Hockey Weekend and More

I was one busy girl this weekend, but not as busy as my two boys! 🙂

DS#2 had his first-ever hockey tournament this weekend, and unfortunately for me, it coincided with the same weekend of DS#2’s third hockey tournament of the year.  It was a hard choice to make, but we finally decided to let my husband take the younger son to Big Rapids, where they played hockey at the Ferris State University hockey arena. It was a lot of fun for them!  DS#2 even got to go to a Ferris State hockey game, where the Bulldogs beat those rotten Spartans of Michigan State. (Sorry, we’re big U-M fans here in the “Loud Redhead” household. 😉 )  He even got to hang with the Bulldog himself.

They had a tough go of it their first 2 games (losses with big goal differentials), but they did better in their third game.  Finally, in the final game of the tournament, they pulled out an exciting 2-0 win over a team that had beaten them pretty soundly here at home in league play!  Afterwards, I saw several parents from that team at my other son’s tournament, and they all were very effusive in their praise of my little guy.  Considering he is “playing up” into a higher age division this year, I was one proud mama. 🙂

Meanwhile, back at home, the older son was having similar luck, unfortunately.  They lost their first two games by big margins, but they were playing tough teams and they played hard.  On Sunday morning, they played an extremely good team and were just on fire—they held this team to only 4 goals (this team was routinely scoring 7-14 goals a game!).  Unfortunately, they couldn’t get one in the net to save their lives, so they lost 4-0.  Still, it was a great effort by all of them—our little goalie just about stood on his head, ha ha!

Sunday night, we played against a team that included four of our old teammates from last year’s team.  It was a bit nerve-wracking, and they seemed evenly matched, but eventually the other team out-hustled our kids and we lost 5-1.

Monday morning was DS#1’s last game of the tournament, against a team that beat us twice in league play to take first place in our division (we took second).  It was destined to be intense.

Normally, before each game, I tell DS#1 to play hard but play smart and “don’t hurt anyone.” I say this because DS#1 is a big kid, and as a defenseman, I’ve seen him knock more than his fair share of kids over unintentionally, just because he’s big and the kids he’s going up against can be quite a bit smaller than him.  As a mom, I hate seeing any kid get hurt, you know? But on Monday morning, as we drove to the rink, I changed my speech a little. “Son,” I said, “forget everything I ever said to you before.  Go out there, skate hard, be aggressive, and kick some ass!” 😛 😉 You should have seen the look on his face, lol!  I did feel compelled to add, “But don’t hurt anyone!” I made sure to tell him that I didn’t want him to go after anyone, but I wanted to make sure he knew that he should not be shy about going for his puck.  (Although, that’s usually not a problem for him—he averaged one penalty per game for the tournament, lol!)

The kids must have been hungry for a win, because our boys ended up beating the other team by a score of 8-5.  It was a great game and very fun to watch.  Sadly, since my camera is still in the shop {sob}, I have no pictures of my own to share, but I did buy a CD of pictures from the professional photographer (yes, I’m a sucker, but I got a good deal!), so I may share a few later this month. Because I love hockey pictures, even if they aren’t my own!

Meanwhile, what was I doing in between all the hockey? Well, I’m so glad you asked!

For starters, I ran.  A lot.  🙂  Saturday morning, although it was cold and crazy windy, I ran 2 miles outside as I attempted to calibrate my Garmin foot pod again.  It was pretty tough in that wind, but the sunrise was worth the effort, if nothing else.

And, on a good note, I think I finally got the foot pod calibrated!

That was a two mile run I did after the first two outside, and you can see that the mileage and time are almost right on.  It was supposed to be a 10-minute pace according to the treadmill, and it’s 10:05 on the Garmin.  I’ll take it!

The next day (Sunday), I made this in between hockey games .

I was surfing Pinterest while I waited for a hockey game to start and I found this recipe.  Besides wanting to make the cake, I desperately wanted to try to recreate the awesome presentation and photography. 😉 A food blogger I will never be, but I daresay there aren’t too many food bloggers who can do that in between two games of a hockey tournament. 😉  It was quite good, although I don’t think it was that skinny (four points for 1/20^th of the cake).  Still, it made quite a bit, and after I went crazy with the heart cookie cutter, I cut the rest into what I decided were two-point bites, which is more manageable and a nice treat.

So what else did I do?  I ran some more.  In fact, on Monday, I ran a 5k! Not a race or anything, but just 3.1 miles down my road.  I had 3 on the schedule and I decided that I would do 3.1, because it had been 6 months since I’d even attempted to PR a 5k.  I was thrilled with my results!

That’s three and a half minutes faster than my last 5k PR back in July!!  And I managed to knock it out before a 9:30am hockey game. 😉

Back at the rink, after the game, I walked out to the parking lot to be greeted by this.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen that! 😛

I took today (Tuesday) off  to recuperate from all the hockey. We had bitterly cold temperatures on Tuesday morning, cold enough that they actually cancelled my kids’ school. (This is the part of the story where I shake my finger and say things like, “Back in my day…”) Although I dislike the idea of a “cold day” (c.f. “snow day”), I must admit I was glad my boys got an extra day to recuperate from their very active hockey weekend.

I got the phone call to cancel school about 5:45, and although I tried to go back to sleep, I just couldn’t.  So, I figured I might as well get up and do the two miles I had on my half-marathon schedule for that day.  I had thought to do it in the barn on the treadmill, but then I thought, “It’s only 2 miles. If properly equipped, I can brave anything for two miles.”

Yes, even this:

(Please note that is a minus sign in front of the temperature.)

So, that’s how I ended up pulling out every cold weather item I could find to make me look like this:

(The two fingers are actually supposed to be for the two miles I was running; holding them up was DS#1’s instruction to me before he took the picture.)

And then…off I went in the cold blue yonder.  And let me tell you, it was cold. Despite the scarf, gloves, hat, etc., my body was just numb by the time I hit a mile.  Then I turned around, and at about 1.5 miles I began to feel a tiny bit better.  Just a tiny bit, though. 😉 By the time I was done, I actually had one of my fastest times to date:

Clearly, I was running as fast as I could to get back to the warmth. Once it was over, I was quite proud of myself, though.  And that hot cappuccino I had tasted so good. 😀

I did finally manage to weigh myself this morning:

Not quite the 113s, but darn close!  I’ve decided to knock off one point from my usual daily allowance this week to see if I can get back down to somewhere in the 113 range this week.  It may prove difficult, based on events coming up this week, though! 😮

So, that was my weekend.  Told you it was busy!  One last thing before I finish, though: my wonderfully dedicated DS#1 began his 10k training this week.  Today was his first run—talk about bad timing! He’d just had 5 hockey games in three days and now he had to run 2.5 miles when the temps were in the single digits!  But he is my little trooper, that’s for sure.  He put on his warmest clothes and made the trek out to the barn.

He ran 2.5 miles on the treadmill, stopping only briefly 3 times, he told me, with a total moving time of 26:34.  Not bad for a very cold, very tired 10-year-old! I was so proud of him, but not as proud as he was of himself.  His smile when he was done was huge, and it made my heart burst to see him so happy with his accomplishment. 🙂

Thanks for reading!