She Runs By Faith

We officially finished the school year today, celebrating with double chocolate muffins from the grocery store and a bike ride! Despite all the craziness of COVID-19, homeschool stayed on track for us and I'm very thankful for that. It's nuts. The fairs are cancelled and we can't go many places (not even church yet?!). One of the best parts of the homeschool life is the freedom to go on field trips, visit friends, meet up with our co-op, go to the library... and we are missing that freedom so much. Though many are "homeschooling" during this time by necessity, not by choice, this "COVID homeschooling" isn't a good representation of what homeschool life is actually like. None the less, we're making the best of what we can do. We did get our own camper - that's cool, right? I'm just praying we can make a few trips to our favorite state park this summer. The school year itself went SUPER fast. I think much of that had to do wi...

We finished up Term 2 of our school year, well, a while ago (March 6th) and I'm determined to get this quick review typed up before Term 3 is complete. Our Spring weather has finally arrived and, aside from all the COVID-19 craziness going on now, we are so relieved. It's been hard to make myself sit down to type this up!  Because this is a Term 2 review, I am not going to touch on how COVID-19 has affected our homeschooling (that will come for the Term 3 review). It hadn't affected anything here back in early March! Our co-op group still met as usual and the Library was open and well back then. Feels like forever ago.  We continued to thrive on the A Gentle Feast Form I curriculum for the term and overall everything has gone rather smoothly while homeschooling with a two-year-old in the house. (He is a huge blessing and also one of trickiest parts of homeschooling in this season!) We also found out Baby #4 was on the way at mid-Term 2 and we are all SO excited! I found th...

When I'm "running for two", I race very sparingly and enjoy the break of lowered mileage and a less rigorous training schedule. The Wicked Half Marathon in Wamego, Kansas snuck into my year as a fun girl's trip with my running partner. She needed a race on non-iced over ground to prep for Boston and I was up for a road trip. At the time, I didn't know baby #4 would be on the way, so I planned to race the half too. Fast forward a couple months and we found out about baby #4 (yay!) but I still planned on jogging the race. Then all of this COVID-19 crazy happened - first Boston was postponed and this race followed suit not too long after, along with basically every other race out there. I don't envy the job of the race directors one bit! This has been new territory to navigate for all. The Wicked Marathon series changed all of the distances to the virtual option and we were still able to get the run done anyways! I had only ran a virtual 5k and 10k prior to t...

We are seeing some strange times, aren't we? It's a weird feeling. Life goes on but we really aren't "supposed to" go anywhere! I'm thankful to be homeschooling, especially at a time like this, as our school routine hasn't changed. It's the co-ops, the playdates, the library and the appointments that we're missing and that just feels weird. I have been trying to make use of the time when we "can't" do so much, to instead DO a lot of things I don't want to do. (i.e. clean bathrooms, clean and restock our fridge that failed this weekend - now fixed, organize old papers, sell books we don't need, etc) The time is well spent but I wonder how long all of this will continue! Like the rest of the running world, my race scheduled for this weekend was swapped for a Virtual Run. Thankfully it's a half marathon - as I'm not sure I could handle running a full marathon on the same old roads in our town! My dear running partne...

After the back-to-back marathons last Fall, I had one more race experience for the year and a recap is long overdue (like from October 2019)! Two weeks after the Blue Ox Marathon, I competed in my first ever  12-hour event, the END (Extreme North Dakota) Halloween Double Feature, with a team of three other gals. When one of my relay teammates initially mentioned the idea, I thought it would be a fun group event, a relaxing day away and more "fun" running after racing two marathons. What I didn't realize is exactly how many miles we would each cover that day. Though our distances per team member varied, it was basically another marathon day! This adventure certainly didn't disappoint. One thing was for sure, we enjoyed A LOT of time on the trails! How much stuff does a relay team of four gals need for a 12-hour event?  Turns out A LOT! Between packing clean outfits to change into after each of our 10k loops, food and drink and rehab tools (foam rollers, rol...

This was my  fourth consecutive year running the Frozen Feat 5k/10k, which is easily the best winter race in our area. My relationship with winter has its ups and downs. I like when it first begins, the holidays are exciting, but by February I need some sort of motivation to go out in the cold. I'm done! Turns out, a frozen race with fellow all-weather runners is a great motivator. What was new this year? My husband and I ran as a "Lovebirds" team for the 10k and signing up was actually his idea. I could hardly believe it myself! We haven't ran a race together, just the two of us, since I was pregnant with our first baby! We signed up at the end of December and both of us did a decent amount of training for a month or so. I was entertaining the idea of running a couple Spring half marathons at the time and my hubs was wanting to run well in the 10k. In the weeks leading up to the race, we definitely didn't get much running done between sick bugs and then L...

Ten years ago, I toed the line to my very first marathon. I was running it with a group of friends and acquaintances to raise money for my co-worker battling Leukemia. Little did I know how much that experience would change the next ten years of my life. This is my run down of the past decade of marathons and major life moments, with the layout inspired by Teal's post at Miles to the Trials (definitely check it out!). From marathons to marriage to the birth of our three boys, I'm amazed by all the Lord has brought me to and through in the past decade. Lots of mistakes made. Lots of lessons learned. Lots of memories made. And I wouldn't change a thing. 1. Walker North Country Trail Marathon, September 2010 Goal: Finish Training: I ran exactly the miles in the Marathon Training Academy free plan I used. No strength work and minimal warm-up/cooldown or stretching time. Biggest Victory: I completed my very first marathon training cycle! Biggest Challenge: Runn...