Ragnar Wasatch Back Relay...

Wow, I'll tell you what! Wow! There is something in someone who decides that it's a good idea to do this sort of thing: craziness. I mean, I'm all for being fit and eating right (ha, I'm terrible at both, but I'm working on it), but these sorts of things are INSANE!

I decided that I needed to get back in shape after my thyroid told me that it no longer wanted to work and took a nose dive of the deep end a few years ago. I finally found out what was wrong a few months ago. It took its toll on me by ruining relationships with people (I could never figure out why I was always so ANGRY! Why everything upset me and why people irritated the heck out of me), gaining weight, not sleeping---almost at all!, and being hungry all of the time. Grrr...so, I needed to fix it through the hormone replacements and getting my lifestyle choices back into their proper places.

My friend Shayla started me out with a 5k in May and I haven't looked back. This last weekend I ran the: Wasatch Back. It is a 188 mile relay with a team of 12 (or if your INSANE, a team of six...I just recently heard that there were even a few men who did it without teams at all...188 miles all on their own...this must be where you don't know you're insane).

Through a lot of things, I turned out to run a moderate part of the race. I had one really hard run of 3.8 miles up a freakin' mountain. Plus a few others of easy slope and not to difficult of mileage, either. I was relieved. The woman who took my original legs is looking at some knee issues and while I do relish the fact that i don't have those issues, I do feel terribly that she does. sigh...oh well.

I will hopefully have pictures to share with you soon. This was an incredible journey with hardly any lousy sleep and some very cheesy sayings.

We saw people running in full costume:

3rd place: Crazy Xena Warrior Princesses: These women actually had the real thing on! I'll bet they spent an INSANE amount of money putting those costumes together!

2nd place: Super hero team: I saw Flash with a FULL MASK! IN THE BLAZING HEAT! RUNNING! Who is that stupid!?! I would have died of heat stroke. I believe that Wonder Woman was also on his team. She looked more comfortable, at least.

1st place: Man in coconut bra, grass skirt and wig
I give this first place because I can not IMAGINE the CHAFFING this guy received for this get up! What an insane idea!

Insanity seems to run deep (didn't I already mention that people doing this are INSANE! Don't worry, I'll continue to remind you...)

Honorable mentions: Some family took Disney's Incredible Logo and they all wore those suits with a slight modification here or there.

CARS! they dressed up cars!

My fav was a Suburban with 10 foot tusks off the front. It was a full on Woolly Mammoth! So cool!

Road kills take on an entirely different meaning: Every time you pass someone, that is called a 'kill' or 'road kill'. My first leg I only had 3 (which was a goal before I even knew what a 'kill' was!). My second leg I had 9! (this was the mountain one...so many people stopped to walk. Made it really easy...however, there were about 30 who paced my snail like pace). and 4 on the last one. I'll bet there would have been more but this girl barfed right in front of me and I almost did it in response. Had to stop to walk a bit of that one! YUCK!

I hope I'm improving because I have a triathlon next month!

It was truly amazing and I plan on doing it again next year. However, the INSANITY is not permenent. Your body does adjust. And it would be INSANE not to take care of what you were fixing to change when you started.

ALL THE INSANITY!!!

games...

Nick and Claire have a little game going...wanna see? It's past her bedtime when we took this vid, so she's a little grumpy, but it's still sweet...

sleeping style/capes...

Put Claire down after a feeding in her high chair...two seconds later, she's wearing her bib as a cape!

Claire no longer will keep a blanket on her when she sleeps and we have stopped running our heater (sad that this is June and we are saying this LOL...Logan is SO cold!). So, I have tried to come up with options for how I should put her to bed without getting cold...this is my solution:

Put her in a pillow case! It totally works!

stairs...

Not that we have many stairs at our place (okay, we have ONE), but Nick was able to catch her crawling down one in a sequenced order. Made us laugh. I love the one that she seems to be more interested in the bugs than the stair.

another first...

I was filling out some paperwork yesterday in the kitchen. Claire was playing beside me, shrieking at the top of her lungs for the enjoyment of making our eardrums burst and have a merry time doing it, per usual. Suddenly she stops, looks up at me, and SCREAMS...

You can even see her tears in these pics! Oh, she's so brave...she stopped crying in like 4 seconds.

I couldn't see anything that was wrong, just her obvious upset. I picked her up and looked her over and finally notice a trickle of blood coming out of her nose. I still have no idea what happened.


Well, at least I'll document it for later: Claire had her first nosebleed yesterday. Poor girl.


I do, however, enjoy this shot...She is really upset, but Dad (nick) is distracting her with the camera. It almost looks like she is this big 'n tough, rumble 'n wrestler and that this is nothing out of the norm.

shhhh...

I've walked into Claire's room to get her up from a nap and found her like this almost every time since she's learned to sit up. I love how she has both her doggy, her blanket and then she tucks her legs up under herself like she's kneeling. I've always thought she maybe fell asleep saying her prayers...

cute bum, eh? I think this would be incredibly uncomfortable to sleep in this position, but it seems to make her happy! Maybe it's because she's talking to God.

Why?

why do people run for fun? I mean, I have run since I was in middle school (take out about three of the years I've been married and .563 years from living in the Valley of the Sun), but I still can't figure it out...

I am running the Ragnar Wasatch Back in 17 days and I just BARELY was able to finish 5 miles (well, 4.96 miles) tonight. I have to run 16.3 miles in under 24 hours for this race and I can barely do 5 miles! What do people do to train for these beasts! My ankles hurt just thinking about it. Then my knees tighten, then my hips...and the only thing that SHOULD tighten (which is my stomach) becomes more flabby the longer I run---it's too much effort to hold it tight when my other joints scream for relief! As I said...who does this for FUN!???

So, I'm going to start my own: Would you rather...

Would you rather run for 16.3 miles in less than 24 hours (three different legs of a relay race that measure like this:

Runner 10: Debbie Mathews (I think they must have become confused on my name because my sister-in-law is a Mathews and I am a Sorensen...oh well...)
Leg 10 – 3.5 miles, easy, flat
Leg 22 – 7.7 miles, hard, gradual climb
Leg 34 – 4.0 miles, very hard, steep climb

OR....

Would you rather eat four worms, an moldy apple and then run a 5k?