By now it’s beginning to sound like I’ve given up on running completely.  Not true!  I have, however, done most of my running inside on the treadmill and I have not got back to any kind of running schedule yet. But I wasn’t letting that be an excuse to avoid a great run last weekend!

Last Sunday Hog Wild had their Off Road 8 miler and 5K. It was held at Hillsborough River State Park. I’d never been there before but I am beyond a doubt going back, just look at this place!

This is the first non-obstacle run besides The Color Run that I’ve done, and it was really a different experience.

For one thing, there wasn’t that many people and there was only 1 wave.  I like multiple waves, it means I can be the slowest person out there and still not finish last. I’ve only run once since Castle Canyon two weeks ago, so to say I could have been better prepared is an understatement.

I had three goals for this run.

1) Don’t get lost (I do that, and this was off road so…)

2) Don’t be last (wouldn’t be the end of the world, but a good goal)

3) and don’t fall down, though I didn’t hold out much hope for this one

I managed all 3!  I did majorly trip at least 3 times over roots and came so close to hitting the ground I don’t have a clue how I didn’t, but whatever.  The course was marked pretty well, so getting lost wasn’t too much of an option after all.  It was the don’t be last part that made it different and fun.

Since the run was in the woods you couldn’t see who was ahead of or behind you, but you could hear them!  As little running as I’ve done lately I walked a good bit more than I would have liked to, but when we heard someone coming up behind us we would start running again, or if we heard someone in front of us it was motivation to get going and pass them. I didn’t expect to have so much fun with this part! I always tell people I don’t have a competitive bone in my body, but maybe I do have a little one or two. Long story short my son and I decided we will start looking for more trail runs.  They won’t replace mud runs/ obstacle runs as my definite favorite and motivation to keep running, but strangely they just may be the thing to motivate me to try and run BETTER.

Oh, can’t forget the race bling!

So, if you are a runner what do you prefer?  Mud runs, trail runs, or straight up road races?

If you aren’t a runner have you ever surprised yourself by feeling competitive in a situation you didn’t expect to?

Guess what’s coming to Tampa in just 2 weeks.  The Spring Beer Fling!  What the heck is that you ask?  How about a whole day of surf rock, games, and as much retro fun as you can handle?  Oh yeah, and beer. One choice will be Samuel Adam’s spring seasonal beer, Cold Snap.  I tried it at the pub this weekend; trust me, you should have a glass!

It sounds like a whole lot of fun, and for those who aren’t that into beer Twisted Tea, Deep Eddy Vodka, and Angry Orchard will be there as well. I’m a big Angry Orchard fan!

I’m really looking forward to the music; I LOVE surf rock. Seriously, how could you not?  Here’s one of the bunch of bands that will be there.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6xgMJpVrvo?rel=0]

To top it all off the night’s going to end with a ‘Beach Ball Drop Spectacular’.  There’s something you don’t see every day!

Want to come out and join the fun?  General admission tickets are $15 in advance or $25 day of and include entertainment, games, and activities including the beach ball drop.  You also have the choice of VIP tickets which include all of that and also access to their ‘retro lounge’, unlimited drinks, a meal ticket for one of their vendors, and a Spring Beer Fling pint glass.  How cool is that? The VIP tickets are $85 in advance or $100 day of.  They’re 75% sold out already though, so there may be none left the night of the bash!

I have 2 general admission tickets to give away, enter here to win! The winner will be announced March 24th.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Spring Beer Fling is Saturday, March 29th from 1:00pm – 11:00pm at Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park. Come on out and join the fun! You can get your GA or VP tickets here.

I received two VIP tickets to Spring Beer Fling 2014 in exchange for writing a review and this giveaway. As always, my opinions are all mine.

I’m a fan of smoothies, they’re like having dessert for breakfast with none of the the nutritional downfalls.  I’ve always used yogurt in them though, the few smoothies I’ve had made with ice just didn’t have the flavor I like.  Of course since I decided that I haven’t tried all that many different recipes using ice so it’s not exactly a fair assessment.
Anyways, I decided to forgo the yogurt AND the ice and see if I could find a vegan recipe that I like.  This simple recipe is so good I may not go back to using yogurt in my smoothies!  🙂

Strawberry Banana Green Smoothie

• 1 c vanilla almond milk
• 1 c packed kale
• 1 cup frozen sliced strawberries
• 1 frozen banana

I just put them in the Ninja in the order listed and blended.  I did break the banana in half so it would fit. Easy, delicious and vegan, what else could I ask for?  It is unfortunate that they look kind of brown… but even my youngest son was singing it’s praise, definitely try this one.

I made several and froze enough in mason jars to bring with me for breakfast the rest of the week.  That way I know I’ll have a quick and healthy breakfast every day this week!

I’ve been in the mood for salads lately so that’s just what I’m doing for lunches this week.  I cut up, washed and spun a head of green leaf and I’ll bring that with some cucumbers, tomatoes and radishes every day. I just pulled the first radishes of the season form the garden this morning, I”m going to throw the leaves in the salads too.  Waste not want not and all.

I’ve recently seen that you can fry or roast radishes, I may try that soon just for fun.  Anyone every try cooked radishes?

I like running.  I do!  Not every run, but for the most part. I also like writing, or I never would have started writing here. So why haven’t I been writing much lately? Because somewhere along the line I must have subconsciously decided that I could only write about running here.

And, I have a slight problem with an odd cross between the squirrel syndrome and being obsessive. That combination can be better than it sounds, except for when it’s worst than it sounds.

Last year my squirrel was gardening.  One minute I was thinking about how my mom used to grow lettuce in the side yard, the next thing I know I had bought 2 raised gardens and was finding out more than I needed to know about what a too-rainy season in Florida could do to a garden.  Also, I now know what an assassin bug is.  Just as cool yet not at all cool as they sound.   I even started a new blog with my niece to keep track of the garden.  Here is where I started, take a look if you are feeling bad about how your yard looks and would like to realize just how great it really is.

Then everything died except the basil plant, then my dogs ate the basil plant, then gardening season was over.  On to the next adventure.

Until a few weeks ago when I was feeling a bit overwhelmed reading about all of the GMO veggies in the local grocers and remembered I already had a fence up, why not start another garden?  So I bought a bunch of non-gmo seeds from SeedsNow.com and Clear Creek Seeds. And of course since nothing other than radishes, a few cucumbers and the basil lived last year I decided to start bigger.

The 2 square shaped beds are the ones I bought at Sam’s club last year, and I built the L shaped bed in the back a few weeks ago using these directions.

Of course I had to fill the beds and I originally intended to partly use dirt from the yard mixed with other stuff.  Then came the next squirrel. The dirt in my yard was full of disgusting things that I found (thanks Google) out are slugs.  They live under ground and eat roots and kill all your plants.  Even vegetable plants.  And did I mention they’re gross?  It was a little bit like finding out evil little aliens lived out there.

So I spent the better part of the day Googling how to get rid of them.  Guess what?  Basically the entire internet laughed and said too bad, all you can do is HAND PICK THEM and drop them in soapy water.  Now I swear I’m not a total wimp but no.

As I continued to (desperately) read I found a single ray of hope.  My new squirrel.  Yep, and I’ll tell you all about them later. That’s right slugs, take THAT!

How about you, do you ever take an idea and start running with it before you know exactly where it is you’re running too?  If not I have to say, I highly recommend it.  🙂

I went to the Mud Endeavor obstacle run and it did exactly what I knew it would – got me motivated to run again.  Yay!

I was kind of upset because I forgot to bring a camera to at least take a couple of pictures before the run.  But then I looked at their Facebook page and they are letting us download pictures for free.  Nice! Here is why I was so anxious to get pictures:

How cool is that?  Out of all of the runs I’ve done Mud Endeavor  runs are my favorite – I’d be happy to run every one they put on.  But this location was by far my favorite.  Lots and lots of (steep) hills, boulders and actual climbing (almost like AZ, this was the closest to a place to hike I’ve seen in this state!) and just generally a beautiful place.  Who wouldn’t love obstacles like this??

There were a couple of uphills like this and one downhill with the rope to help, which was VERY fun.  And ya, two days later my right tricep and shoulder are still a wee bit sore.  Which is weird since that is the side I have tennis elbow on so I would have thought I’d baby that side.  Guess not.  Even my subconscious is out to get me, go figure.

Anyways, they also had the more typical stuff like the A frame net to climb (very high) and over and unders to be tortured by.  I was not really looking forward to the run until the night before because I haven’t been running at all this month, my elbow has been hurting just drinking coffee, and I REALLY had hoped to learn to climb a rope before my next run.  I didn’t learn it.  🙁  The last thing in the course was a free rope climb (or whatever you call climbing a rope with no wall) and I hate to admit I just walked on by.  It was the only obstacle I didn’t do, I REALLY need to learn that! But long story short, always look forward to an obstacle race even if you aren’t all that ready for it.  It’ll be fun, it’s just a given.

On top of all that they have some pretty groovy race bling.  I am really hoping I can make it to their next run, the Little Manatee River Run.  My usual partner in crime will be unable to make it but I don’t want to miss out!

On top of all that we ran into our friend Ashley (1st place in the competitive heat!) and I met Holly from Muddy Mommy.  I was happy about that because I just won a entry from her to Hog Wild’s Off Road 5K (or 8 miler, maybe next time) and got to thank her. That’s what I love about running and reading running blogs, it’s its own little community. I always seem to recognize or know someone at every race.

All in all an excellent run, and I am unbelievably happy to have got back the running bug.  I guess the secret is to do more races!

If you’re a runner do you ever just kind of stop for a while?  I tend to do it every so often for no reason at all.  Worst of all is that when I don’t run I don’t feel as good in general.  Please tell me I’m not the only one who does this to themselves.  What do YOU do to keep motivated?

Yes, I did it to myself AGAIN.  I was doing great with my running, I was up to 4 miles and keeping to a running schedule, running 3 or even 4 times a week.  Great, right? Right.

Then February hit and I just fell right off every wagon there is.  Stopped running, stopped blogging, stopped doing yoga, guess how great I feel about now?  Yep, not that great.  But all of that is just the start. Guess what I’m doing in the morning.  Less than 12 hours from now.

Mud Endeavor! Not just any mud run. This one is 5 or 6 miles, depending on how they decided to set up the course.  So not only is it the longest mud run and longest run I’ve done yet if I must be honest, it’s after taking an entire month off of doing anything even remotely healthy for me.

I really don’t hate me, but I CAN be my own worst enemy.  As a matter of fact, I excel at it!  Does it make it better or worst that I am super excited about the run tomorrow instead of dreading it like I think I probably should be?  Oh yeah, and I have a case of tennis elbow so bad I’ve been drinking my coffee with my left hand.

There won’t be any kicking ass tomorrow but I will still have a ton of fun!

So what exactly have I been doing with myself besides watching Netflix (I’m in the midst of a full on 4400 kick) and drinking hard cider? Gardening!

I cleared out the side yard (yet again), build a new raised garden, and planted the whole thing with non-gmo seeds.  I have lots of things sprouting and I’m planning to share pictures but at the moment it’s a wee bit too dark outside and I just wanted to share my insanity of the moment, my longest, most unprepared for mud run.

So with me luck since I’m going to need it, and come back later to see if I made it.  Ya, you can laugh.  Goodness knows that’s what I’ll be doing.

The other day I decided to go for a run.  My oldest was home and said he’d go with me, so of course the next thing I knew the younger 2 decided they wanted to run as well.  Well, this is going to be fun!

First try we all walked barefoot to the end of the driveway, realized it was oh-my-god Florida cold and all ran back in to get on some shoes.

Second try….  we all started jogging together at about the same speed.  It didn’t take long for the older two to start jetting ahead, skipping, jumping, boxing, and going in circles and the youngest to start lagging behind.  After a bit I told the older two to go back and get their brother since they weren’t running anyways, they were doing everything else.  Let the fun begin!

The rest of the run went something like this:

Want to box?  Hey! Mom, he/she hit me! You knocked me down!  (they all sprint past me like a pack of dogs hunting)  I bet you can’t do a back flip!  No back flips on cement!!! (me obviously)  I bet I can punch harder than you! ( my daughter, go figure) All of this is punctuated with frequent I’m getting tired, running is boring, I want a drink, blah blah blah.

So we get to the corner of our block and I tell the younger 2 they can head home.  But mom, we love running! We don’t want to go home!  Really????

Just one more way a parent can learn to completely zone out the circus created around them while still magically hearing the parts you have to in order to avoid a trip to the emergency room.  Seriously, who would think it’s a good idea to learn to flip in the middle of an asphalt road??

Do you ever run or do other exercise with your kids? Is it as much of an adventure as my family’s outings tend to be or is it just me and mine?

I’m not even going to tell you about how amazingly relaxing it is to do yoga with them.  (Is there a sarcasm font?)

A little while ago I mentioned that I’m planning on going to the ElectroDash 5K in Tampa March 21st.  You should go too!  And to help convince you the folks at ElectroDash gave me 3 codes for free races to give out!

What do you need to do to enter for a chance to win?

1. Look and see if there will be a race coming to your town here.
2. Comment below letting me know you’d like a ticket

It’s that easy. I have 3 tickets to give away, the winners will be drawn Monday night and announced here Tuesday, February 18th.

Don’t forget to check out ElectroDash on Facebook and Twitter.

Disclosure: I received race entries in exchange for posting about ElecroDash 5K.

I haven’t been writing, running, or doing much at all the last couple weeks, I guess I took a mini vacation from all the little things.  It would have been very cool except for the part where I am now kind of behind on everything.  Oh well, now I have plenty to write about in the coming weeks!

I have a super simple (this does seem to be my thing) vegan recipe to share for Meatless Monday, this one is just as good as it is easy!

3 Ingredient Buffalo Burgers:

• 1 cup dry lentils, cooked according to package and strained
• 1 1/2 cups oatmeal, run through the food processor (after measuring)
• 1/2 cup Red Hot hot sauce
• oil to fry in

Toppings:

• Sliced onion, tomato and pickles
• Lettuce torn into bun sized pieces (I used red leaf)

Mix the first 3 ingredients, make into patties and cook in the frying pan with a bit of oil. I used a 1/3 measuring cup and scraped off the top to measure them into patties, then squished them down a bit with a fork.  This worked perfect since I served them on dinner rolls from the bakery.

Serve on buns or rolls with toppings of your choice.

We didn’t use any condiments and they were really good.  My kids even asked for seconds which is a minor miracle since they saw that I made them with beans, they both originally asked if they could just have rolls for dinner.  Yes, they are THOSE kids that automatically equate healthy with oh-my-god-gross.  Lucky me!

First things first as always,  the winners for the Color Me Rad entries are Lori, Kaili, and Dylan Bukowczyk.  Email me at kindazennish.com and I will send you your codes, congrats!

I didn’t post for Meatless Monday this week because honestly I just ran out of time – I haven’t even done my weekend grocery shopping yet and it’s already Tuesday.  Ever have weekends so busy you feel like you need to recover from them?  Ya, next weekend I am doing NOTHING.

But food is on my mind, especially since I read this Tweet Monday morning.

Have any vegetarians out there done the #21daysugardetox?

— Kristen (@thismomruns) January 27, 2014

I’ve had the idea of trying a sugar detox for a while, but all of the information about it seems to be Paleo, which I think of as including lots of meat though I know I’ve read that there are vegetarians that follow it.  But it also cuts out the majority of grains.  I don’t see any reason to cut out whole grains because I think they’re healthy if you’re not gluten intolerant, which I’m not. The problem is I know perfectly well that I’m not a food expert so I keep thinking there must be some reason for it, although I couldn’t find anything on Google except for 1 person’s comment on an article (I already forgot which one) that grains eventually break down into sugar.

So I’m curious.  What’s wrong with including whole grains while trying to cut out sugar?  I’d like to try this with my own modified plan in the next few weeks and if there is a reason to eliminate grains then whatever, it’s temporary!  As long as that doesn’t include oatmeal.

Anybody have an opinion on this or know the reason?