planetdanika

About to hit you with several sets of photos – no time delays as they are all cute – look at them all I tell you!

171. And could you visit all of them in one day? Mark Malkoff does it in this very funny video (note: it’s 10 minutes long). He has to purchase something (and consume part of the purchase) at each store. In order to complete the task in one day, he must visit a store every seven minutes. My favorite part of this it that he accidentally visits 6 stores TWICE, making his total Starbucks visits 177. Total spent is surprisingly low at $369.

You might wonder how many Starbucks there are in the city of Seattle? A quick search of their site turns up 103. Anyone want to take the challenge on for our fair city?

Yesterday’s trail run was listed as a 5/5 on both the “pain” and the “gain” scales in my trail running book. This means it was both extremely strenuous and highly rewarding. My group did the Melakwa Lake/Pratt Lake loop off exit 47 on I-90. It’s a 14-mile loop in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. The scenery was utterly stunning as we ran past multiple Alpine lakes.

This week’s run was about a million times better than last week’s. I took the lesson to heart about eating and drinking enough and yesterday finished strong. I carried more water and Gatorade, ate a PB&J sandwich mid-run and tried salt tablets (to help balance electrolytes). I felt like I could continue on for a few miles and am hardly even sore today. The terrain was incredibly technical and challenging. My book described the “overgrown” section of a couple miles in the middle of the run by mentioning the stinging nettles and berry bushes that obscure the path. Add to this the fact that the trail is riddled with rocks both large and small and that there are many holes in the path. My ankles turned a few times and I was COVERED in mud by the end of the day.

But man, it was a glorious run. NOW I’m starting to feel like this race is within reach. I still have a fair bit of training to get up to 50K but I can see that I’ll get there. Although I still feel like I somehow don’t belong with this group. Hopefully by October, I’ll have convinced myself that I AM an ultra runner.