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This kid may be a basketball player, but he sure does seem to enjoy his time on the backyard rink 🏒 He especially loved introducing his baller friend to hockey!

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My most of the time team of one Maintenance crew finished shoveling the ice for tonight so it would be ready for another day of hockey and skating 🏒

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Below 0°F today and it didn’t stop these kids from getting out on the ice to play a little hockey 🏒🥶

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Had to do some backtracking on my run this morning as I really wasn’t going to be happy if I lost one of my favorite gloves… Thankfully I found it only a half mile back! 🏃🏻‍♂️

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Walker Family Christmas 2021

It is always so fun to get all the cousins together to hang out. Seeing that they are all from Minnesota and know how to skate they also enjoy playing a little backyard hockey together 🎄🏒.

The full Walker clan

Just the cousins

Girl cousins

The boys (for some reason the older ones like they hockey hair flow)

Grandma and Grandpa with their Grandchildren

Getting ready for a little backyard skating

Let’s Play HOCKEY!

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Even after a busy day of presents, food, and inside fun the kids wanted to get outside to do some night skating now that everything is solid again 🏒

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This was actually a gift of my sons that we did together. However, he gave up after a while and I preserved through to identify the right person. Fun murder mystery that I might have to buy another one of now.

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Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday to all from my family to yours…

I like smiling, smiling is my favorite 😀

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Before, during and after Christmas 2021 Present opening 🎁🎄

Quiet night before the chaos and fun!

Encanto gifts and a “tik tok light” this morning, our festive girl is loving Christmas! In fact this one woke up at 3am ready to start the day and April had her stay somewhat contained till 6am when she promptly woke the rest of the house 😱.

She didn’t get her puppy BUT she got room decor and art stuff, so she’s a happy girl….

Candy + ISU gear brought a lot of smiles this morning ❤️💛

The aftermath where everyone was playing, reading or resting after the excitement.

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When you get arcade games for Christmas you are for sure going to create an arcade room for your family to visit. Don’t worry she made sure to find some prizes for the winners too. 🤭💰🕹️

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With the temperature of 40° today I decided to get a run in since I could wear shorts of course 🤷‍♂️🏃🏻‍♂️.. It was nice outside today for a run but the rink does not like this weather. Glad we got a skate in yesterday 😒

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Rink is open, and the fire is going… 🏒

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First day of Winter Break

First day of winter break for the kids so I took the morning off work and we all went to the The Original Pancake House for breakfast followed by pictures with Santa 🥞🎅.

*Really didn’t need this much food but it was really good! *

*The whole family with Santa *

Dec 23

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Chanhassen really likes these signs. Why can’t they make mention of it at the beginning of the trail instead of after you fully committed to a half mile in. Then the only options are up a hill through someone’s private yard or back the way you came. I took the hill 😁. 🏃🏻‍♂️

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Trying to join a Webex call and I get this screen… Well this isn’t good 🤦‍♂️

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Been on the project docket for a while and with limited kids activities tonight I finally constructed (cobbled together) a “built-in” shelf for my daughters room.

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I feel like this is the time of year that we reorganize everything in our house. Some of it is just to reorganize but also get rid of some clutter. I think I need to really put some plans in place for Project Shed Phase II next year. Only to help from the clutter aspect 😁

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4x4x48 Recap

Two weeks ago I decided to set off on completing a 4x4x40 as part of some crazy ideas for my 40th birthday year. However, after I reached the 40 miles I felt like I really needed to continue as I figured at that point I might never do this again and get so close to hitting the real number and completing a 4x4x48 (run 4 miles every 4 hours for 48 hours). Maybe it helped that I was a bit sleep deprived at the time and not thinking clearly as I figured what was two more 4 mile runs at that point.

Since I posted after each of my runs with a short photo, time, and thought I will not rehash all of them. I don’t want to make light of this challenge as I think it was hard but the miles themselves weren’t the worst for me. Some of that could have been that I didn’t really have a pace per mile in mind. I obviously wasn’t going to try to run the fastest 4 miles I could every time. However, in my mind, I wanted to keep all of my averages per run under 9 min/miles. The biggest struggle for me during this challenge was trying to fit it in during a normal working day. Due to the weather forecast and maybe my last-minute planning, as it was December, I did it during the middle of a workweek. So I scheduled it out earlier in the week and pretty much created an appointment for myself every 4 hrs. It worked great the first day but the second day some things came up at work so I had to shrink down one of my 3 hr blocks of recovery and extend other ones. I still was able to get the run in that 4 hr bock but I wasn’t as consistently on the hour as I was the first day of running. In a way, I am wondering if working both days helped me keep my focus away from running and how tired I might have been as I was doing things I needed to do during the day. Then in the evenings I still helped get the kids to activities and stuff.

Now obviously the lack of sleep is one thing but the worst time of runs for me was the 5am runs that I did. I think it is because after the late-night 1am run it always took me longer than anticipated to fall asleep. You would have thought I would have been tired enough to just get into the house and fall asleep. I am guessing that the kick of adrenaline that was in my body messed with allowing my brain to shut down at that time. So for both days by the time I would will myself to sleep and it would work I think I only got 1 hr before I would have to wake up at 5am to run. After that run, I would just start my day and didn’t try to get any more rest as my youngest gets on the bus at 7am.

In the end, I have never run so many miles in two days. It ended up being 48.9 miles due to one run when I put my trust in a running friend who lead me astray by an extra mile. Those two days were more mileage than I had completed any week during my marathon training this past year. It was an interesting challenge as it took careful planning as I still worked and helped with kid activities like a normal day. It was just I ran every 4 hrs 😁. The day after I was done I felt pretty wiped out from most likely lack of sleep and over-exercise. Fast forward two weeks later and I am back on track. Maybe I will do another one of these challenges someday but probably no time soon. At least for the rest of this year, it will be back to the normal scheduled running for me.

Full Data of Runs - Links to Posts and Strava

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Snowy run this morning as I created my own tracks in the neighborhood 🌨🏃🏻‍♂️

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One of those head scratching moments seeing the icicles in this tunnel while out on my long run today. Kind of makes me think there is cracks in it 🥶🏃🏻‍♂️