Who's ready for the Inaugural 465 Challenge?

Don't Miss the Inaugural 465 Virtual Challenge! Shown above: Inaugural 465 Challenge Sticker included with Premium and Basic Registration Packages. Coming January 1, 2020 . . . Inaugural 53-Mile VIRTUAL 465 Challenge! WHO: Fabulously motivated YOU! WHAT: The Inaugural 53-Mile VIRTUAL 465 Challenge is an event conceived by Indianapolis-based Vision Event Management. Why 53 miles? Here's the skinny: Indiana Interstate 465 is a 53-mile loop around Indianapolis. As a kid, do you remember driving somewhere with your parents and imagining yourself moving on a map? Now, dig if you will a picture of yourself running, walking, biking, skateboarding, scootering or performing any physical activity of your choice for the 53-mile loop around the 465. THIS IS A VIRTUAL EVENT SO PLEASE DO NOT ACTUALLY STEP FOOT ON INDIANA INTERSTATE 465!

Tshirts & Totals of 2014

It's time for one of my favorite blog posts: showing off all the commemorative shirts I collected last year, & totaling up my miles, plus a little preview of my 2015 plans.

If you've been reading our blog for a while now, thank you!  You may remember from the goals I set for last year (14 Things for 2014) that I wanted to collect 21 commemorative t-shirts.  I ended up with so many that I had to split them out into 3 groups just to get them all pictured.  First up, my race shirts:

This pic is in chronological order, but it's missing the shirt from the Great Pumpkin Run.  I packed that away with my Halloween stuff.  So that makes 18 shirts just from races.  I actually ran 19 races, but they didn't all offer t-shirts.

The Unlikely Triathletes or Team Badass Librarians

by Guest Blogger Kathy Helmond

My first (and likely only) venture into the world of triathlons came last Saturday at the Go Girl Triathlon at Eagle Creek.  This all-women event provided a great way to try something new and be surrounded by inspiring women athletes.  Long a fan of the Kona Ironman specials on television, the triathlon is a challenge that this shaky swimmer will probably never attempt, but I love to watch others giving their all to this three event race.  I am always moved to tears watching the men and women in the Hawaii heat and wind overcoming obstacles and persevering to the end.

 A co-worker (Penny) of mine competed in some triathlons with Team in Training some years back (pre-knee replacement) and we sort of fantasized about doing it as a team “someday.”  One day during one of these conversations another co-worker (Carrie) joined in the conversation and revealed that she was a swimmer in high school.  That was all we needed to decide that the idea could become a reality!  Before we could talk ourselves out of it, we signed up for the Go Girl Triathlon and Team Badass Librarians was formed!  The name was obviously tongue in cheek for this 2/3 middle aged, past our prime team.  But we had a lot of fun anticipating it all summer.  As life usually does, things came up for all three team members and training was not what it should’ve been! 

13 Things from 2013

2013 was an awesome year! 

I give thanks to the Lord.  I praise Him in front of everyone.  (Psalms 109:30)

1. Together with Laura & Cindy we started this blog!  It's been fun writing up our training and events, and thinking up other topics like product reviews.  It's been pretty interesting too - learning about how to use social media to promote our blog and to connect with people who might be interested in what we have to say.  And I feel like it's made the three of us even closer - I hope Laura & Cindy feel that way too. Checking out the stats from our blog year-to-date, here are our top five posts in terms of page views:

Entry	Pageviews
Gatorade Energy Chews Aug 3, 2013, 2 comments	51
2013 Walk to End Alzheimer's Recap Oct 14, 2013, 1 comment	48
CareNet Feed the Need 5K Recap Nov 11, 2013	39
Hendricks County Half Marathon Recap Sep 17, 2013, 2 comments	39
Creeper Trail 10k Jul 27, 2013, 4 comments	36

A lot of our page views came from Facebook, but a surprising (to me) number also came from Google searches.  We have 120 likes for our Facebook page, and 34 followers on Twitter.  I think that's pretty good for 6 months.  84% of our Facebook fans are women, which is who we are targeting.  We do wish you all would comment more, both on our blog posts and our Facebook posts.  We enjoy hearing what you have to say & learning from your experiences, too.  

Month-Long Iron Man DONE!

I finished last night with a 6.2 mile bike ride and a .58 mile (or 20 lap) swim.  Woo hoo!  Grand total 26.2 miles running, 112 miles biking, and 2.4 miles swimming in 29 days.  Now I am anxiously awaiting my commemorative t-shirt.  Pics to follow as soon as I get it.

Things I learned from this challenge:

Month Long Iron Man Update - Almost Done

I finished the 26.2 miles of running last night.  I am 78% done with the swimming & should finish it Sunday. (Side note - ear plugs made a huge difference - definitely worth it.). I am 73% done with the biking.  As long as the weather stays nice, if I do 6 miles a day I will finish on Monday.

It's been a lot harder than I expected to do all this in one month, especially the biking. I've really enjoyed swimming again & plan to keep swimming until the pool closes for Fall.  I'm not a very strong swimmer, but it's still a very refreshing workout.  

Month-Long Iron Man Update

Just a quick update - I'm 52% done with my running and 52% done with swimming, so both of those are about where they should be for slightly over halfway through the month.  I'm only 25% done with the biking, but I do have the East Side Bike Ride tonight after work, so that should help.

I did rediscover the fact that I'm prone to swimmer's ear.  It had been so long since I'd swum that I'd completely forgotten.  So this weekend I'm going to get some ear plugs & maybe a swim cap, before I hit the pool again next week.

Month-Long Iron man, 1/3 Done

Okay, I'm not really 1/3 done, although I should be since the month of July is 1/3 done.  Kevin & I are doing this month-long Iron man through our local parks department.  We have the month of July to log 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of biking, and 26.2 miles of running.  I am at 28% on swimming, 15% on biking, and 21% on running, so I need to step it up a bit.  I can't even use the fact that last week was a holiday week as an excuse, because that should've given me more time to get some activity in.