Hello there!

I’m going to brag about my awesome gifts from my awesome friends.

There were several gift cards (and one pretty hefty one for one of my favorite running-related shops… RoadRunnerSport! Thanks to this guy).

And then there was this HUGE GIFT BASKET of things just for meeeee

And, of course, my eyes were wide open and excited when I saw this special bag:

If you can’t tell, that’s a LULULEMON bag! I love their clothes but could never get myself to purchase anything from there because… I have no monies

Joy, Susan, Cindy, and Jennifer got this jazzy pair of shorts for me from Lulu’s

We’ll see if I can pull them off when the weather gets nice.

So back to the gift basket.

I was so excited to look at every single item in there! There was totally a theme going on:

Lots of chocolates and cool eats (and drinks). The Groupon in the middle is for online guitar lessons! How cool is that?? [If you don't remember, I had a goal of learning guitar this year. I thought teaching myself would be super easy, but my poor weak fingers thought I should learn from someone who actually knows what he/she is doing].

Here are some of the other interesting ones:

Pretty sure I’m not supposed to share any of these with anyone. You’ll soon be able to call me the Michellen Tire Woman.

Ahah… I’m so lame.

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Got started on one of the chocolates while watching the guys play basketball on Sunday:

^When I glanced at the picture, I thought someone was dunking. That would have been a fun pick-up game to watch.

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So last week was STRANGE because I was eating whatever I wanted and not working out. I hope it’s not some odd quarter-life crisis.

I turn 25 TODAY.

What does this mean to me? I can rent a car and I move up in an age division for all races. It gets tougher in the 25 to 29 age division, and even tougher in the 30 to 34.

I’ve gotten about 5 or 6 age division medals in the 20 to 24 category. Now I gotta really step up everything if I want to get medals in this new age group. SIGH.

But knowing that, I went for a treadmill run yesterday! I wanted to run for one hour and do a (sort of) ladder run. I started a warm-up for 5 minutes going from 6.8mph to 7.0mph. Then every 5 minutes, I increased by 0.1mph. I went up to 7.7mph, then started climbing back down until I hit one hour (7.42 miles).

All of this was done on 1.5%incline. Then I walked at 4.5 mph (and 1% incline) until I hit 7.75 miles, but decided to just run another quarter mile to make it 8 miles (66:18).

I went on an elliptical to cooldown and pedal backwards, but it was one of those ellipticals that only likes to be pedaled forward. 15 minutes was enough.

MAN it felt good to run again! And I hope that I’m not scared to push myself to train harder as I get bumped up to the faster age group!

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Have a blessed Tuesday!