::we are the waltons::: September 2016

The time has come...Nola is in school full time!! As emotional as I feel about the whole ordeal, I am truly so happy for her. She was so excited to start Grade One and so far, she is loving every minute of it. I do find that she has been pretty tired and emotional, however that comes with the territory. She is in Mrs. Sewards class and enjoying it well. Both Melissa and I were a little sad when we discovered that Nola and Eleanor would not be in the same class this year, however they find each other at the park during recess and play :) They are still such sweet friends. Nola does running club every Wednesday at noon hour which she loves!!! My busy, athletic girl.

Look how cute she is in her desk :)

After her first day, we went out to Montana's for dinner to celebrate.

Nola, I love you so dearly. I am proud of the little girl you have become. Enjoy your special days, Grade One-r!!

For our anniversary this year, I registered Doug and I for a Spartan Sprint race in Calgary. We have been training for the last couple months and on Saturday Aug 13, we had our race. Rob and Pat watched the kids for us to go and they spoiled us even further by taking the kiddos the day before! We headed up to Calgary on the Friday and took it pretty easy. We did a little shopping – mostly school clothes for the kids – went to the Cheesecake Café for dinner, soaked in the hot tub at the hotel and watched the Olympics. It was a perfect day.

The next morning we were up and at it, ready to head to the race. Once we got there we got registered, body marked and then went to check out the course. You couldn’t see too much of it from the spectator section, but what we could see was mud, mud, mud!! Our heat was at 9am and when we were in the pig-pen waiting for the race to start, the nerves started to kick in. I couldn’t believe we were about to do it!!!! I kept worrying if I had done enough training, if I was ready for this, but before I had too much time to think about it we were shouting ‘Aroo’ and starting the race.

There were a total of 23 obstacles over 5.5km of hills and mud. The first section was through the trees and it was awesome. There was one part that was just a constant switch-back of hills and you could see that Doug was totally in his element. Heck, Doug was in his element every step along the way!! Here is a map of the race itself.

I really did not know what to expect, as I have never done anything like this before, but I can say I was shocked about how much mud there was. It was muddy everywhere! And not just little puddles… calf and knee deep mud to run through, waist and chest deep water to wade through, and everything in-between. It was freaking awesome!!

Some of the obstacles were easier than expected, and some much more difficult. The atlas lift (packing a block of cement from point to point, putting it down and lifting it again at each point), over –under-through walls, balance beams, spear throw, slippery wall (using a rope to climb a wet wall immediately after coming out of chest deep water), stairway to Spartan and the vertical cargo were actually easier than expected. Not to say they were easy, because they weren’t, but they weren’t as daunting as they looked. A huge personal best for me was on the Monkey Bars. During training, I could not successfully complete a SINGLE swing on the monkey bars. Not. Even. One. At the race? I went ¾ of the way before my grip slipped!!! Wahoo!!!!

Some of the most challenging obstacles were the bucket brigade (holding a Home Depot bucket in front of you, loaded with dirt, down a slippery slope, then a 40 degree turn and straight back up the slippery steep slope), parallel bars, tractor pull, multi rig, the barbed wire mud pit and the rope climb. If you cannot complete an obstacle, the punishment was 30 burpees. I successfully completed 19/23 obstacles. As I mentioned before, I only went ¾ the way on the Monkey bars, so I had to do 30 burpees. I failed miserably at the parallel bars! It was actually pretty hilarious, Doug hopped right up on to them and shimmed his way across in seconds. I lifted myself up and with the first movement, I collapsed!! 30 more burpees for me! The tractor pull I did complete, but boy howdy! It was SO hard!! There was a cube of cement with a chain in it and a fat rope attached. You had to drag that sucker through the mud around a little course. Honest, I was barely moving it at first! I would pull and pull and move a foot. It wiped SO much energy out of me. Luckily, I watched other people and a group of us girls were asking others for tips. Once we figured it out a bit, we pushed through and got it done. If only you could have seen the rope burn on my shoulder… The multi rig was ridiculous. I gave it a go but failed on my first swing. Poor Doug made it all the way to the end, but he missed the bell at the end so he had to do 30 burpees. He did amazing!! 21/23 obstacles completed by Doug. The hardest part for me, by far, was the barbed wire mud pit. They put gravel in the pit and it was cutting up my elbows and knees pretty bad. I couldn’t get my feet under me at all – every time I lifted myself I got caught in the barbed wire!! I had to rip my ponytail out the wire twice and I cut my back. By the end, I literally had tears in my eyes. It was obstacle 20 out of 23 and I was exhausted. Luckily, the girl next to me was cheering me on – thank goodness!! The next obstacle was the rope climb. Not a single person around us was able to complete it. We were soaked and covered in mud – the ropes were so slippery!!! I got down to do my burpees, but crawling through the mud KILLED my arm strength. I only did 6 burpees… I just couldn’t do any more.

It felt so amazing to jump over the fire and cross the finish line! Even though I gave it my all, it was nice to not feel like I was going to die when the race was over. It pays to take care of our bodies!!!

After the race we went to Tang for celebratory Vietnamese subs. Yum!!

The race was itself was amazing, but I got so much more out of this than a t-shirt and a medal. The training truly was such a rewarding process. There are so many parallels between working and testing your body and working and testing your spirituality. I found that through my training not only did my body get stronger, but so did my attitude, my resolve and my spirit. The best part of this all? Racing with Doug by my side. I very literally couldn’t have done it without him – he literally lifted and threw me over walls!! But I also couldn’t have done this without his love, his example, his determination and just knowing that he was right there, cheering me on. Again, spiritual parallels! I loved seeing him ahead of me, showing me that I can do it too.