Motivation

So after anxiously awaiting for email, I finally got the one I've been waiting for the other day. As mentioned before, I want to run the Colder Boulder. However, you have to qualify for it with a time of 56-58 minutes at the Bolder Boulder. Luckily for me, I qualified this year!

This means getting back into running and training my butt off! I really want to do well and say I've done it. It would be cool to place again but I'm not counting on it. I have not registered yet but I will soon (hopefully).

I have just realized I haven't updated in a minute. Since the last time I've updated I've turned 22. It was a good birthday and a lot clammer then last year. Now I'm no longer the youngest one at the bar. 21 was a good year and one of my favorites so far; 22 has a lot to live up to! It's up to me to make it a good year.

Being an adult

So I have a job now. After a whole of summer of searching I'm a productive member of society again. I work at daycare. It's not a school but I don't mind it. I'm working with younger kids then I'm used to but they are so much fun! I'm with another teacher and we are the K3 room. Therefore, most of our kids are 3 (we have a few who are almost three). Love my class and the teacher I'm with.

I also float around as well. I can be with infants, toddlers, two year olds, or four year olds. I mostly go where ever I'm needed but I mainly stay with K3. The infants are cute unless they are crying since there can be ten babies in there at once! The toddlers make me laugh like none other. They are very alert and like playing with you for the most part. You can see their personalities forming and watch them take in the world around them. One of them punched me in the face! I call him The Situation since he dresses like Mike from Jersey Shore. The two year olds are wild. They have an attention span shorter then mine! However, they are good kids and are a ton of fun to work with. The four year olds are crazy! They give good stories to share and are fun to be with. They did tire me out today but my friend from UCCS works there so I like being with her. K3 is the best! I love my kids in there and they are too much fun. They make me laugh like none other.

My running has suffered since I'm at work all day. I'm using excuses not to go so I need to get ready for the Colder Boulder to motivate me. I did go for a run today but my foot was hurting for some reason. I'm going to get my running back on track and be ready for race season :)

So much for my run today...

Well I said it before, winter is coming and boy did it come today! Last night I was over at my friend's house and when I left it was raining. I was a little excited since I do like rain (but my hair doesn't). Then this morning I crawled out of my warm bed and went upstairs. Since my room is the basement I never see the weather until I go upstairs. I was greeted by a dark gloomy sky and snow. This time last year it hadn't snowed yet and summer was prevalent as ever. It was like winter was never going to come.

To make it clear winter is here, there is already an opening day for ski season. Ski season has started at Wolf Creek with three feet of fresh natural snow. Usually Loveland or A-Basin are the first to open but change is good right?

So my run was canceled today. Last time I went for a run in the rain, I almost ate it on a bridge. I do not want to know what will happen in the snow. Also the wind is kind of crazy. Colorado has the worst wind ever! As the rate I'm complaining you would have never guessed I'm from Canada.

Now time to enjoy my everything bagel, make some coffee, and cuddle up in my sister's CU Snuggie. It's going to be a PJ day.

GTL

Winter is coming! I'm excited to go skiing since I missed out last season. Now that I have a job skiing will is on the top of priority list. It's a expensive sport but it's something to do outside in the winter. But I need to run.

When it snows, my trails get gross and muddy. My personal favorite trail, Ute Valley is the worst! Even after a bad rain storm I stay away from there. My shoes get so muddy that I gain three inches to my height. The mud collects at the bottom of my shoes the further I run. My other trail is okay since it is paved and usually cleared off fast. However, I'm stuck the same parts because the unpaved parts are muddy. What I'm getting at is I hate muddy shoes.

To avoid this I would go to the rec center at school. It was nice to relieve stress after class and socialize with my friends. Now that I'm graduated I can no longer go since I'm not paying my rec center fees (as well as other fees that I'm happily not paying). So the big question is: What gym should I join?

Option 1: UCCS Rec Center
I would pay 200$ annually, have full access to fitness classes, and the pool. Also, it's 15 minutes away from my house! However, I'll be paying for parking. The campus police have been strict and we cannot park across the street anymore. I avoided getting parking tickets for four years and I hate UCCS parking. Most of my friends have graduated or will be graduated by the end of May. The pool keeps weird hours. The fitness classes interfere with my work schedule and I have to pay extra for them.

Option 2: Lifetime
It's the new gym in town and opened this past summer. It has a spa, tennis court, indoor and outdoor pool, yoga classes, and state of the art equipment. This place is nice but far from work and my house. I would go here for the outdoor pool in the summer time haha!

Option 3: VillaSport
This place is fairly new and is near Lifetime. Classes aren't free but there are many options for me to try. Like Lifetime, it has an outdoor and indoor pool and far away from everything.

Option 4: 24 Hour Fitness
Most people I know go here and like. There are various locations around town that I can go to as well as other states while I'm on vacation. There are spin and yoga classes at times I can take them. I really want to get back into yoga again.

So these are my gym options so I can get my GTL on. I'll be doing more research to see where I should go.

Dunzo

As of now, my racing season is over! I ran four races this year: St. Patrick's Day 5k, Take 5 in the Garden, Bolder Boulder, and the Panaerathon. I planned on running a few more races but my training sucked. As most of you know, I student taught this year and I was sick on and off. It limited my training and I was no near ready for my first three races.

In the summer I ran almost everyday and went too hard. First it was my knees, then my right quad, and now shin splits. I wanted to a 5k but it is this Saturday and I'm nowhere near ready for it. I took a week off to recover and get used to my work schedule. I'm hoping to join a gym in the near feature so I have a place to run when it is too gross to run outside in the winter.

I might do the Colder Boulder which is in December. It is a 5k but as of now I'm not sure. I want to be fully recovered and take it easy for the next while.

Getting things done...

Every time I'm in Boulder my Dad and I pass a hotel that is near the start line. He makes a point about booking our hotel earlier each year. Last year, my dad was plagued with injuries before the race so he was not sure about doing the Bolder Boulder. We register and had a hotel in Broomfield which is outside of Boulder. We had to get up earlier to get to our heat time which was pretty early to begin with. Each year we book too late to get anything in Boulder.

However, this year is different! Our hotel is already booked, so talk about getting things done :) It is about half a mile away from the start, and half a mile away from the finish. This means no paying for parking or having my mom drop us off in a mess to get to the start (also, she won't have to navigate through the CU campus to find my Dad and I at the expo).

I guess this means I should start training now?

A little something I found today

The weather is like Seattle in Colorado today. I love it, but still wish we had our nice summer weather. I wouldn't mind it so much in November but we always could use the extra rain.

Anyways, after looking for jobs I was messing around on Facebook and came across this little story. I think I got it in an email once but thought I'd share it.

This one time I painted a living room with a girl.

This was a handful of years back. It was about eight months before the huge, flame-out of a breakup. That day, though? That day we painted the living room? It was pretty uneventful. We painted my parents living room for $50 between us and a pizza. That was it. I think we watched Anchorman or something after that.

But it still holds as on of the most indelible memories I have. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not still in love, it happened, it was good, it ended, and we’ve both moved on. But I’ll never forget that day. Because it’s never, in the long run, about the grand gestures. You can fly across the world and show up on her doorstep with a rose in your teeth and a ring in a little velvet box but I can guarantee you that - more often than not - she’s going to remember the time you built the birdhouse in the back yard, or what have you, a whole lot more.

Life wasn’t meant to be taken in large movements. The next day will inevitably arrive, you’ll sleep, and the moment will have passed. But when you have a hundred thousand small moments, you can step back and appreciate the picture a lot more than metaphorically blowing your load on some grand moment that, in all honesty, look, you’re not Bruce Fucking Springsteen, you’re not going to be able to blow everyone’s mind every single night. You’re not Romeo and/or Juliet. There’s no reason to drink the poison together in some flame-out gesture. So that leaves us with the small stuff. It’s all about the detail.

That’s what love is. Attention to detail.

And the moment will end. And then things will get boring. And it might get a little quiet. And it might all end horribly. And you might hate eachother at the end. And you might walk away from eachother one day and never speak again. But that’s just how it goes.

But she’ll remember the time you held the door open for her on your first date.
She’ll remember the time you laughed at her impression of the landlady.
She’ll remember the time you stayed up all night that first time.
She’ll remember the small things a lot longer than the big ones.

But everything ends. And I’ll tell you why you have to make the small things, the small moments count so much more:

One day, probably a while longer from now, when old age takes ahold of someone, she might just only remember your smile. Everything you ever did together, every second, every moment, every beat, every morning spent in bed, every evening spent together on the sofa, all of that - gone. Everything you ever did will be reduced to the head of a pin. She won’t remember your name. She’ll just remember your smile, and she’ll smile. She won’t know why. It’s a base, gut reaction. But she’ll smile, uncontrollably, and it will come from somewhere so deep as to know that you touched her on a primal, honest, and true level that no scientist, scholar, or savant could ever begin to explain. There is no more. There is nothing else. There is just this: She’ll remember your smile, and she’ll smile.

And you know what? That’s all that really matters in the end.