Chasing My Joy

My journey to becoming an Ultra Runner and Ironman

Archives for January 2022

Revisiting Growth Mindset

I have posted about growth mindset before but I haven’t thought about it in a while and was reminded wile listening to a podcast about parenting how important it is for us but maybe even more important for our kids. I feel very motivated to try to instill a growth mindset for Cannon and Emerald. As a patent, educator and athlete I love these ideas:

One of the things that has been very impactful in my life has been learning about growth mindset.

I read the book Mindset by Carol Dweck and it was very enlightening. I highly recommend reading it if you haven’t already. Thinking of things in terms of the growth mindset impacts my teaching, parenting and hopefully it will impact my training as well.

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When I am teaching I fully believe that all of my students can master the content I am teaching. I know to the depths of my soul that with the right effort they can all do it. Even though some of them will tell me that they are not good at math and have never been able to do it (fixed mindset).

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In parenting when thinking of my children it’s easy for me to keep a growth mindset (for them). When they were learning to walk I never once thought they would never learn how, I just knew they would keep trying and some day it would just click. And they clearly felt the same, they didn’t seem bothered when they fell down they just kept trying.

It also didn’t bother them that Sally down the street started walking at 10 month and they didn’t start until 14 months. It seems that a growth mindset is our natural way of being and somehow we learn to sometimes have a fixed mindset.

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Where I struggle with overcoming a fixed mindset is for myself and lately with my training. I am trying to shift the voice in my head from things being hard, that I am not naturally good at certain things and getting discouraged to growth mindset of taking responsibility and focusing on hard work and improving.

So now I am working on shifting into a growth mindset for myself.

https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/develop-a-growth-mindset/

reading, researching and putting in the work. It happens to be one of the things I would really like to help my kids remember also for the rest of their lives!

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What is the last book you read that had a profound impact on your life?

A Mini Valentine’s Book Nook

We added a couple book shelves to Cannon’s room and I am in LOVE! We added some Valentine’s books to celebrate the season.

We added the book Hug Me in honor of our Christmas Cactus trip:

We also added:

Little Blue Truck’s Valentine

A Crankenstein Valentine

Tomorrow I’ll Be Kind

You’re My Little Cuddle Bug

Tiny T. Rex and the Perfect Valentine

The Poky Little Puppy’s Valentine

*Shelves

Trying to Love Winter + Cuddle Buddies

I have been actively trying to not hate winter this year. Usually I spend winter wishing it away waiting on spring to come. I am trying to find ways to love winter and enjoy the moment we are in.

Cannon and Humphry don’t mind cuddle weather.

We spent our evening working on our bike and scooter skills.

Any evening that it’s not bitter cold or covered in snow you will find us outside!

What do you do to love winter?

A Winter Day Trip to Rocky Mountain National Park

We often overlook that we live so close to a magical National Park. It is my goal to spend way more time there this summer (We love our parks pass).

We have been to RMNP many time but never taken the time to get a stamp in our passports so we stopped in at the visitors center.

We went to the Bear Lake Corridor.

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We weren’t really prepared for a long hike as this wasn’t our original intention but we explored around Bear Lake and had an amazing time.

The lake is frozen over so it’s fun to run around on.

We do have all wheel drive and snow tired but the roads were easy to drive on regardless.

A little deposit in my attempt to like winter more….

Outside Time + Family Game Night

Just a reminder (to myself) how important outside time is even in the winter when it’s harder.

I loved this article:

https://childmind.org/article/why-kids-need-to-spend-time-in-nature/

I spent my day still trying to deal with a very tender knee….hoping to get well enough to enjoy time exercising again soon!

W also broke out some heart for fun Valentine’s breakfasts.

And finally we are getting some family game nights (candy land) I have been dreaming of the time when we can all sit down around a table and enjoy board games. Emmy is finally old enough to play along and Cannon is super into it. I love it.

What is something that you are looking forward to?

A Winters Day + To Ski or Not To Ski

We had a pretty typical winter day.

We spent the morning at one of our favorite playgrounds. It was a little cold and grey but these kids have fun no matter what.

We broke out some of our fun Valentine’s Day snacks (there will be many)

In the afternoon Cannon had school and then we hit up the library, it’s time to refresh our book nook!

We have been talking a lot about skiing and how we are bad Coloradans because we don’t currently ski. We are thinking that we should all start ski lessons and learn together. I ran across this article about how you can build skiing into your training.

https://www.trailrunnermag.com/training/cross-training-training/the-trail-runners-guide-to-skiing

Do you ski? If you have kids do they ski?

Treadmill Survival Tips

If I am honest the treadmill is not just a winter survival tool. We are lucky to own a treadmill that lives in our basement, and it helps get the miles in . All times of year the treadmill is often the best bet for getting my run in.

I have a few tricks to make treadmill time more enjoyable and fight boredom.

I save shows or movies that I really want to see for the treadmill, it’s especially satisfying to binge watch something so I know I have something to look forward to watching. Bonus points if it’s something that Cory doesn’t like to watch. At home we have a TV in the basement gym, at the gym I borrow one of the kids’ tablets, I worry about breaking my iPad especially since I use it for work, the Fire Tablets have big cases around them and are under warranty.

For longer workouts I keep my favorite snacks with me, like gatorade that are hard to carry with my while running outside.

Last and most important I play games with the treadmill to keep things interesting. Our treadmill at home has incline and decline so I will move it up and down to keep my legs engaged. When I have an easy run planned but mentally I am having a hard time I will change up the speed and it makes the time go by way faster.

One of my favorites is a progression run. I start off really easy then speed the treadmill up .1 MPH each minute (or so, doesn’t have to be perfect) until I am running comfortably hard, then I start over and do it again until my cool down. I also like to one minute hard, 1 minute easy or strides at the end to flush my legs out.

Here are some GREAT treadmill workouts if you are looking for a strength workout or speed work:

My definition of torture and HRG workouts all in one place!
7 Best Treadmill Workouts (Adaptable For Your Fitness)

This 3-2-1 workout is great, this one and many more HERE.

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Do you love or hate the treadmill?

Any fun tips for making it work?

Happy Running!

How We Made it to 1000 Hours Outside

I was very excited when we met our goal of 1000 hours outside last year! It was an audacious goal and well worth it.

The 1000 Hours Outside movement really spoke to me and they have many great resources:

https://www.1000hoursoutside.com/

While getting outside can look different for everyone I wanted to share what we did in 2021 that helped up reach our goal:

  1. We were intentional about getting outside even when the weather wasn’t great. To be honest the pandemic helped with this as well. In years past we would just visit museums, pools or indoor playgrounds during the winter and while that is great a lot of that wasn’t always available to us. We adopted the There’s No Such Thing As Bad Weather attitude and got outside.

2. We traveled a lot (for us). We spent over 70 nights away from home in 2021, at least 55 of those in our RV. When we are traveling we spend most of the day outside exploring where ever we are visiting. I am not sure that we will be able to keep up this level of travel, but I hope so, we love experiencing the world with our kids.

3. We counted everything! Dinner in the backyard, trips to the playground, a day in Disneyland, time at walking to school….all of it. It didn’t have to be a long hike in nature to count. In the summer we spent almost every morning in our back yard while it was still cool.

4. We allowed for seasonal shifts.

If we broke down the year evenly we would have needed at least 84 hours outside each month. In January 2021 we only logged 42 hours. I wasn’t worried about the deficit knowing that spring, summer and fall would be much easier to be outside. Our month with the most time outside was September with 158 hours outside followed by May with 129 hours. Even summer can be difficult to be outside all day when it’s blazing hot in the afternoon. The shoulder seasons and trips banked us the most outdoor hours.

5. We tracked our time but didn’t sweat the details.

I logged our time outside on a simple spreadsheet and just did my best to be accurate(ish) I didn’t use a timer and mostly rounded to whole numbers. I didn’t subtract 5 minutes here or there for bathroom trips inside or add outside time for walking into a store. We didn’t count time in the car driving to places we would spend time outside or camping sites. Our total could truly be hours less or more but that’s not important to me it was just a fun thing to work towards together.

The 1000 Hours Outside website has other ways to track your time outside if spreadsheets aren’t your jam.

Valentine’s Occasion Bin

I am loving setting up our occasions bin for each holiday this year. It’s so nice to just be able to grab fun, festive items to celebrate each season. This idea originated from Shakira, she has such cute ideas!

These bins are so fun to put together. All of the items are found easily at places like Home Good, Target, Amazon or Etsy.

This is only the third bin we have put together and I am excited to see what an entire year looks like.

We have plans to make bins for these occasions:

  • Valentine’s Day
  • St. Patricks Day
  • Easter
  • Spring
  • Cinco de Mayo
  • Summer/Camping
  • July 4th
  • Back to School
  • Halloween
  • Thanksgiving (Maybe)
  • Christmas

We love these little extras, it makes meals and snacks so much more fun!

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