GoodBye Summer

It seems like it was just last week, my girls and I were celebrating the first day of summer at the Y's pool party and I was jetting off for a girls' weekend to Puerto Rico.  And here we are, bookbags hung by the front door all ready to go in just under two weeks.

Yes, we still have the rest of this week and another full week of summer vacation.  So we are going to live it up as we have been doing for the last ten weeks!

Some of our favorite memories from this summer are:

• Summer Play Days @ the Disney Store
• Mr. Kurt singing at the library
• Playdates with our friends from school
• ARUBA!
• The girls' birthdays & collaborative birthday party
• Having our cousins visit for a few days

Every year I do a "best of summer" playlist.  It's a collaborative playlist from the regulars in my spin class where they suggest their favorite song of that summer.  I work in all of their suggestions whether it be as a warm-up, cool down or a killer climb.  They love hearing their suggestion come up.  This year, most of my regulars are on vacation this last week before Labor Day, so they begged me to do it next week.  How could I say no??  But last night, while catching up on facebook, another instructor posted a  fantastic End of Summer playlist.  I changed a few songs around, but the idea came from Chris.  I am really excited about the playlist tonight.

GoodBye Summer

I am looking forward to the fall.  My oldest daughter starts kindergarten and my youngest is going to preschool which means lots of time to run and swim. (Yes, I have something I am training for! More info on that later!)

We have a lot to look forward to this fall:

• apple & pumpkin picking
• running an Oktoberfest 10k
• my husband's birthday
• Halloween (can you believe that the girls know what they are going to be?)
• my BFF's wedding & wedding related events

me, the runner, she's back!

Over the spring, I joined a local boot camp class.  It was a great workout three mornings a week.  It never felt like 6am and I really enjoyed not having to think about what I was actually going to do on those mornings, but just show up and give 150%.  But I didn't have the time to invest in running.

Working out twice on Mondays and Wednesdays (boot camp and teaching indoor cycling), boot camp on Fridays, plus going to spin on Tuesdays and Thursdays and getting my daughters to their activities, it was hard to fit it all in.

Over the last few months, I would run a few miles on the weekends, but with our family's get togethers and social calendar, I could never fit in more than 2-3 miles at a given time.  Although, for my husband's birthday, he wants to run a 10k. Given that I haven't run more than 4 miles since April, this is going to be a stretch.

I went out for a run on Saturday morning and started strong, but quickly fell back.  Feeling awful, I was determined to get back out on Sunday morning.  And that I did.  A 5 mile run on the D&R Canal Trail. It was a beautiful, scenic run along the Raritan River on the towpath.  My goal was to finish under an hour and I hit mile 5 at 54min.  I was really pleased with my run.  I really needed that confidence boost because many times I get in my own head and beat myself down.  This was a great way to end the weekend and start a new week!

Last night, I was catching up on Pinterest and this came on my newsfeed.  And I thought it was perfect for this past weekend and how I felt on Saturday, but was able to overcome it on Sunday.

Water + Laptop = a giant headache

About ten days before we left for our family vacation, my mac book had a run in with about 32 oz of water.  Although it was a combined effort between my dog and I, I would love to solely blame him.  It was quite a scene and a lot of expletives were screamed.  I went to Apple and there I found that my computer would not be going home with me, but instead it would be taking a luxurious trip to get it's insides replaced - yeah, the damage was that bad.  The most depressing news of all was that all of my music on my laptop (going back from before the days of iTunes) was g-o-n-e.

As a Spinning instructor, music is the key to my classes.  I always receive compliments about my music choices - I like to have different genres, themes, and throwbacks that many people enjoy!  So losing all of my music was threw a huge wrench in being able to create new playlists quickly.  Yea, it's all replaceable, but the time I spent downloading and looking for inspiration on the inter webs was all for nothing.

Luckily, my technologically savvy husband was able save the day and pulled all of the playlists from the ipod I had used up until a few weeks before.  Whew!  Because the thought of starting over was not pleasant.

It's always something, isn't it??

The first playlist I created after our family vacation and the mac book debacle was a decades ride.  My class loves throwback playlists and so do I.  I love hearing a song that I haven't heard it years and being temporarily transported back in time. It's amazing how powerful music can be for our minds, especially when working out and needing an extra boost of adrenaline. "Reelin' In the Years" got rave reviews from my class!