A Hurricane, Running Challenge, and One Tiny Tooth

I hope everyone had a good holiday weekend. Ours started with Hurricane Arthur who blew into town on Thursday.  It was a very good storm to us, and the only thing we had to clean up were tons of leaves and junk from the trees.  Hurricanes can be exciting until you think about the serious damage they can cause (which comes with a huge deductible on our insurance – ouch!).  We were lucky this time. I do have to say though, that it’s a strange feeling knowing you’re so close to the eye of a hurricane. Thankfully again, we got up on Friday morning to sunshine and it stayed that way for the rest of the weekend!

Hurricane Arthur

We had some fun as a family, I had some girls over for a pool party (complete with mimosas), and we celebrated. If anyone thinks patriotism is dead, just go to the beach on the 4th of July. You would be incorrect.  My husband loves battlefields and on last week’s bike ride, my friend and I rode right by Moore’s Creek Battlefield. When I looked it up, I found it was a battlefield from the Revolutionary War, not the Civil War.  How cool is that?!  So we packed up the family and dog and headed up to see it and walk the trail on Saturday. What a neat place with just tons of history.  I hope everyone else had a lot of fun this long weekend!

It doesn’t take much for me to find an excuse to run. After Boston, I found a challenge on Facebook that intrigued me, but it didn’t ever seem like the right time to do it.  It’s called the 10×10 Challenge, and “all” you do is run, walk, or a combination of, 10 miles a day for 10 days, provide proof to the guys that started the challenge that you completed the challenge, and that’s it, you’re done.  My time to get this challenge under my belt was running out since true triathlon and marathon training will start at the end of the month. It also takes a bit of coordination with the hubster since the kids are home and we have had quite a bit going on, PLUS I am running a half marathon in the mountains in a few weeks. I challenged you readers, my friends, and my family to donate towards my cousin’s fundraiser and I would do the running challenge. Everyone responded so well, and I’m almost up to raising $500 for her cause to find a cure for Huntington’s Disease, including the $50 that I will also donate. By the way, my cousin cried when I told her about this.  To those of you who donated, it seems very inadequate by saying thank you, but those are the only fitting words.  It means a lot to me.

It’s still just a “Thank You”, but at least it has flowers.

I started the 10×10 Challenge yesterday by running at the beach. One group was starting at 6 and one at 8, and I wanted to run at 7, so I did the 10 miles solo. It was kind of boring! I’ve been really enjoying running with other people, and I certainly missed it yesterday.  It didn’t feel fabulous, but over the entire weekend, I was in totally “holiday eating/drinking” mode, so I’m not very surprised. The morning was beautiful and a cool 69 degrees.

View along part of the run.

Proof of Day 1

I got myself up early this morning and ran my ten miles. It wasn’t as cool as yesterday, but besides being super humid as always, it wasn’t swampy. I was slightly achy, which surprised me again, but I got it done. I know my paces pretty well, and my Garmin was registering slower than what I was actually doing. I HATE that. Because I want to be SURE I have proof of my run, I’m also using MapMyRun, and it showed a more accurate time and distance. By the finish, my Garmin was .25 miles behind.

Proof of Day 2

View on today’s run.

Tomorrow, I’m going back to the beach and running that route with fellow blogger Paul from Running Wild, since he’s in town for work. Then on Thursday, I’m planning to run up by UNCW and will probably do more of a run/walk thing.  I need to be careful and go slow and steady as I progress. 100 miles in 10 days is the highest mileage I’ve ever done, and I do not want to get injured.  Wish me luck in this challenge and if you want to make a donation, please visit my cousin’s website at http://www.bar2barbara.com.

So on to the tooth story. Yesterday, after riding our bikes around Greenfield Lake that is actually FULL of alligators, we went to our little hangout to have a few beers and well, hang out. The kids get Shirley Temples and I’m totally into Alagash White. We ended up going outside to play cornhole (I don’t know why, but I HATE that name). All of a sudden, my little son said something was poking him in his foot, so he took his shoe off and found….. a teeny, tiny, itty, bitty, little shark tooth. Granted, he was at camp all last week at the aquarium, but the chances of him finding this tooth are minimal, let alone while playing cornhole several days later. I find it fascinating.

There it is, right next to a penny.

I had a very hard time taking a picture of the tooth (it would probably help if I actually knew how to use my camera properly), so this is the best I can do.  Pretty neat, isn’t it!?

Well, hope everyone is staying cool and safe with all these thunderstorms I’ve been hearing about!