Ms. _______

Well, I’ve started student teaching, and so far have been loving my class! I’m with first graders, and they are really sweet. It’s quite the new experience suddenly being “Ms. ___________,” I feel so grown up, though the name feels slightly awkward. It really felt like such a good fit though. I’m finally feeling confident that the multiple subject credential was the right choice and can definitely imagine being in the classroom! My school is great, really nice with a “life-lab” garden and plenty of outside space to play in. I’ll be going in for the full day tomorrow, which should be great. Teaching in first grade really seem like being back in the pre-school classroom, except that the students are orderly, sit at desks, and raise their hands when they want to talk! It’s amazing :)

My running this week has been a little spotty again, with finals and all, but I still managed to get in the mileage I planned. I accidently overslept my nap on Tuesday, and with an evening class, didn’t have time to get it in. After doing that the last few weeks, I knew that I couldn’t let that happen again, and just write off those miles. It is just a little over a month until the 50 miler is here! So, I set out Wednesday after class to do a run of some significance. I essentially did the same run as Sunday, with just a shorter turn around, to do 15 miles total, my longest midweek run ever!

I was definitely a bit tired from the 20 on Sunday, but I was able to keep a 10:44 pace, which is exciting. The trails were, obviously, a lot quieter on a weekday afternoon, which worried me a bit, but there will still bikes going my every so often, and I must have seen a good 30 or 40 people on the trails during my run, so it was never too isolated. My argument is that this firetrail is sort of like a nature highway, which I’m assuming would be unappealing and too busy for a mountain lion to hang around (or for any 2 legged animals to be around). Nevertheless, I did make sure my pepper spray was easily accessible J. It was funny, as I was getting high up, to my turn around point, a woman coming down the hill on her bike saw me and loudly exclaimed “Wow!!!” Now I’m not exactly sure what this referred to, but I’d like to think she was impressed that I was up there, as there doesn’t seem to be a lot of runners who go that high up the firetrail (it’s sort of a relentless uphill for a while). Then again, she could have just been shocked that I was on the firetrail and not one of the beautiful singletracks ;).

Another male biker commented to me while I was on my way down, “wow, you’re up here! Good for you!” I wanted to tell him that I had been considerably more “up here” than this, that I was about 2 miles down from the turn around, but It was still nice to be thought impressive J I suppose the only 2 other runners I’ve ever seen on these firetrails were super buff, scantily clad, men, so I didn’t exactly fit the image of runners that usually visit there.

Something I noticed though, is that the mountain biker community is much friendlier than the running community out there, at least on the weekday. All the bikers, almost, said hi and smiled when I went by, but when I said hi to the runners, they just sort of looked past me like I was weird. Ah, oh well.

Did 5 miles today which was good, but hot! Despite the fact that I didn’t go out until 6:30 at night! (addendum- okay, it was maybe in the high 70s which for most isn't hot, but it's hot for here!)

Celebrating this weekend with hopefully some good long runs (25 miler maybe?) as I’ve made it through the first section of classes (just one paper to write) and have no classes until Tuesday J

And hopefully, with the free time I’ll have, I can finally get up that 50k race report!