Weekly Review April 24-30

Wow... busy week this past week! This current week will be no different. Let's take a quick look back and see how last week went down in Fitness, Farm, and Life!

Fitness
Lots of wrap up this past week, as April came to a close. I finished up with one ten-day yoga challenge, two month-long running challenges, and a three-month long fitness program. I'll break down each of those individually (I'll try to be brief) and also will fill in with the weekly stats and year-to-date info.

#RunnersLoveYogaITBand Yoga Challenge
This was a ten-day yoga challenge that I decided to squeeze in late in the month, even knowing how busy I would be. I wanted the time to myself to wind down and refocus, and typically ended up doing these stretches at the end of my day. This series was also specifically focused on ITBand, which for me is perpetually tight and is an issue. These stretches felt SOOOOO GOOD!!! I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for future RunnersLoveYoga challenges. You can check them out on Instagram (@runnersloveyoga) and on their website: http://www.runnersloveyoga.com/

Here's a few photo collages of some of my yoga poses:

#runnersloveyogaITband days 1-5

#runnersloveyogaITband days 6-10

#MillionMileMonth
I participated in this challenge as part of my involvement with Team Beef Montana. I pledged a goal of 50 miles of running, and I hit my goal on April 29th with a nice early morning run.

#OiselleFullHalf
This challenge was through the Oiselle blog/team that I'm on. The goal was to pick something relating to the number 13, and do that, because 13 is "half" of a full marathon. Some people chose to run a full  half-marathon, for example. Some people decided to do yoga thirteen times in the month of April. Those are just a few examples. I decided for my goal to do thirteen different running routes or workouts-and not repeating any- within the month of April.  I completed my last unique workout on the treadmill on April 27!

Here's how all my 13 different runs/workouts ended up looking on paper. :)

Shape Up Montana
I was again a Team Captain for our family Shape Up Montana participation and also coordinated three teams at school, while also participating on the family team myself. Shape Up Montana runs from February 1 through April 30. Individuals earn points for their teams based on their activity. This year, I set a goal of scoring 600 points. I hit 622 points on April 30 and was really happy overall with my fitness level and improvement over previous years. I was really proud of our family team and the teams from school for their hard work, too.

Here are the overall stats and activities from last week:
Sunday- Icebreaker 5-Mile race! <<Read Race Review HERE>>, 15 min yoga
Monday- rest, 15 min yoga
Tuesday- 30 min yoga, 30 min vigorous workout with track kids, and 3 mile easy run with distance runners
Wednesday- 3 mile easy treadmill run. #OiselleFullHalf challenge complete! 15 min yoga

Thursday- rest, 10 min yoga
Friday- 3.2 early morning run, #MillionMileMonth challenge complete!
Saturday- 15 min yoga

Here's how my April calendar filled out overall! Busy month, and not just with fitness. 

And here's Year to Date-
Year To Date, through April 23
Running: 184.7 miles
Walking/Hiking: 65.7 miles 
Yoga: 900 min <-- I gained 110 minutes of yoga last week! Wow!
CC-Ski: 500 min / 14.1 miles *Done for the season
Alpine Ski: 3 days *Done for the season
Mountain bike: 34 miles - Watch for this to pick up as Tri Training continues!

What's next in Fitness?
I have a 10K race penciled in for May 15, weather dependent. Jeff and I are also signed up for a color run on May 22. Has anyone ever done a color run? And, I also have my triathlon training. I've created a training plan and I am starting this week. I'll write about that on my Tri Tuesday post (which obviously isn't going to be published on Tuesday...), so stay tuned!

Farm
We had another rain event last Sunday/Monday and the ground stayed REALLY wet for most of the week. So, this meant that our seeding efforts were kabashed. Jeff and Tom branded our yearlings one day and also turned our cow/calf pairs out onto pasture.

The cows were really ready to move to bigger pasture. 

We are so, so thankful for the rain that has happened. Our crops that we have planted so far are already beginning to break the ground surface, and the grasses in the pastures are looking more lively already. We have had about three inches of rain in the month of April, which is unheard of in these parts. I think the El Nino weather pattern has officially come to a close for us, which is good. El Nino means drought in our geographical area. Transitioning to La Nina is a much better outlook for cropland in Montana--  bring it on!

Our peas are sprouting!

Life
Again, not much to report in the "Life" category. I am super busy with Track and Field, and I did get my typical springtime cold last week. Thankfully, it wasn't that bad and didn't really keep me down. I did get a Stitch Fix box this past week and am working on a review blog post for that, too. Keep on the lookout for that!

That's all for today! Thanks for reading, everyone, and have a great week!

Lots of sunrise runs lately! Love that it's starting to get light out at 5:30 for early runs!