{Weekend Recap}

What a great weekend!

My weekend's are a bit longer than everyone else's "typical" weekends only because I work 4 days in a row (48 hours in those 4 days) and then have 4 days off. Saturday was my first day off and I stopped by Nick's Garden Center for their Fall Fest after I woke-up from my night shift. I like going there purely for the photo ops since they have Halloween and Fall items out.

If you follow me in Instagram, you may have seen these, but here are a few of my favorite photographs from that day...

It was great, just walking around, smelling the roasting of the chilies.

I also stayed around for a bit after walking around to eat a roasted corn on the cop and jalepeno cheese tamale, listening to the live band. Mmm Talk about delicious food!

On Sunday I had race #10 for my One 5k Race a Month for 12 Months.

This race was the Hot Chocolate 15k/5k Race.

My friends Elisa, Holly, and Jeff were able to join me on this race.

The race began at Civic Center Park Downtown Denver and ran throughout downtown.

Elisa stayed with me the entire time and I felt terrible for that since I'm so slow. 

However, it was also my 2nd best time ever.

Overall, the route of the race was a good one but I'm pretty sure the last 1.5 miles were all uphill and that was also my slowest time. 37:47 was my overall time with an 11:48 min pace.

The blue line is the 5k route through Downtown Denver and the red line is the 15k route.

It was so cold this morning that I put on way too many layers.  I was comfortable while waiting for the race to begin but after the first 1.5 miles I was burning up and not all that comfortable. I ended up taking my gloves and hair thing that covered my ears off. I'm pretty sure the temps didn't reach 50 degrees until sometime after 10am. The race began at 7am and the weather was definitely in the lower 30's, upper 40's.

Anyway, it was a good time!

Part of the Denver Art Museum building next to the start line.

Views of Downtown from the start line

Me and Elisa

Jeff, me, Elisa - Holly didn't want her picture taken since she'd only had 3 hours of sleep!

The sunrise view of Civic Center Park from the Start line

{Busy little bee}

Yesterday was extremely busy. I had race 8 out of 12 and it wasn't too bad.

It's slightly better than what I've been running. Let's be honest though, my running has definitely been slacking. With my high triglycerides though, I've been picking up the slack on the running.  Even my alarm clock says, "Wake up! You have high cholesterol!" hahahaha

It was a pretty good run. The route did have a good bit of small hills we had to run up and down. There was a girl who gave me some encouragement the first time I stopped to walk. I began running again at that point and pretty much ran with her the entire time after that. It was a good feeling!  :)

Here are some other photo's from this morning...

(Most of these are on my Instagram, so sorry for the re-post!)

Hand-washing stations!! Amazing concept!

By the time I got home and showered it was time to head to a friends BBQ.  That was good times. The only thing about this BBQ is one of the guys my friend/co-worker is trying to set me up with was there.  He seems to be an okay guy.  I had no idea he smokes though! Which is funny only because I give my mom such a hard time about smoking. I can't seem to help myself though because she smokes in closed areas such as the car. It makes me so sick and I literally cannot breathe. I hate closed area smoking with a passion. Anyway, off topic there for a second. So, this guy. He got my number and sent a text a few hours after I left just saying it was good to see me again and next time we'll have to get drinks or something. This was the 2nd time we'd met, BTW.

So, there's that.

And then there's also this awesome shirt I got in the mail finally!!

Bahahaha! I love it!

{August 5k}

Tomorrow is race #8 of One 5k Race A Month for 12 Months goal.

I have to say, the location this race is taking place at is one of my favorite parks of all time. It's called Cheeseman Park. A little history for you... it use to be a cemetery that opened in 1858 but they moved most of the bodies to a new location. Families were given 90 days to move their family members from the cemetery but not everyone could afford it, so every now and then, during heavy rains, people occasionally find bones.  1907 is when the park opened. 

This park is also known for its male prostitution. It's quite interesting to see but I don't mind running there. I know I won't get picked up by the guys. ;)  Anyway, so does anyone else find it ironic they are having the AIDS Run at a male prostitution park?

Here are some of the previous pictures I've taken at Cheeseman Park. 

I've been running every morning this week and I'm taking today off.

So, it should be a great day for a run on Saturday morning!

                            

{Funny thing...}

Almost daily I think of something to make a post about.  Daily I forget to make said post. So, one thing I've wanted to make a post about is my monthly 5k races. I am still running in them. I even bought the next 5 months worth of registrations. The only thing that makes that scary is my work schedule. My work schedule is so crazy, but known, that I scheduled these races on days I know I have off. If a race day changes (like this months), it could definitely throw a kink in things since it seems like for the rest of the year I'm working most weekends.

Anyway, so on to my previous races! I don't think I spoke about May, June, or July's races. May was the Drop Your Drawers and Run Wild 5k. This race benefits kids in need getting underwear. For instance, they sent a whole bunch of underwear to Oklahoma after the huge tornado. This run was at what's become my favorite race park, City Park and afterwards there was a private after party at the Denver Zoo with 2 drink tickets (beer or wine). I had some pink ruffled panties I'd bought for a Halloween costume one year so I wore those over my running pants and an awesome tank-top my parents bought me for my birthday (an early b-day present).

 

Seriously, the green man photo is positively my favorite!

June was a 5k race in Estes Park, Colorado. This is an absolutely beautiful place to run but terrible to do so because of the elevation. I've become use to running here in Aurora at 5,471 ft above sea level. As use to it as you can get anyway. The beginning elevation for the Estes Park 5k is 7,522 ft above sea level! While it may not seem like much of a difference, and I naively thought this as well, it was terrible. When I began running I immediately felt it. To top it all off we gained about 100 feet in elevation in the first mile and a half. I have no problems admitting I walked most of the first 1.5 miles of this race. The nice thing though is the last 1.5 miles were ALL downhill...steeply downhill but that part was nice.

The Stanley Hotel
(The inspiration for the book/movie The Shining by Stephen King.
The TV series was filmed here also.)

The Stanley is the white building on the left side of the photo

The view of of the Rockies on my drive to Estes Park, Colorado

If anyone ever gets a chance to visit Estes Park, CO and Rocky Mountain National Park, I highly recommend it. It's positively beautiful. I can only hope that I'll never run a race in higher elevation again! haha!

July's race was terrible. It was the Firefly Run and was supposed to be on a Saturday night at City Park (my favorite park to run a race in). The Firefly is a night run with glow stick goods and good music and parties and all that jazz.  It was moved though to Friday night at Dick's Sporting Goods Park. Luckily, Friday night worked with my work schedule. The picture of the running route at Dick's did not look promising though. It looked like it was through a lot of parking lot. I tried to keep an open mind though. Oh, we had to pay $5 for parking also! So far, all of my races have had street parking or free parking.  Well, I get there and the pre-race party seemed fun enough. I was by myself though (as I am for all my races but one so far) and I'm a shy person so there's only so much fun that can be had!  The race began and it was entirely through the parking lots of Dick's Sporting Goods Park. Entire. Race. After 1.5 miles the ankle I had surgery on a few years ago began hurting. It occasionally hurts me but usually stops after a little bit. This time, however, it did not stop. I'm pretty sure I began overcompensating for it because then my hip on the same side began hurting. Really bad. It was terrible and the most pain I've ever been in while running. I did stop to walk to kind of walk out the pain but walking just seemed to make it worse. I didn't stick around afterwards for the post- race party. I was in too much pain and not happy with just having ran around the parking lot I had to pay an extra $5 to park my car in.

I can only hope none of my races get moved to this location again because I just won't run it.

These are my next 5 races:

August

September

October

November - Color Run

December

Ok. Whew. What a long post! Sorry guys, it's what I get for waiting so long to post!