Inspiration Found

I am WAY behind... so I am just going to talk about the most significant thing that has happened since my last post. A couple weekends ago, I attended a women's reTREAT in Kingston, WA put on by Beth Brewster (owner of Kingston Adventures). She is an amazing, inspirational female athlete who has done just about everything - including ironmans and ultraman competitions (6.2 mile swim, 261.4 mile bike, 52.4 mile run -- YIKES!!) -- and is really one of the coolest people you will ever meet. She held a 30 woman retreat that was filled with stand-up paddleboarding, yoga, trail running, lots of yummy food, crazy fun, and some really cool free swag!! (see shirts below - courtesy of Oiselle) I didn't know anyone that was going to be there. I seriously contemplated not going (but I had already gotten on the ferry at that point -- so there was no turning back!) ha ha But -- we all know that we just need to put ourselves out there sometimes... and I quickly made friends and knew that I wouldn't regret it from the moment that I walked through the door :)

The weekend was filled with challenging physical activities, and also goal-sharing, and talk about distractions and things that hold us back from achieving our goals, etc. It was really great to be around a group of strong, athletic women -- and to hear that we all deal with similar stresses, time-restraints, and fears... just a really empowering experience... hard to put into words..

Here we are on the paddleboards... yes, not only did we stand on them and paddle around, we also did a "boot-camp" workout... push-ups, squats, plank poses, etc... so HARD... but so FUN!Here I am with a new friend during the morning trail run (hats courtesy of Kingston Adventures)... we aren't too tired... yet :)Here is the group pre-trail run... we are all sporting our compression sleeves courtesty of RecoFit -- awesome product for fellow runners... :)
So... had a great time, had good workouts, made some new friends (running with one of the ladies this Saturday morning - Yay!), and most importantly... I found new inspiration and motivation for my goals :)