Weekly Review Through Feb. 17

Another week in Fitness, Farm, and Life!  I just realized I never did my weekly review post for last week. Oops!  Oh well. It was a relatively quiet week for us anyway. Here's a look at this most recent week

Fitness:
February 11- rest. Daily #RLYCORE challenge pose.

Executing a side plank!

February 12- rest, again. Daily #RLYCORE challenge pose.
February 13- Evening treadmill hike, 30 minutes. Daily #RLYCORE challenge pose.
February 14- Rest. I had planned to exercise when I got home, but Jeff surprised Genevieve and I with a surf and turf dinner! Daily #RLYCORE challenge pose.

This was such a fun surprise and Jeff executed it all PERFECTLY! SOOOO GOOD!

February 15- Treadmill hike, 45 minutes.
February 16- Indoor cycling via Rouvy for 50 minutes, covering 11.3 virtual miles in Kona!
February 17- 45 minutes of snowshoeing outside with Harvey!

This week, I did a one-week-long challenge from @runnersloveyoga (find her on Instagram!) called #RLYCORE, with a new pose each day focusing on core strength. It was a lot of planks and plank variations. I am proud of myself for sticking with it and doing each pose each day!

This was a fun, quick challenge. Can't wait to see what she does in March!

Even though I didn't have a ton of dedicated workouts this week, I was still happy with my overall step counts. I've been working hard to walk more while at school, breaking up the time I'm at my desk. I actually had a great week in our Shape Up Montana team, too, and I'm on my way to reaching my goal of scoring 600 points overall throughout the three month duration.

Farm:
Wow- thanks to everyone who checked out Jeff's guest post on Country of Origin Labeling for beef and meat products! It had a great response! Jeff actually went to Helena to testify on Tuesday in front of the Ag committee. He said it was a great experience and that he learned a lot. He has also done a few radio interviews, which were aired on AM radio ag stations this week. Did anyone happen to catch any of them? We'll keep you posted on how the bill ends up, but either way, I'm really proud of Jeff for his hard work on this! 

Life:
Temps have been very frigid outside! It hasn't been above zero for a week at least, with no end to the freeze in sight! We are doing our best to entertain ourselves indoors, but we are also all getting a little cabin fever! Yesterday (Sunday) it was one whole degree above zero, so I bundled up and took Harvey outside for a snowshoe hike in our field. The windchill was still -20 or so, but we hiked right along the shelter belt and honestly, I didn't feel the wind at all! I was actually OVER dressed!

Harvey and me, enjoying some chilly sunshine!

He has the sweetest face! He was so happy to be outside!

I also attempted some yeast baking, and I'm happy to say it turned out great! I've always been pretty intimidated by baking with yeast, and yet it's something I'd like to get better at. I love the concept of possibly grinding our own flower from the wheat and grains we grow, and then baking them into bread and other treats, right here on the farm. So, this being a very simple recipe from Bettie Baker, I thought it would be a good one to try. Jeff, Genevieve and I all gave it a thumbs up! I'm definitely going to check out more recipes from her website.

That's all for this week! I hope you all had a fabulous weekend, we'll catch up again soon!

April Fitness Challenges, a.k.a. AM I CRAZY?!

You guys know I love a good fitness challenge. I've signed up for several in the past, including a mileage challenge last October, the #RunLoveChallenge earlier this year, and the Pulse Pledge Challenge, to name a few. I don't know what it is about challenges that draws me in. Typically, I set a manageable goal that is a bit more than I normally would do, and strive to get better in some way throughout the challenge. I think I like seeing what I can do. Maybe it's the structure of having a plan.  Or, maybe it's just my inner crazy finding something new to obsess over every so often?? (Don't answer that!)

Well, suffice to say that my inner crazy is being unleashed for the month of April. I'm committing myself to not one, but TWO challenges this month! WHAT?!

This is no April Fools. This is for real.

Is that a crazy twinkle, or just sweat?!

First off, introducing the Million Mile Month challenge, or MMM. I'm doing this one as part of my Team Beef Montana involvement. It's pretty simple. Everyone who signs up pledges to total a certain number of miles or minutes of physical activity in the month of April. I pledged 50 miles of running. For me, that's a bit more than I normally do in a month, so it's a stretch, but not impossible. I typically run between 10 and 15 miles each week (lately closer to 10), and with a few races penciled in for April, I think I'll be able to do it.

This is the old-school paper calendar I made to keep track of April mileage.
I also have potential races written in, and wrote in our Track Meet schedule.

Second, I'm also participating in the #OiselleFullHalf Challenge as a member of the Oiselle Team. For this one, the idea is to highlight 13.1 (or round down to 13) as being a FULL distance of a half-marathon. Full Marathon gets all the love, right? But achieving 13.1 miles is also quite an undertaking. So, for this challenge, we're supposed to set a goal of doing something 13 times in the month of April. I decided to run 13 different running routes/treadmill workouts during April.

The sign I made, expressly for the purpose of taking an Instagram photo. Yep. 

Since I had already committed to MMM, but still wanted to do #OiselleFullHalf, I wanted to choose a goal that would work together with what I'd already planned to do. I've decided that my 13 different runs could be done outside or inside on the treadmill. Outside runs cannot repeat routes exactly, but could build off previous routes. I'll continue to challenge myself to run trail routes on the farm, and to keep working to find new routes to and from our house, or in town. Inside treadmill workouts are allowed, but may not be repeated more than once. Again, they could build off previous workouts to extend time or distance. I think both challenges will help work together and will build off each other as running different routes/workouts will help keep things fresh and exciting as I work toward hitting my goal of 50 miles for MMM.

I added a #OiselleFullHalf tracking log under my calendar to help make sure I don't double up on runs!

Or, maybe I'll just go crazy trying to track both challenges, AND Shape Up Montana, which continues through April 30, while also balancing home life, farm, and the busiest month of Track Season.... WHAT WAS I THINKING?!?!

Follow along all month by checking back on the blog, on my Facebook, Strava, and Instagram (@katie.r.bangs) to see if I'm able to keep it all in check, or if the craziness will overwhelm me!

And here's one more Pro Tip for you... Oiselle is on Zulily today! Go ahead and shop the sale! You won't be sorry... :)

Here's a screenshot I took of the Zulily event.
I own those Charcoal leggings and I LOVE them. Favorite tights.
I also have the Flyte top in a different color and wear it a ton.
Needless to say, it was easy for me to find a few more items to add to my collection from this sale!

Do you have any fitness goals or challenges lined up for April?