Getting ready for Giving Tuesday!

This week Trot with Spot joined with Giving Tuesday to start changing the way people think about the holidays, particular to the Thanksgiving Black Friday/Cyber Monday time. How about adding Giving Tuesday? It's a day to give to charities, large and small, and we're all over it. What a fantastic concept. Check out the full website here: http://givingtuesday.org/

As we're getting ready for Giving Tuesday, we've expanded our inventory and designs! Very exciting news. Loving the inspirations from others and the support we've gotten so far. We may be a small organization, but every little bit counts in the desire to make this world a better place :) http://trotwithspot.spreadshirt.com/

Training this week went well also. Tonight I'll just need to go on a short run and do some strength workouts so that I have earned my grilled cheese. It will be my last grilled cheese Sunday in Namibia so I am looking forward to it. Next week I am hosting a Thanksgiving dinner here to celebrate the giving season. Woot!

One of the more important running tips I reconnected with yesterday was never to doubt your body. If you go into a 5 mile run worrying about whether or not you'll finish it, you'll be miserable the whole time. Just focus on the run itself, the joy of running, and the surrounding/music you have around you. Be positive and trust your legs!

Here are some pictures from my week this week, as well as the new designs.

 

 

Sick as a dog!

Well I kicked off my first week of training for the 10k with a 50% success rate. I made it through 3 runs (4 miles, 3.5 miles, 4 miles) with surprising ease and then got my one and only, worst ever, cold. I had a fever and am still sucking on cough drops and blowing my nose at least 35 times per day. The good news is I'm on the mend and feel confident that I can restart the running this week! Right now I'm hoping to do some yoga tomorrow to stretch out the muscles then either bike or run on Tuesday, depending on how I am feeling. Wednesday will be a fartlek workout, so it will be tough! What on earth is a fartlek? It's a 'speed game' where you change your speeds throughout your run. It helps with a lot of things, but I find it helps me the most with mental toughness.

Alfie, grabbing a drink during our run.

This week I also restarted running with Sabu and Alfie. For Sabu, I felt a happy medium where we can run part of the way on the leash and the other part off, so that worked out well. It just so happened I saw cheetah tracks that day and within a day the cheetah was collared and released for research purposes. Awesome!!

Big ole German Shepherd!

Today I also met the HUGEST German shepherd I have ever seen in my life. Also the sweetest. Very gentle creature, helping to take care of the kids of the household. When I got back from town, I dribbled some water on my fox who looked a little toasty and later that day experienced a very weird 10 minutes: wild baboons very close to the house, one baboon that was tame who came to visit, and then an orphaned animal dropped at the house by the owner of Naankuse. Everything is sorted now, but man it was weird! 

We've got some new designs today, check them out! You get 20% off until November 12th so it's a great deal. The savings don't affect how much Trot with Spot gets, in case that worried you.

It's time for me to go finish watching Indiana Jones and get ready for taking a baboon tonight. I'm moving back to the states for some new adventures in a few weeks and I want to get as much baboon time as possible. (Since my cold is on the mend it shouldn't affect the baboons.)

Tips for runners and dogs: 

• PEANUT BUTTER. Cheap, nutritious and filling.
• Positive reinforcement: Look at what you have accomplished in addition to what you still have to do. Make sure you acknowledge how much you've already done on the way to your goal!
• If you have a cold, sit out a round and let your body recover. :)

Don't let obligations get in the way of the joy of running

I learned a valuable lesson this week: Don't let obligations in life get in the way of the joy of running. What do I mean by that? Running is a way to relax, re-energize, and be healthy. It isn't something to feel pressured by. This week, I had a tough week with the dogs - they both wanted to run 16 different directions at any given time and I came back from 2 runs feeling down, as opposed to my normal post-run cheer. It sucked! So I went for a bike ride to switch things up and took some time to reflect. I realized I was putting too much pressure on these runs to be perfect and wasn't allowing the dogs to be dogs. So this week, I'm going to start small again and be thankful for the ability to run.
In that thought, I looked around for some inspiration for my runs and found 2! Hopefully you'll enjoy these as well:
Run Cape Town - This is an opportunity to combine sight-seeing tours with running, guided by a running guide. I am so excited! The tour I am doing will be a bit more of a social one and will include wine and beer. What a great idea!
The Coyote Hills 10K on January 25th, 2014. It has a canid in the name!! Of course I am going to sign up. It's at a California Regional park that I grew up near, so it feels nice to be a part of it. Can't wait. This will be my first race 10K!

To help with the 10K planning, I looked up some training guides and will start those this week. As I don't want to work against my resolution to relax a bit more this week, I'm going to stick to the week 1 amounts, even if they are lower than what I would normally run.

We had a great week leading up to Halloween! Hope you enjoyed our special Halloween products. We'll be working on Fall/Thanksgiving ideas soon, so look out for those.

Have a great week!