A New Reason to Run

Hey blog buds!

I hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July!  I have to say it’s not nearly as fun when it falls on a WEDNESDAY!  We took a long early morning walk along a local stream that day. Later we tried to hang out on the back patio but it was blazin’ hot so we didn’t last long before moving indoors.

This year in Colorado almost all of the fireworks shows had to be cancelled due to the high fire danger, which we completely understood and appreciated.  So we also brought the fireworks inside and watched the Macy’s Fireworks in our basement!

I made baked ravioli for dinner (chicken sausage/ricotta for Cory and mushroom/arugula/goat feta for me).

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You might want to look in the sky to see if there are any pigs flying around today because… I went for an actual RUN this morning.  (WHAT??) No intervals, no wogging, an actual start-to-finish-don’t-stop three mile run.  I don’t think I’ve done that in a year!  It’s shocking how hard running can seem when starting all the way back at square one, but it also felt really good to do it again.

Plus Rascal needs it.

When the vet suspected Riley of having degenerative myelopathy at the end of December and was losing function in her back legs sometimes, all of a sudden our days of long walks and ‘dog wogging’ with her along were over and we were limited to getting her out for about 10-20 minutes a day total (a very SLOW session at that).  Poor Rascal got the short end of that deal and his exercise time was really diminished.  In January when he had his teeth cleaned, he weighed a fit & muscular 23 pounds.  I had to take him in yesterday for a vet visit and he was up to 27.9!!!  The vet was so funny when she lowered her voice to tell me he’d gotten chubby and whispered “sorry!”, as if she might hurt his feelings.    So while he’s been on a number of 4 mile walks recently, it’s time to kick it up a notch for him.

Which is what prompted our family run this morning.  Looks like Rascal has signed on in the “Fit and Fine at 39″ plan!  I’m looking forward to helping him get back in shape while I work on improving my own cardio conditioning at the same time!

I followed up the run with about 20 minutes of strength work on my legs and upper traps and ended with a few minutes on the foam roller and some stretching.

TGIF for sure – I am looking forward to getting a lot of activity in over the weekend.  Between that stair project, travel in June, and all the other stuff going on, it feels AMAZING to be regularly moving the ol’ bod again!  This week’s consistency has been on the money!

Got any FIT plans in place for the weekend?

Have a fantastic Friday, friends!

– Shari B. =)