You know what's super fun? New camera gear is super fun! Y'all, I have been itching to get a super fancy pro-quality 70-200mm zoom lens*. And I finally got it! I picked it up from the UPS store at 5:30pm yesterday and by 5:45pm I was running around the backyard with it. Fortunately a few of you have said you want to see more pics of Ryder, because today that's what you're getting!
When I was a little girl I grew up in the countryside outside Atlanta (yeah, decades ago that still existed) and my family had a huge fruit and vegetable garden. Now that McCrae and I are in our own house and spring is tantalizing me with its options I'm itching to add to the garden that is already established on my little half acre. But I have a confession: when it comes to gardens my strategy is more "plant it" than "plan it." I like to experiment in the garden and prefer plants that flourish on their own, and my latest experiment is growing plants from seeds!
It's hiking season! I'm super excited about tackling another section of the Appalachian Trail this weekend with another friend and I'm still head over heels with the last trip with Emily. To celebrate I caught up with Emily and got her thoughts on her first backpacking trip and what she learned as a newbie.
It's always exciting to get a new medal, but where do you put it? For my first couple race medals I just draped them on the frame of a mirror, but a few more medals later and my poor mirror was sagging under the weight, so I just stuffed the medals into a bin. But a bin is a sad place for medals to gather dust and feel neglected, so I started looking for a medal rack. I wasn't thrilled with any of the commercial medal racks available. They were cute, but they just didn't fit me, so after a while I just decided to build my own race medal rack.
One of the reasons we picked our particular house when we were house hunting last summer was the yard. I was adamant that I wanted a house with a big yard for Ryder and for gardening. The yard already had a good amount of landscaping, so it's been a lot of fun to discover what flowers pop up this spring - and here are the latest blossoms!
REI just announced a focus on women in the outdoors in 2017 called "Force of Nature." It's an attempt to counter the long-standing complaint about the outdoors industry: for too long the outdoors has been dominated by men. Men are on the covers of outdoorsy magazines, men are depicted in active ad campaigns, men get the best gear, men get featured on social media, men men men men.
Well, it had to happen eventually. After a four race PR streak I finally broke my streak. It was bound to happen though. It's unreasonable to assume that I can run every race in my life faster than the last, and it might as well happen on my fifth half marathon.
A Saturday post?! What is this?! Exciting, right? Well, it's the first of the month so of course I had to put up a monthly goals post!
