Father's Day Hike 2016

As is our custom, Dad and I, and the pooches, went for a nice hike today, Father's Day 2016. We needed to work up appetites for our dinner out at The Himalayan, the best restaurant in Big Bear! Anyway, thought I'd share some shots from the hike.

PCT!!

View of the desert. This is where we turned around.

Happy Dad's Day Dad!!

Tuck!!! 

The sky was perfect blue with perfect white clouds.

Indian Paintbrush

I swear I've never seen this orange blossom before!

Drinking buddies ;) 

Happy after a great hike!!

I love this hiking pooch!!

Dinner was spectacular as expected. Now we're getting me caught up on Galavant!!

Trippin' West - In Pictures

On Wednesday, Slugger and I put most of what we own in the Snowball and headed West to our Mecca in the mountains for a summer of fun! Road trips are always fun, of course, with lots of interesting sights. This is what we saw/did!

Lots of sitting :)

Windmill blades on a train

headed into a storm - and it was a STORM

Heading out of the storm - blue sky never looked so good

rainbow in the rear view mirror

the pictures do not do justice to the beauty that was in the sky

boredom sets in

Slugs sitting vigil while Mama slept

he did eventually sleep too, but he sat like this,
awake, and alert, for a long time!

I don't remember... 

Such a good copilot!

We'd never seen this part of NM in the daylight. 

It was very exciting.

Cows at the truck stop!

Are we EVER gonna be there Mama?!

He needed fresh air?

Slugger couldn't get enough of the fresh mountain air!!

And now we're here!!

The DWG Dash 2016

If you've been following this blog, you know I recently took up running. Well, I started over a year ago, then took most of the year off, and started again a couple of months ago. Today, I ran my first 5k! You might remember that I WALKED a 5k as a #40440 new thing. This time, I ran. Well, most of it.

Slugger and I have been running a few times a week for a couple of months, with today in mind. We walk on the days we don't run. I've been trying to build up our endurance for both. It's hot though so it's tough to stay out for too long. The longest we'd gone before today was about 2 miles, with probably 1.5 of it running. It's also different to run with Slugger because I am often stopping to watch him sniff or pee and such. I've started trying to at least run in place so I keep up my heart rate and stuff, but he still gets his little breaks.

I picked today's "race" because it was cheap :) It was only $15 to enter which I figured paid for the shirt and bottle of water, and if I skipped out on it, or shortened my route back to the car, I wasn't losing too much. It was also small (this I was only assuming would be true but I was right) and I probably wouldn't see anyone I knew. I had NO idea what to expect of myself so I didn't want to see people as I was dying on the side of the road or something. DWG stands for Dalworthington Gardens. It is their 80th anniversary. I thought "Gardens" would be a pretty setting. It was. What I learned today is that basically it's a very nice neighborhood in Arlington.

Slugger did NOT understand why I left the house in my running gear, but he didn't get to go too. I planned ahead and got dressed and such before our morning walk which was very short. So I just had to feed him and leave. He still didn't like it. But he never likes when I leave!

Okay, so you probably would like me to get to the actual 5k part, right?!

Ready to go!

The view at the start. See, pretty.

The start! That lady didn't stop running. She was running
when I got there. She ran the 1 mile fun run twice. Then she
ran the 5k at least 1.5 times! 

here we go!!

One of several dogs. He's wearing a "gentle lead".  I'm
still on the fence about them.

One of the smaller homes on the course. It looked like the epitome
 of the American Dream house.  Bad picture, but I was RUNNING!!

The water stop, at MILE 1!! I stopped and had some water. The announcer
guy at the start told us we should. So I did :) It was also the start of the first hill.

This is a hill. There were a couple. Nothing major. But still not flat. Ya know!?

I held my phone/camera in my hand and I have MANY random RANDOM
pictures of the course. This one's actually pretty.

This is more like the rest of the RANDOM shots my camera took while in my hand.
Kinda artsy I guess.

Mile TWO!!! And I'm STILL RUNNING!!! 

Slugger and I had never run more than two miles. Seeing mile 2 today was amazing!! I had run probably 95% up to that point. I then ran about half of the last mile. I wanted to make sure I could actually RUN to the FINISH!!

I DID IT!!!!!! 

Exactly 10 minutes faster than my time when I walked. 

I took this pic later, on my way back to the car. I was so focused on
the finish line that I didn't notice it the first time :)

On my way home, I ran a bunch of errands. No, this was not what I really wanted to do after finishing, but I was on "that side of town" and didn't want to have to go "all the way" back. And it meant I hit 10,000 steps by 11:30am :) Also, I impressed myself even more by actually being ABLE to go grocery shopping!! 

Recovery!!! 

Oh my gosh, y'all, I'm a runner!! I enjoyed myself immensely and all I did was run!! I imagine with some buddies and such it would be all kinds of fun. So, yes, I will definitely do this again!! 

Side note: As I was coming up to the last quarter mile or so, my mind drifted back to my younger days when my dad would go run a 50 mile race and I would run in with him the last 200 yards or so. Today, I was totally imagining a time in the future when perhaps dad is running the last 200 yards with ME!! Though probably not after 50 miles!! 

Thanks for running with me :) I'll keep you posted!! 

Sunday morning update: I'm not even sore!!