Happy Birthday, Jon!

Geburtstagsausflug mit Jon, Stephanie und Shelly in die Busch Gardens Africa, Tampa Bay.

Tosohatchee

My long run went really well, 16 miles in 2:10:34, that’s about the fastest 16 miles I ever ran in training.
Later Stephanie took Bailey, me and the horses to Christmas to go trail riding. It was a nice fun ride, my first one since we got back from Orlando and we enjoyed it a lot.
When I got back home Jon and I went grocery shopping on the base, I cooked dinner with my dad and we just hung out for the rest of the night.

See more progress on: take one photograph each day as a way to document my life.

Florida Cowboys

After running my eight miles early in the morning Jon and I drove out to the barn where I cleaned up Brownie’s pen before we hit the road to go to a working cow horse show with Stephanie, Laura and her kids in Sarasota.
It was a long drive and as we were a party of seven and wouldn’t fit into Stephanie’s truck (or any other car that anybody of us owned) we went to her grandparents’ house in Kissimmee first to get their mini van so we could all ride together.
Unfortunately we missed the pro classes, but saw some of the better intermediate riders and than the green riders and horses.
It was very interesting and fun, another long, busy day and Jon took loads and loads of pictures of horses and cows, happy to have great motives for his camera.
I can’t believe we drove five hours to see some horses, but even the long drive was part of the fun and we all had a good time.

See more progress on: take one photograph each day as a way to document my life.

Hal Scott Trail Ride

Shelly is joining the army and off for base training next week, so we loaded the horses in Stephanie’s big trailer and hauled them to the fairly close Hal Scott Regional Park & Preserve for a last farewell trail ride.
We were a party of 4 girls, 4 horses and 1 dog: Stephanie rode her older mare Patty and brought along a neighbor, Susan who I had not met before riding her thoroughbred mix JD. Shelly rode Stephanie’s other mare, Patty’s sister Bita and my Brownie had to carry me of course. Stephanie’s australian shephard Joseph is just a perfectly behaved dog and you barely notice him at all on a trail ride.
The ride was fun, great company and an awesome, exiting, breathtaking gallop within the sandy horse-friendly trails along the Econlockhatchee River and flat-wood prairie.
Back at the barn we met Gwen, a new boarder and went to Canaveral Groves with her to pick up her shagya arabian mare Endre, a horse with the best endurance bloodlines. She’s 6 years old and Gwen is just breaking her right now. She bought her only 3 weeks ago, so she hasn’t been on any trails yet but is definitely interested.
I didn’t want to ride the bike back home, because we still had some grocery shopping to do, so Jon picked me up and we stopped by Wal-Mart on the way home.
I ran my 8 miles, starting nervous and stressed out, but after a while the relaxing component of running in the rain kicked in and when I finally came home I felt great.
It was also time to start making dinner, because we had Stephanie, Shelly and Jeremy over. The first time we had real guests at our new house.
Everybody liked the burgers we made on the grill, the cheesecake the Stephanie brought was just so delicious and we had a lot of fun looking at each other’s photos of prior events and horses.
It was a great, full day and a fun night.
Looks like those weekends at home are not as calm as they used to be before we met those guys…

See more progress on: take one photograph each day as a way to document my life.

Horse, Bike, Run

I am seriously tired now!
After getting up at 5:45 I ran 10 miles in the morning and did some core strength training, worked with Ashley from 9 to 12:30, put my bike in the truck and rode it for 17 miles on SR 520 and Nova Road, Florida’s back country, rode Brownie for an hour and then stacked 34 bales of hay with Stephanie.
That was a strenuous amount of cardio and strength today and now I’m ready to eat the mushrooms with ham and cheese that Jon is making on the grill and not move away from the couch for the rest of the evening. We might watch a movie and I’m going to bed very early tonight!

See more progress on: take one photograph each day as a way to document my life.