Fall Is Finally Here!

Happy Monday everyone!  Last night we decided to open the windows and shut off our air…in other words Fall weather has finally arrived!  I love falling asleep to the cool fresh fall air.

Fall is my favorite time of the year to run outside.  I love admiring all the leaves changing colors and the cool breeze does not hurt either.

This photo was taken last year at Pilot Mountain right when Fall was starting

I slept great last night and maybe even a little too great because I did not want to wake up this morning.  It was just another one of those days for me… a case of the Mondays.  However, it was just the opposite for Chewbacca.

During our walk this morning he was extra excited.  I think it was because this was the first morning that it was not incredibly humid.  It must be hard wearing 2 fur coats during the summer.

I decided to cut my run short today (ran 3.5 miles) and take Chewbacca on my last mile with me.  He was ecstatic!  He ran 1.4 miles (went a little farther because he was not ready to turn around) with me and that is the farthest he has gone without stopping to walk.  I was so proud of him 🙂

“That feels sooooo good”

“I Love Fall”

We have a fan in our bedroom and Chewbacca popped a squat right in front of it when we got back.

After our run I decided to continue on with my excited about fall and make a pumpkin chai smoothie for breakfast.  It turned out mediocre so I need to play around with it before it is blog worthy.

Survey Question of the Day

Tea or Coffee?

I love both….but if I had to pick one it would be tea probably.  My favorite is Chai Tea with splash of soy milk 🙂

Football & Lemon Poppy Seed Chicken

So after our exciting morning Saturday I made us egg sandwiches for breakfast and got ready for football!

We had made plans to go watch the football games at my brothers place.  He lives with his girlfriend, Steph, in a condo near downtown Raleigh.  You would think that since we live in the same city that we would see each other often, but that is anything but the case.

Lee (my brother) and Chewbacca are best friends

We had a great time catching up, watching football, and enjoying a few drinks together (I love a good Bloody Mary in the afternoon).

And the winner is..

My brother wanted Chewbacca to wear his medal he got from work for the day haha.  Chewbacca makes anything look good.

Sunday I spent some time getting errands done and then watched some NFL football with our friends.  FYI I beat Andrew this week in Fantasy Football! 🙂

I went to a Hot Yoga class later in the afternoon while Andrew decided to cook dinner for us Sunday night.  He picked out one of his mom’s DELICIOUS recipes, Lemon poppy seed Chicken, YUM.  This was his first time cooking it so I was excited to get home from yoga and try it.

As I was walking up to our apartment, our smoke alarm started going off.  I opened the door and was immediately swarmed with gray smoke.  It took us about 30 mins to get the smoke alarms to shut up.

Andrew was allowing some olive oil to heat up in an iron skillet when all of a sudden it just burst into flames.  Now our stove fan and the wall has black smoke stains everywhere.  This was just not Andrews weekend.  Another lesson learned haha.

So we cleaned up the mess and then continued to finish our dinner with a different skillet.  The meal turned out amazing!  We will definitely be cooking this again but Andrew will need supervision from now on when he is cooking haha.

Lemon Poppy Seed Chicken on bed of brown rice and peas

She uses Rachel’s Ray Recipe so we tried following it the best we could..i dont think nearly burning down the apartment was part of the recipe.  But we will try to leave that out next time.

10 mi run turned to the worst

Wow! this has been quite an interesting weekend.  Let me start from the beginning to update everyone.

Saturday Andrew & I woke up at 8am and headed over to Umstead State Park for our 10 mile run.  I was really excited about this run because running on trails is so thrilling.  You have to hop over rocks, dodge branches, run down and up steep hills.

I have a lot of random thoughts while I am running, one that I always seem to get when running trails is how I feel like Pocahontas running through the forest (one of my favorite Disney movies).  I just feel so free, light, and just in-sync with all the nature that surrounds me.

Umstead State Park Trails

What kind of random thoughts come across your mind on runs? or is it just me….

I finished the 10.3 miles in 1:40.  I thought this was a descent time for trails.  I had crossed paths with andrew about 30 mins into our run, he was smiling and in good spirits.  I was expecting him to finish about 5-10 mins after me…..

45 minutes later Andrew still had not showed back up….I was freaking out… All I could think about was how he hurt himself, maybe he got lost, he had passed out, got attacked by a wild animal, etc.  I decided to call the park office to see if someone could come out with a four wheeler so we could go search for him.  I would have gone after him myself but I did not want to leave the car incase he showed back up.

As I was waiting for Umstead office to answer I see Andrew walking up the path. THANK GOD!!  He told me how he had tripped at least 4 times, thrown up 3 times, and got lost.

So Andrew hung out with a lot of his guy friends the night before and drank more than he was expecting too.  He drank at least 4 cups of water before he went to bed and then more before we left for our run.  He said he felt fine just had a minor headache when we woke up.  Before we headed out on our run I told him multiple times to not run if he didn’t feel up for it but he reassured me that he felt fine.

I started finally calming down and relieved that he was safe.  But I let out my breath a little to soon…on the ride home Andrew could still not catch his breath.  He was freaking out, and freaking me out.  He fell out of the car once we got in the parking lot to our apartments and threw up again.  Then it got worse….his hands starting locking up, he started getting lock jaw, and told me that it felt like his body was shutting down.

At this point I was incredibly concerned,  I called 911 but Andrew said that he did not want an ambulance.  I was thinking that he was suffering from severe dehydration and I asked the 911 operated if this sounded correct due to all his symptoms but he was no help at all.  His response was “I do not know, do you want an ambulance or not”, I was appalled at how rude the operator reacted.

Once we got into the apartment I called my brother because he actually suffered from severe dehydration a few times before.  He recommended a cold towel, cold shower and a lot of gatorade.  We did everything that he said and Andrew started coming back to normal.  Not only was andrew dehydrated but I think he had an anxiety attack too because that would explain his hands and jaw locking up.  I am no doctor though.

This was quite a learning experience for Andrew.  He realized that his body has changed a lot with in the past year.  He played division 1 soccer in College and would go to practices hung over and be perfectly fine.  He knows now not drink a lot the night before a long run.

Have you ever had a scary moment that was related to your running?