A short summer

I'm not totally sure where the summer went... but it appears to have flown by. There is a class I need for school that's only offered in the fall, so I decided to take the summer off. It's been so nice not having to go to class on these beautiful nights... I'm not sure I'll be able to go back in three weeks.

It's been a pretty hot summer. I've gotten so accustomed to running on my lunch since starting with Brooks... but some days that meant running at 10:30 to try and avoid the hot sun. It didn't really help. I love summer and the sunshine, but I like fall weather for running much better. :)

We took advantage of the sun however with some after work hiking and quite a few days at the beach!

 I also worked on perfecting a vegan potato salad (because what says summer more than potato salad??).

We saw the Sounders beat the Portland Timbers... and also saw one of the most beautiful sunsets ever...

I ran the Ragnar race for the first time, with a team from work. There are 12 runners on a team, two vans with six runners each. We drove up to the start in Blaine, Washington on Friday morning. I was the very first runner, so I got to start the race. My first leg was 6.3 miles. Our start time was 11am, so it was a tad hot, but no worse than my normal lunch runs. My teammates drove by in the van and cheered me on and even stopped to give me water along the way. We rotated through the rest of the runners in van 1 and then we got to take a break while van 2 ran.

My second leg was at 7:30pm and was 4.5 miles long. It started at the Burlington High School, which is where I finished the Burlington marathon last September. It was nice to leave that place feeling much better this time around.

Our van finished running just before midnight and then we drove to the next exchange point to try and get some sleep. Some people went inside the high school gym, but I just slept in the van (for about two hours). My third and last leg of 3.1 miles started at 4:45am. The run finished along the water in Oak Harbor and it was a beautiful and quiet morning. Then I was done! I just got to enjoy the rest of the day after that. When our van was done, we cheered on a few of the runners in van 2, then went to the finish line to wait and enjoy the festivities. When the last runner is finishing, it's tradition to have the entire team run across the finish line with them.

It was an exhausting and fun experience.

We went to Lake Tahoe in July for a surprise, celebratory weekend for Dustin's friend David, who had recently gotten married. We rented a house not far from the water on the north side of the lake.


We drove down there with Pat and Amanda and left Wednesday night after work. We drove through the night and took a detour to watch the sunrise at Crater Lake. It was 30 degrees there in the morning, so we only took pictures for the few minutes we could stand to be outside of the car in the freezing cold.

We made it to Tahoe and met up with everyone else and had lunch at the Tahoe Brewing Company.

We spent the weekend hiking and listening to music on the beach. We also rented kayaks and SUP's one day and spent plenty of time in the water.

Anoterh weekend we took a short trip over to Leavenworth and floated down the river... it was nice and relaxing.

We saw the Dirty Heads and Pepper play at Marymoor Park.

Now football season has arrived, which I believe signifies the end of summer. I managed to buy some tickets to the preseason game against the Bears. Seahawks won 34-6.

I have a few weeks to enjoy my birthday, some football and dad coming to visit before school starts... then I'll probably be MIA for a few months!