One day while driving along with the kiddos, we passed two women running together on the sidewalk. Evelyn was all excited and yelled, "Look mommy, cool runner girls like you!!" :)



Thursday, September 29, 2011

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 :)

4 comments:

Laura said...

Awesome Michelle! It sounds like it was amazing! Good for you!!

AJ said...

That sounds like so much fun!

Melissa said...

That looks amazing! Tell me if you do it again!

Kara said...

How fun!!! It definitely looks like a very inspirational event :)