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No matter what your preferred workout or healthy habits are, having a few fun (and also practical) tools on hand can help you feel more motivated, positive, and accountable to your spring wellness goals. Like the Suunto Ambit 3 (my constant running companion for years!), it’s great for accurately tracking my runs and other sports, and it seamlessly connects to my third party apps (hello, Strava!), but it also has the added benefit of allowing me to stay connected, check messages, and track my overall health and well-being via Wear OS by Google. I love that I get credit for all of the hard work and training that I’m doing on my runs, plus the extra credit from all the steps, and physical activity that comes from chasing my busy toddler around, biking, and even practicing yoga! I rely on my AfterShokz Aeropex everyday to keep me tuned in – whether it’s for following along with my at-home workouts streaming from my computer or phone, participating on conference calls, keeping me up to date on all of my favorite podcasts while I run, or even to listen to music while I cook, wash the dishes, or do other chores around the house without disturbing anyone else.

On December 8, 2019, I ran the Portland Holiday Half Marathon for the second year in a row, and while it was at least on my calendar for a few months versus a few days this time around, I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t I managed to shave 6 minutes off of last year’s time – with an official time of 1:38:14 (7:29 average pace) which was miraculously only 20 seconds slower than my 2019 half marathon PR time (Rock Tahoe). And if that’s not enough, my post race belly issues gave me a perfect excuse to lay on the couch for an hour and avoid all other parenting (and / or adult) responsibilities for a hot minute. I hope to return and run again next year and am thinking we’ll have to set up a runner’s recovery station at Flex & Flow with light stretching and yoga, massage, acupuncture, coffee, NOW Foods BCAA Big 6 recovery beverages, and all.the.carbs.

We’ve been preparing the same, uninspired things week after week, and quite frankly eating way too much takeout, or snacks for dinner (cereal, crackers & cheese, and sometimes even popcorn as meals). I was starting to feel like I was in a constant loop of preparing food for Colby (our toddler), and then cleaning up the mess from his meals, only to start preparing food for our own meals and then cleaning up the mess. And yes, I get that it would be easier to just prepare one meal for all of us to enjoy but the reality is, Colby doesn’t eat everything we eat and he eats WAY TOO EARLY. If you’re looking for a hearty, quick, and delicious meal to add to your family’s weekly rotation, try this vegetarian tortilla soup recipe and let me know what you think (about the recipe, not my parenting…):

I didn’t expect a sub-24 hour finish for this one, but as it turns out, my training coupled with the fact that the weather was perfect, my stomach was compliant, and my crew (team Cold Hard Cheese!) was the most amazing crew ever was the perfect storm of awesome that I needed to finish this race strong. By the time I got into the mile 23 aid station, I was happy and excited to see my crew…and of course, even more jazzed that there were actual bathrooms. The aid station volunteers knew it too and said, “we’re kicking you guys out of here…” and I turned to Andrew and said, “let’s do this.” In my heart, I knew the only way I would make it sub-24 hours was if I didn’t give into negative thinking; I knew that it was purely mind over matter at this point in the race, and that I was going to have to focus on moving forward