Tri-Dogmom

Have you ever been back to a place, that somewhere in your lifetime you spent a LOT of time. Somewhere you have a lot of memories, like you could go back to that place with just a blink of an eye? Priest Lake, Indian Creek Campground - that's my place. We spent a week to 10days there every year growing up for as long as I can remember. If we were friends growing up, you probably spent some time there with me as well. Even in College I brought a few of my roommates there for a weekend in the summer. My parents would be first in line on the phone (post holidays) to reserve our week, the second week in August. Yes, you had to make reservations in JANUARY for August to go CAMPING?! Usually, we had 1-4 campsites between all of my parent's friends, and, if we were lucky we got the sites along the creek, no campers behind us... just skunks, and bears and well - pretty much all the critters that hang out in the woods. So many memories. Night swimming and volleyball on the beach. Frogs

Where has the time gone? We left Arizona over 7 weeks ago! The first week in Utah flew by, probably because we were running ourselves (or, being drug) into the ground by the Billy Goat Benny, and Supa... But, 6 weeks in Coeur d'Alene ALREADY. WTH? With only 2 weeks left we were starting to realize we hadn't done nearly what we wanted to! Shane has been working his tail off, and while my work hasn't been all that busy - races are behind us, we needed to take the next 2 weeks and really enjoy ourselves! We started out Friday! Date night :-) We headed out to the floating restaurant, Cedars (I have ALWAYS wanted to eat here!). It was a nice night, perfect temperatures, but a little windy (which made for an interesting meal on the floating patio!). The food was fantastic. I chose seared scallops with red mashed potatoes & green beans - I made a really good choice. Shane had the cedar plank salmon with wild rice & veggies. Of course finished with a chocolate molten cake.

This past weekend was my dear friend Shelby's wedding in Seattle. Shelby & I were good friends at WSU - always living with in steps of each other. The friendship continued on when she moved down to Arizona with me a couple of weeks after graduating, for the summer. A year or so later she had moved back to Arizona for a couple of years. Those were some fun times.. In fact, Shelby was the one who drove Shane & I (much to Shane's dismay) to the airport for our very first marathon in Monaco. Perfect timing with our summer trip, so we were able to just hop in the car & drive over. A quick, but VERY eventful weekend. I decided to surprise Shane for an early birthday gift by getting us a room at the Four Seasons. He has heard Melisa & I brag about the comfort and perfection of staying in the hotels, but he had yet to experience it. The Seattle Hotel was in the perfect location for the weekend, so we were completely set up. I had Shane fooled, thinking we were

Relays are FUN. Seriously... no stress, just show up & do your part! I've done one relay before, in Mexico - I totally forgot how much fun they can be. The CDA triathlon is something I found on line a LONG time ago. I don't even know why I was looking at races in this area, because we had not started our plans to come here for the summer yet. Anyhow - I looked it up for this summer, and if happened to fall the week after Troika, what was supposed to be our 'A' race.... Had I only known..... So, still not wanting to give up on the race, I put out an "Ad" on Facebook looking for someone to join Shane & I for a team. My only thing - I was going to swim. After swimming in 2 different, not so pretty lakes this summer I wanted to swim in CDA. Not to mention I had had about enough with my sub par swim times lately..... Sure enough my Facebook post worked and within 24hours of posting we had a runner. How cool is this. A girl that I have not seen f

When I signed Shane & I up for this race, I thought it was perfect timing. A few weeks after we got to CDA, then we could spend the rest of our summer just having fun, not on a schedule. We only had about 8 weeks to prep - So I created a modified schedule to get us to race day. I used some old schedules from a Mark Allen training plan, but had to cut down the mileage because we didn't have time to build up to them. We also had a goal of trying to do more tempo/speed vs slow long. That plan worked for a while. We were working hard, seeing results and having a LOT of fun. And then the travels began. We were able to keep up our running, but the biking mileage and swimming took a huge dip. The last few training rides here I felt like crap. Sluggish & tired around the 2hour mark. I kept telling myself it was just from the travel & racing, etc.... but deep down I knew we just didn't get in enough long rides. In fact, our last long ride (3hrs) was on June 27th.