Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Training Begins Again

Good morning world!  This week we started training for the Tucson Marathon.  This will be my 8th marathon.  Believe it or not Terry has decided to run a full marathon and this will be his first!  I am thrilled to be able to share this experience with him. 

In between we will be running the Ragnar trail relay, 120 miles between 8 runners, 15 miles each with a 3ish mile loop, a 5ish mile look and a 7ish mile loop.  Camping at the central point with the team so it's really a big party with a 15 mile run in 24 hours built in.  Good team, lots of fun.  And lots of beer.

This morning we ran our first 5 mile moderate run, hot and humid, but we made it happen.  The sunrise was amazing, several colors of pink and orange between the puffy clouds, it's always inspiring to see a sunrise of beautiful colors as you run toward it in the morning.

The Place

We never expected to live in Texas for 33 years, it just sort of snuck up on us.  We thought we would move back to the mountains where we could enjoy the seasons of outdoor activities with our children.  That wasn't in the plan and here we have been for some time. 

Abilene was a great place to raise children and we loved it there, have great memories from our time there.  However, we always knew we would leave, go back to the mountains when the kids were gone.  And then we came to Granbury instead.

Granbury is a pretty little town with hills and trees, a nice lake, and wonderful people.  We've made good friends in Granbury, we enjoy going to the winery, or Music on the Square, hanging out at Revolver (our local Brewery) or heading over to Fort Worth for unique experiences.  But it's not the mountains.  We thought we would be here three years, maybe five, it's been six.

In all this time we've looked, more often and deliberately in the past six years, for "the place" we would like to make our home for the next chapter of our lives.  We used a website titled Pick your Spot.  It gave us the top 25 places that fit our criteria and we began to visit those places, mostly in Colorado.

We created a spreadsheet of all of the things we would like in a place where we live so that we can compare, including distance from family and activities we enjoy.

We visited Salida, Gunnison, Westcliffe, Fort Collins, Northern New Mexico, and then a few weeks ago Pagosa Springs CO.  Pagosa Springs met every criteria and more, we love it there, it's so much like Ruidoso (or home town) and yet so much more of those things we enjoy.

And so the decision has been made.  We will be moving to Pagosa Springs in the Spring or Summer of 2016.  Possibly sooner if we happen to find a home and can get everything here wrapped up.

Trail running will become the new thing in my blog so stay tuned.

In the meantime training has begun.  Ragnar trail relay in October and the Tucson Marathon in December, there is so much to write I will try to keep up!