Things to Take Advantage of for a Workout

1- There's a workout facility. This can be the trail through the woods, a sidewalk in a busy city, a quiet country road, or an actual gym. You can find a gym anywhere if you just lace up your shoes and step out that door.

2- Women's workout shorts don't tend to have pockets. Take advantage of that, don't bring your phone if you are going in a group unless you can use it for timing or to track your mileage. If you don't need it for your run font being it, it's amazing how much stress can go away if you leave the electronics at home!

3- There's no service if you run outside. Seriously, if there is it probly won't be as good, so use your iphone or whatnot to track your running or listen to music/books-on-tape/whatever keeps you going, but don't do any more than that! If you do it's just a waste of time I think.

4- Make it a group activity. Running with friends will encourage you to keep going and can actually increase your speed/distance over time. I find that talking every once in a while with the person/people I am running with helps both me and them to keep their minds off any hard work.

5- There's always inspiration. I've heard so many times from people who are lacking in motivation to find a reason to workout, or a reason to get up and do something. Just look pretty much anywhere and you can see inspiration for getting a fit body, not skinny as in skin and bones, but healthy and fit, which I have heard is the new skinny.

Alright, that's what I have for you for today. More will come later, I apologize for the slow and lack of posts currently, it has been my busiest week/weekend at school yet and it will only get more busy :P but I will do my best to keep the posts coming! I promise!

I also didn't get the chance to climb this weekend :( due to working for 6 hours straight instead, which sadly took up the time I usually spend climbing to get food and go to work. Hopefully that will start again this weekend or sometime soon!

I do have a bike ride coming up next weekend: The Apple Affair, in Galesville, WI. My grandparents are from there and we try and head up there for this big bike ride every fall that we get the chance to! This will be my first time going in quite some time, so I will update on how that goes this Saturday. The ride is Saturday, starting between 8-9am. Wish me luck!

Have a great week! October starts tomorrow!!! Crazy how fast this year has gone...
Love,
Sara :)

Stressing?

Tis the season for more stressing! Well, kinda, I mean for a college kid the most stressful time is the whole final exam time and such, but right now is kinda stressful too. Anywho, I was browsing pinterest (cause I was totally not procrastinating....) and i came across this little lit of this to do in order to stress less, I thought "Hey! This could be useful!" So, I wrote them all down and have them taped to the back board of my desk so I can see them, which is nice.
Here is the list that I found along with a few of my own and some comments/thoughts on a few of them!

Stress Less
1-Dance it out! Get your moves ready for hitting the dance floor this weekend! Not to mention you burn calories too :P
2-Go for a walk/run! Get your mind off whatever is stressing you and release some endorphins (they make you happy!)
3-Take an early lunch! Again to get your mind off of whatever is stressing you out so much, eat outside if it's nice (especially in fall right now, it's so pretty outside!)
4-Talk about it! You'd be amazed how many people can probably sympathize with you or who can at least provide advice or a shoulder to scream into :)
5-Breathe! It is essential for survival and also can help you to  relax your muscles, remember: in through the nose and out through the mouth.
6-Go to bed earlier! This is not always possible, but when it is TAKE ADVANTAGE!! You will love yourself later on!
7-Focus on what you can control! So you can't control that the refs in last night's Packers game were stupid, all you can do is concentrate on making dinner or getting the kids ready for school (you have control over that).
8-Reminisce about good times! Remember your first kiss, or when you met your one person or when you get mail at college :D Think about things that made you happy and most likely they will make you happy again!
9-Ask for a hug! Sometimes that's all we need, and who knows maybe that other person could also use a hug?
10-Look for opportunities in life's challenges! So your boss is being hard on you? Well, beef up and show him/her that you can handle it, impress them and it will help you too!
11-Go let out your stress with a good workout! If you want to punch something, preferably make it a punching bag and not an actual person (unless karate or something of the sort is on your schedule)!
12-Join a group exercise class! Zumba can always put me in a better mood, I know I'm not that coordinated but hey, it's another way to do #1: Dance it out! Plus you look pretty good and will get better over time (even if it takes a long time....I'm still working on that!).
13-Smile! This is something that people forget to do. Even if you smile just a few times each day, if will help, smiling a genuine smile can help not just you but people around you. And don't doubt that people can't tell if your smile is genuine or not cause most people can!

Well that's all I got for now folks :) I hope to update again later this week!
Try to stay less stressed and remember to have fun with life! It's the only life we got right now, so take advantage of it!
Love,
Sara :)

Musica Monday

There are so many songs out there about being unhappy with love. It's a little annoying, I mean even when I'm unhappy in love I still want to hear about being happy in love or falling in love, isn't that the best part? I found a song that really is more what I'm looking for here about falling in love, or thinking about someone you are falling in love with. This is how I interpret the song, not how it might be interpreted by others, just by me! I wanted to share this song called "Making Me Fall" by Moya. Not to mention that her look is really adorable!

Enjoy! Also take time to surf YouTube every once in a while, cause you never know what you might find! Such as this that I found a few days ago!
Happy Monday!
Have a great week my friends!
Love,
Sara :)

Possible New Training Goal?

Alright, so I got through my first 5K (woo!), I have another one to run this upcoming weekend for Homecoming and I'm working on getting my time better for this one. But what next? I was talking with a friend when I ran across an article on Pinterest of The 21 Most Incredible Themed Races. We were both looking at these, I have wanted to do the color run since last year when another friend and I tried to sign up only to find that the tickets were sold out within a week of them going on sale! Crazy! We know better for this time, so we are gonna hopefully try again and see how it goes this time!
However, my friend pointed out the Tough Mudder. I have heard about these races and they look scary intense but pretty awesome at the same time! So, we looked up dates and there's a race in Wisconsin next September, our goal is to get in good enough shape to possibly participate in this Tough Mudder race next summer. Wish us luck!
I will try and keep updated with my progress and how close we are both getting to being able to run this obstacle course.
Happy Wednesday!
Love,
Sara :)

Climbing Update

Alright so this past Saturday I went climbing again (yay!!), it was pretty neat cause I was able to climb up the wall the first time pretty quickly, granted the second time was a struggle and I didn't make it all the way up. I was sad the second time :( However the first time was pretty fun! I went with one friend, since it is the first weekend after a full week of school people were kind of freaking out about the amount of homework they had, which makes sense, but I find that an hour long break or so is always helpful especially when you have a lot of reading to do (particularly ethics). Between me and my friend, we were able to make it up the wall our two times in under a half hour, which is a lot of progress from the last time we went climbing when it took us an hour to climb three times. We are pretty proud!
That's all for now :)
Have a great day my friends!
Love,
Sara :)

Monday Musica

Alright, so this song of today's Monday Musica is not new. It was published as a music video in 2010, but to this day I still love watching it! For those who don't know, I attend St Olaf College in Minnesota, our school has had it's fair share of Rube Goldberg Machines. I'm not a physics major or much of a physics person at all myself, but this video is still awesome in my opinion because of the complexity of the machine displayed. This song is called "This Too Shall Pass" by OK Go. I hope you all enjoy!

Happy Monday my dear friends!
Have a great week!
Love,
Sara :)

A Climbing Update and Apologies

Hey guys, so in case you missed out school started again, this past week. I'm currently on my 4th day of classes, and things are going pretty awesomely! I'm excited for all my classes and I look forward to learning more about each of my topics! This is my excuse for why I'm a bit slow on the uptake of blogging consistently....sorry! School does tend to get in the way.
Anyways! This past Saturday I went climbing for the first time in a while (yay!!). I climbed here at school (cause we are awesome and have a climbing wall!), and I'm proud to say that after going up the wall all the way (about 2.5-3 stories high) two times, I was not sore, or at least not really that I noticed, the next day! This is an awesome feeling, since when I started I would be so sore for the next few days. I guess I getting stronger :)
Regularly climbing can really help you to get a full body workout so I encourage everyone to do this! We will be going weekly (or as much as we can to keep a regular schedule) on Saturdays, as long as the wall is open this year. I also now have friends who work at the wall and can help when I need help. I'm also planning on getting certified as a belayer myself here, since each time you go to a different wall you have to get re-certified, which is slightly annoying, but it works and that's how things go, so I am willing to do it! I will keep on updating throughout the year (I hope!) so stay tuned if you wanna hear!
I recommend for people again to try this whole rock climbing thing out! It doesn't matter if you get all the way to the top or not because it's a full body workout plus it's a great way to meet mew people. You can actually see your progress as you continue, until you are able to reach the middle or 3/4 of the way up, eventually you will get to the top if you keep trying and learn to push yourself a bit. There's a reason rock climbers are some of the most ripped people, it's hard work to get yourself up a wall! I'm working on getting there, but I'm not quite there yet.
Try something new, be it rock climbing, swimming, running, biking, walking, whatever! Try something and then stick with it, you aren't going to become a pro in just one day, it will take time, but I promise it will be worth it!

Have an awesome week guys!
Love,
Sara :)

P.S. sorry about missing my music yesterday (Monday)....I have no legitimate excuse except I forgot :P

Meet Coretz!

Alright, so yesterday I mentioned that I might be getting a fish. Well, I did! His name is Cortez and he's a Beta fish. Now, I didn't know a lot about Beta fish, but I learned some stuff from the pet store. Beta fish are also known as Siamese fighting fish, because when they are put in a cage together they fight til the death (reason why I only have one!). One of my pod mates got one as well, it is healthy for them to once a week flare out at another beta (which could even just be themselves in a mirror) in order to keep them healthy (I think there's more to that but I'm not sure right now...working on that), so once a week we will be putting their cages near each other and having them flare out. I feed it once a day and clean its cage like once a week or so. Apparently if it isn't exactly once a week it's alright, the fish won't die, but around then would be nice. I also have to use iodized water, which we were told means we could also use the tap water here and then let it sit out for about 24 hours and then it would be good to put in the cage. I am super excited since this is the first fish I've had to take care of by myself since I was like in 5th or 6th grade! I hope that Cortez lives a long and healthy life for a Beta fish...not exactly positive what that might be but for now we will shoot for him making it past December :P
Here's some poorly taken pictures:

Yay for college pets!! :D
Have a great day guys!
Love,
Sara :)

First Class!

Alright, so a few updates on my life. I moved in on Monday...yay!! Finally got some stuff organized! It's a good feeling :) Classes start tomorrow, actually I only have one tomorrow, Psychology of Personality. I'm pretty excited about it. I also will be going to the pet store tomorrow, we are getting a pot pet and then a fish for one of my pod mates. I think a beta fish? I'm not sure, but I kinda want a beta just because I think it would be kinda fun to have a fish, even though mine would probably die not too long after i get it because that's how I've done it in the past, sadly, but maybe this time will be better? I can only hope :)
Updates on the fishy/pod pet coming later when we figure it out!
Alright, time to continue to be a procrastinating senior :D
Have a great Wednesday night!
Love,
Sara :)