Getting back at it

Hey team!

So I've finally started running with my new running buddy:  Carter.  Except he already weighs 16 1/2 pounds and he does walk, or actually even crawl or roll yet.  Maybe pushing the stroller will make my arms stronger while I run.  I'm thinking about doing a half marathon, but I think the Snow Canyon one in November is now too soon, so maybe the St. George one again in January.  Any takers?  I think it would be fun to train and run it as a group! 

By the way- Good luck tomorrow to Jason on his next race!  (Unless its a triatholon, then good luck with that!)

And... I'm back!

Hey cousins! It has been awhile, huh? Well, congratulations to Jason- wish we could have been around for your wedding, and we are excited to see you sometime (soon, hopefully!) And congratulations for Sherst and Trev for getting ready for this new baby runner! And to Matt, for getting ready to get hitched.

Anyway, I have started running again! After having James the first run was actually pretty good. I was able to do two miles pretty easily (although pretty slowly) and I am going to run a 5K on May 5. I am also planning to run a 10K when I am in Utah in the end of July/beginning of August. (Maybe a 24th of July race?) Anyway, if anyone wants to join me, or if you hear of a race in that time let me know.

I hope all of you are doing great!

Holiday Running anyone?

Hey everyone!

It's been awhile, so I thought I'd ask for an update on everyone's running. I know how mine and Trevor's running is going.....which is why we haven't posted for awhile. Maybe this will help us re-commit to getting back into it. We'll let you know. Anyway, we are excited to see you for Thanksgiving!

Sherstin (and Trevor too)

Loved the pictures!

This is a comment to Jason's last post.  I couldn't add a comment to his post for some reason.
Loved the pictures!  Would love to see more pictures and here more about the Australian runs.

Maybe we should see how many interesting animals we can see on our runs.  So far we have a rattle snake, baby buffalo and now a humpback whale. I will be running this weekend at Bear Lake and hopefully I will see something interesting to add to our animal list. The hills at Bear Lake should be perfect training for the Park City marathon.  If we can run at Bear Lake West, Park City should be snap.

Running Down Under

Greeting to all my fellow runners from Australia!
It is a little weird how my work occasionally sends me to far away lands to sit by a computer and trade stocks and things. Nonetheless I am rather pleased to have been sent to the southern hemisphere for a three and a half week work trip. Since I don't really know many people here I have had quite a bit of time to run and it has been splendid. Sydney is a pretty city and I have had some spectacular runs already.

Last Saturday I went on a 10ish mile run with my friend Rob. We ran around the coastal trails of a peninsula on the southern part of Sydney. Part of the run goes along some cliffs that fall roughly 50-100 feet into the Tasman Sea. I am not sure why they call parts of the ocean that are surrounded by land on approximately 1.5 sides "seas" but they do. For those of you that are a little fuzzy on your ninth grade geography, the Tasman Sea is just part of the Pacific Ocean. As we were running along these cliffs we looked out into the deep blue yonder and saw some splashing. The splashing was about one quarter of a mile from the cliffs and it was caused by the giant tail of a humpback whale! It was quite a fantastic surprise to see a large whale in the middle of a run I would say. I did see a baby buffalo while running along the Farmington trail about 3 weeks ago which was pretty gnar as well, but I think a wild migrating whale may top the list.

Right next to my apartment is a nice park that has some very nice running trails on it. The trails go from my apartment up to the edge of the Sydney Harbor where you get some great views of the Opera House and the main bridge in Sydney. I ran around there last night and then ran up to the actual Opera House to get a better view. Tonight I decided to take my camera with me on my short run and try and capture some of the views.
Hope you enjoy them.
The last picture was taken with the help of a photographer I met there from Germany. He let me borrow his tripod and gave me some tips on decreasing the shutter speed to get more light in the photos as well. All in all I would say it was a nice evening run!

Jason

Excited for Park City

Woooo!! Nice work on signing up Mommer! For some reason I can't comment on your post. It never says I am logged in. So this new post is in response to yours. I am pretty sure that we will dominate the race. And I agree that people should probably sign up pretty quick.
The race will be a little difficult though. gradually uphill for half the race, and then gradually downhill on the way back. Total elevation gain is only 600 feet or so I think though. Over 6.5 miles, that much elevation gain is hardly noticeable, so we will be fine.

I will have to think of a good Stewart Family motto for our training. Nothing good is coming to mind at the moment unfortunately.

Have a jolly good running week!

Jason

Park City Half Marathon

Hello everyone,

Has everyone registered for the race?  I just checked and there are only 57 spots left out of 700!
I started my training last week, following the nice schedule that Jason so kindly designed for me.
It doesn't seem so intimidating now that this will be my third one. I am a little worried that there might be some killer hills.

Does anyone have special goals for this race?  Should we have a motto for our training?
A big thanks to Jason and Sherstin for suggesting this race.

St George 1/2 marathon

I just wanted to say how much fun the St. George 1/2 marathon was!  I was so impressed with everyone!
I want to thank everyone for their help.  Jason for being my long distance coach.  He designed my training schedule and gave me tips along the way.  Sherstin for giving me encouragement and telling me I could do it.  Shelley for doing the long Saturday runs with me and then running the race with me. The race went so well I think we should plan another one. Any ideas?

I told Brenda Brundage about our race and she thought her running team (Kurt and Ellie) should join us next year.  Big news on Big E!  He is no longer Big E, now Jamie calls him small e.  He has lost 70 pounds since the family reunion.

Good luck to Emily and Jane.  They are training for a 1/2 marathon in March. Emily you can do this if I can.

I haven't heard yet how Brent Bell did on his 100 mile run last weekend. That will be the next post.

 

2 more weeks!

The St. George half is coming up in just two weeks! Unfortunately, my training has been between slim and none, but I'm hoping to still finish with Mom and Shelley. Jason- we are excited to see you! Good luck with these last few weeks!

Sherst

More running

I had a decent week of running. I still haven't been running a very large number of miles, but it is slowly creeping up. I think I only ran 13 this week total, but it was spread out over 4 days. On Saturday I went on a 45 minute bike ride where I went fairly fast. Later in the day I went up to the Santa Monica mountains and did a 4 mile trail run. Basically it was straight up for 2 miles and then straight back down. I haven't done very much running in hills for the last month or so and it was pretty tough. My quads are actually fairly sore today. It is probably partially due to the biking earlier in the day as well, but I think it is a good amount of soreness as long as it goes away soon.
Next week I am slowly increasing my mileage and plan to do a 5 miler on Saturday. I know that isn't really long at all, but it should be good to go a little bit longer than I have been. I have done pretty well at my swimming and biking training as well although I missed a couple workouts this week due to being lazy.

I hope everyone else is running well and getting ready for St. George or any other races that may be coming up!

Jason

Running Update

Hi everyone!
I have been completely healthy now for a little over a week! I am pretty excited about that and have been able to work out nicely since last Saturday. I signed up for a half marathon in St George on Jan 22. For anyone else who wants to join it should be a lot of fun. My current training involves nice and easy mileage build up. I am not training too fast just slowly increasing the amount I do at a reasonable pace to get a decent base built up. Hopefully I won't get too excited about running far and overexert myself. My biking and swimming training have been going well also. Generally they are easy and just working on a base as well.
It feels good to be out there on a daily basis and improving my fitness.

How is everyone else doing? I heard the update about all of the family members that did the St George marathon. I am impressed and inspired. It has been almost 3 yrs since I have ran a full marathon. (Wow that makes me feel lazy). My last one was the Death Valley Trail marathon in Feb 08. Hopefully I will get in a marathon sometime in the spring along with a half ironman. Although you never know what may come up in life it is much more fun with goals to work towards.

Keep up the running!
Jason

Running!

Well it has been an eventful couple of weeks on the exercise front here in Southern California. I got back into running about 2 weeks ago which was quite nice after a short sabbatical (I don't know if you can actually take a sabbatical from running). Anyway - I did my first trail run in a while in the Santa Monica Mountains. It was a lot tougher than I imagined because I am not in that great of shape, but I made it about 6 miles or so. Then this Thursday I pulled a hammy playing beach football. The worst part about it is that I missed the bomb that I was going for when I did it too. Ok, that really isn't the worst part, but now I am sidelined from running for a bit. It seems to be healing quickly so hopefully it will be ok to run on in less than a week.
On a more positive note I got a road bike about a week ago and have started biking and swimming and sort of training for a triathlon. I don't know when or what one I am going to do, but I am training anyway. It has been a lot of fun and I can bike just fine with an injured hamstring. I did a 44 minute ride this morning south along the coast which was a fun ride down to LAX almost.

Well - hopefully I will be running again Monday and Tuesday if my healing goes well!

Also - Sherstin and I were discussing doing a half marathon in St George in January. I am pretty sure we are going to sign up. I will keep doing some triathlon training but focus more on the running to make sure I am ready for a good half. It has been quite a while since I have raced a half marathon so I am excited.
Jason

Back in the U.S.A.

I am back in the US!! I haven't posted anything on here in months which is definitely not good. I had been doing some running in London, but not as much as I would have liked to. It turns out that dating tends to cut down on the amount of running that you do, especially if you work long hours. Although I did have a few running dates in London which were fun. I am starting work in LA tomorrow - and hopefully will get some good beach running and trail running in. Our office is 1 block from the Santa Monica Pier so I can easily run along the beach there after work anytime that I want. Well - I hope everyone else is running more than I am, and has fun things to post soon!

Jason

Running updates?

I just thought we needed to hear how everyone is doing on their running.
Here is an update from my neck of the woods.
I took off running almost two weeks due to a bad bruised hip while tubing on a river. Started back today and it felt pretty good.
Matt has gone running a couple of times since his mission. He ran 6.8 miles on Saturday but then was pretty exhausted. He says he needs to work up to it a little more gradually.
Brent Bell decided on the spur of the moment to run the Days of 47 Salt Lake Marathon. His time was 3:57:44.
Not bad for a run the day after his daughter got married.

London Runs?

Jason you have been in London a few weeks. We want to hear about some of your favorite runs.
Beautiful sights, crazy sights, only in London sights?
Speaking of only in....... On Monday morning, May 24, I got up to run in Farmington and there was snow on the ground. Now that is crazy. Fortunately today when I went running the weather was fantastic. Not one single snow flake.

What a beautiful day for the Ogden marathon. Sunny and cool. My job today was to cheer Sherstin and Trevor. I waited for them at mile 17 near the end of Pineview. They looked happy and energetic as they ran by. I took two pictures and I discovered later that Mason Wood was in the background of the second one waiting to cheer Ellie and Brenda. The family was well represented today.
Sherstin wanted to post, but she can't until Jason reinvites her to the blog, so everyone will have to wait to hear about her adventures for just a bit longer. I am hoping to run the Ogden 1/2 marathon next year.

Go Sherstin and Trevor!!!

Good luck Sherstin and Trevor on the Ogden Marathon today! Run like the wind, two cheetahs, a buffalo, and the stubaru all combined into one powerful and unyielding force of forward motion. You will do awesome.

Just Got Back...

From a two-miler. That is the longest I have gone for over a year.

Hello from a New Runner

And by new, I mean brand new! Here is my story: Before I was expecting our little Henri I started to actually enjoy running. My brother, Mike (who has now run 6 marathons) told me I should run a marathon. That seemed like a pretty big task, so I decided to set a more realistic goal. I want to run a half marathon before Henri is one. While I was pregnant I was unable to exercise, but I had dreams about running.

After Henri was born there was always an excuse to not go: a hard recovery and being tired, having a sick baby and being tired, having a long night and being tired, stormy weather and being tired, moving to Houston and being tired. It mostly had/has to do with being tired.

Henri is now five months and I am only a little closer to my goal. I feel like I am at the point in my life where I decide to either be healthy and active... or not. This is now the end of the road for all of the excuses (or the beginning of the road for running!) We are settled in Houston, I have my Brooks, my jogging stroller, my "Zero to Half" edition of "Runner's World" and I am ready to go. So, I will update you on my progress.

Your job, dear reader, is to tell me how awesome I am doing, and that I can do it!

P.S. Are you wondering about why I would post this at such an unearthly hour of the day? It is because I was up a lot of the night with a crying baby! But, I will persevere and post again a little later and tell you about today's run.

A Runner's Thought

Here is a thought that I have hanging on my wall with a picture of me finishing my first marathon 11 years ago. I am in the process of trying to find that same satisfaction I once found in running. I truly miss it!!

"Running allows me the time I need to sort things out, gain perspective, and obtain a feeling of accomplishment that few other activities offer ..... It gives me an avenue to release stress and gives me such a sense of BALANCE." (James Murray, RUNNERS WORLD)