I've signed myself up for another half marathon in August. I ran my first last year and felt like I made all the novice mistakes, starting out way too fast and then dying at the end. Every part of my body hurt when I finished. So my goal this year is to start off with a more measured pace and ideally be able to increase my pace and finish strong at the end of the race. I guess that's probably a little idealistic. This time I'll be happy if I'm still passing people at the end instead of being passed by everyone I passed in the first three miles, plus more.
Evie's sleeping through the night now so most days I go running early in the morning before Anna and Evie wake up. I love Utah summer mornings and being outside when the sun finally pops up over the mountains. I also love the fact that it's so light outside so early in the morning. One of my frequent routes takes me by fences covered in honeysuckle and every time I smell those flowers I'm instantly transported back to my childhood in Oklahoma.
Even though I'm an early bird, I'm not so good at going to sleep early, often getting only six hours of sleep a night. Last week, was especially bad. I went to bed most nights around eleven or eleven-thirty and was up before six. I guess Dan was pretty tired too. We have Church at eleven and almost as soon as sacrament meeting started, Dan was fighting to stay awake. I used to try to nag him to stay awake, but I'm trying to avoid being such a harpy.
Midway through the meeting, I stood up to rock Evie to sleep. Once I got her to sleep and sat down with Dan and Anna, I started to doze off myself. I'm sure it had something to do with the fact that I was holding a warm body in my arms. So there we were, both passed out. It was pathetic. Meanwhile Anna was playing games with the kids sitting in front of us and squealing loudly, but not so loudly that we could muster up the energy to wake up and distract her. Next week, we'll just have to do a better job of taking turns falling asleep so that Anna doesn't start running laps around the chapel.
Last year we managed to hit our neighborhood pool almost every day, but with Evie's nap schedule, it's harder to squeeze it in. Then there's the part where it's also harder for me to keep an eye on Anna if I'm also dealing with Evie. My neighbor, Adrienne, is awesome about texting me when she's going to be at the pool for several hours so that I can go when there's another adult there to help me with Anna. We also decided to check out the Children's Garden at Thanksgiving Point because I had heard that it has a fountain for kids to play in. It's perfect for Anna because it's not so deep that she needs a life jacket or floaties, but it's enough water that she has a blast. When we got there, I noticed that most of the kids were in swim suits. Not only was Anna in her clothes, which wasn't too big a deal, but that day she had also picked out her rainbow pants to where, which was a bit more of a hassle than shorts would have been. Anyway, she loved the water and we also managed to explore other parts of the garden including the little light house. Anna loved it, until she climbed the ladder to the top and then couldn't get down. It's one of our new favorite places.
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