while not eating, and they were cleaning constantly.
We tried different brews to see what we liked. I wished they had a taster set of all of their brews, but I didn't see that as an option on the menu. We tried the Brute porter (my favorite), the Juicy (a hoppy pale ale), the Peachy Wheat, and a beer mix called the Pontyz Painkiller. We weren't quite ready for dinner, so we had some snacks including their bar mix (peanuts, pretzels, and rye chips) and the key lime mix (amazing mix of yogurt covered pretzels, lime candies, and cashews). We were in a sitting type area with comfortable chairs and they were playing 90s music from my college days, which brought on many sign alongs by patrons, which I loved. In the end, even though I picked 2 beers that had low ABV, I was a little too tipsy to drive, so we headed down to the Tall Grass Taphouse to have dinner. Since I was done with beers by then, I ended up getting a crowler to go. We ended the night watching Rocketman FINALLY and loved it as I knew I would.
We moved our long run to take advantage of the cooler temps on Sunday. The dogs were able to stay with us most of the run. Stella did the entire 15 and Ebby and Kitty made it about 10. While it was cooler, the humidity was still above 90 the entire run and just sapped my energy.
We knew that storms were possible but were not suppose to hit until after our run. Imagine our surprise when we looked back to the west after going most of our run to the east and seeing dark clouds and lightning! Our lightning trackers had not gone off so luckily it was striking more than 25 miles away but still scary to see it. The storms split and went around us, so we were able to get our full 25K on the gravel.
I am not a fan of virtual runs, simply because I don't like paying for distances I would be doing on my own gravel for free, but this one was fun. The story behind this run revolves around Bonnie Jo, a runner on our Trail and Ultra running group on FB, finding a suitcase. She posted a picture of the suitcase and asked if she should open it. Well our group went nuts and said collectively in about 1000 comments YES. The problem? She didn't and somehow turned off her phone or didn't check FB for like a day in which time we all went nuts asking WHAT'S IN THE CASE BONNIE JO?? We seriously lost our minds waiting to see what was in the suitcase (it was tied shut BTW making it even more intriguing). She eventually went back to open the suitcase and it was full of empty liquor bottles and deflated soccer ball. Out of the fun we had with all of this, a virtual run was born to benefit the Girls on the Run and I was in. Super cute tank tops and shirts that were super soft, plus a really cute handmade wooden medal was the swag and I love them both. I guess I can finally say I did a virtual run in 2020!
I am sad to report that we are not able to have a Girls on the Run team this year due to all the uncertainties, and i am honestly SUPER sad. I get it, outside coaches are not a good thing, and we do race in Topeka on a weekly basis that puts us in contact with a different subset of people. We had thought about a virtual season, but these kids have enough screen time right now to have to deal with yet something else being virtual. Plus, many of them can not just go out and run from their houses. They need safety in numbers so we will just postpone for the spring season and hope for the best.
Have a great week y'all!
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