Giddyup

This week was about getting on that horse and making friends with it.  This week was about learning who my students really were, learning what my year has in store as I uncovered reading levels and English proficiency and mathematic number sense and inventoried word building skills and a myriad of other things.  I truly saw my students for the first time.  I hosted curriculum night, attended after school meetings and even managed to start to integrate the rest of my life with my work life while managing to keep my head about me, a sometimes smile on my lips.  This is the time of year when work and home life truly crashes together, fighting for attention and energy in my life, so I prioritized a midweek hike with my man and a couple of runs this weekend to make sure I remember where my allegiances lay.  Today, Gigi and I giggled that it seemed like cheating to only run four miles and agreed that next year we are sign up to run the half marathon Beat the Blerch again (sign-ups happen next weekend, already, for both of the races coming up on December 3rd, 2016, and September 27, 2017!😳).


Today I also landed back in Onderland!  Yahoo!  I’m not sure that it has been entirely intentional or if it’s just a result of my busy year.  I come home with a full lunch box often because I forget to eat.  There is just so much to do every day!  So each day I’ve usually hav just my carrots, hummus and chik nuggets by the time I come home.  Whatever.  Along with running and working out fairly regular it’s working.  I’ll confess the least surprising confession ever: I’d like to lose some more fat.  I’d like to lose 30 more pounds.  While I have been ok with losing weight slowly, I’m annoyed at this last bit and I’d really like to see what running feels like at 170.  I’d like to use this recent loss as a jumping point to get that started.  I’m planning to run a longer run of 7+ miles tomorrow as training for my last half marathon of the season in a few weeks: the Snohomish River Run.


In other news, I’ve decided to become an Orca Running Ambassador!  That means that I will get to run, review and share a discount to any Orca runs in 2017 with my readership.  I have to admit I was flattered, for sure, when they asked and I’m totally stoked to run their races!  They put on fun runs like the Better Half Marathon for Valentine’s Day, the Iron Horse Half Marathon, the Kirkland Shamrock 5K, Captain Jack’s Pirate 8k, the Snoqualmie Valley Half and the Orca Half at Alki Beach in West Seattle.  If you’re planning to run any of those, get 10% off by using my code: TAMARASHAZAM17 and let me know you’re running it so I can decide if I can join you or not.  I’m planning on running the Better Half, the Iron Horse and I’m curious about the Orca Half Marsthon at Alkai…


Check this out: me, my best Girl Scouts, fourth grade and a pink sweatsuit.  We were troop 308, the ruff-n-tuff troop!  ðŸ™‚