My old friend Mr. Procrastination overstayed his welcome the last few months, and since I’ve spent so much time entertaining him, I haven’t had a chance to post about quite a few items that I’ve been able to check off the list:
- Finish a 10K.
- Go to Crystal Bridges museum.
- Rough it for the weekend.
- Go kayaking.
- Climb an actual mountain.
- Beat Tanner Nichols at mini golf.
I’ll write about three of these today and three more tomorrow. I tried to make each one as short as possible, but I made the headings big so you can scroll when you get bored:
Finish a 10K.
Running is something I’ve always loved doing. You can relieve built-up stress. You get to breathe some fresh air and enjoy God’s creation. You get skinny. Really, what isn’t there to love?
The Little Rock Marathon 10K was on March 5th this year. I’d like to say I had a well-researched training plan that I started working on several months in advance like a good runner, but if we’re being honest, I forgot about the 10K until mid-January and had a mild panic when I discovered that I could only run non-stop for less than a mile before I had to take a break and walk. I wasn’t sure what I had gotten myself into when I paid real money to run 6.2 miles.
Let me add some extra context to this story… I did the Little Rock Marathon 5K back in 2010 and (somehow) finished in 28 minutes and won second place in my division. So I was more than a little cocky going into this 10K training. Which made it all the worse.
So three times a week, I got up at 6:30 and ran/walked my 2.25 mile loop, only getting about 1.3% better and 426% more annoyed. Maybe nobody will notice if I change the list and take this off, I thought. And then on Saturday morning, February 27th, it accidentally clicked: I needed to find a pace that I was comfortable with. I discovered a feature on Spotify that let you set a tempo (pace), and then it would automatically play songs at that tempo. I settled on a very beginner pace of 12 mins/mile, and like magic, I ran 8.3 miles that morning — without stopping even once.
Perfect timing, because the 10K was the next weekend. I ended up finishing with a time of 1 hour, 11 minutes and 54 seconds — 500th place out of 1,216 people who finished. You can watch me crossing the finish line here:
All in all, getting ready for and actually running the 10K, I ran about 50 miles, and it’s something I’ve continued doing since (although I took a break for the summer because it was just too hot). I even inspired my mom, dad and brother to do a 5K with me last month.
P.S. A special thank you is due to “Team Tanner” (a.k.a. Aly & Emily) for waking up super early and being in downtown Little Rock at 6:30 a.m. to watch me race. Also for surprising me with custom Team Tanner shirts.
Go to Crystal Bridges museum.
Work took me to Northwest Arkansas back in March, so I made Janna and Matt go with me to look at some old paintings.
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is a world-class art museum in Bentonville, Ark. The Waltons of Walmart have set aside almost $1 billion for the museum, so they’ve been able to stock the museum full of big names and famous works. Aside from the artwork, the way the museum is designed to beautifully blend into the surrounding landscape is spectacular. The fact that we have in Arkansas a museum that rivals many of the ones I’ve been to in Europe is still unbelievable, and I’m glad I was able to experience it.
Here are some shots around the museum:
And on our way back home, we stopped by the Wild Wilderness Drive-Thru Safari in Gentry, Ark. It’s 400 acres of exotic animals and apparently the #4 drive-thru safari in the United States according to USA Today. We saw lions, tigers, zebras, hippos, emus, deer and more, and drove with the windows down the whole way like a bunch of rebels. Also, I’m pretty sure Janna fed one or more of the animals (tisk tisk Janna). Here’s one of the zebras we saw:
Beat Tanner Nichols at mini golf.
This next item on my list was one of my (and anyone else who’s played mini golf with Tanner Nichols) personal favorites. Let me explain:
We play mini golf a lot. And at a lot of courses. It’s widely known that Tanner Nichols takes mini golf way too seriously, and to increase my frustration, he always lucks out in the end and wins. And then he brags (and tweets) about it. It gets on my last nerve, and once, I even went full-diva halfway through the game, threw my ball into a pond, walked to the car and sat there while everyone else finished the game.
Back to me winning. It was Friday, May 13, 2016. The course of choice was the outside 18 at Big Rock Fun Park in Little Rock. The players were Tanner Nichols, Katie Whitworth and me.
We were in a dead heat for the first few holes — Tanner and I even both shot a hole-in-one on Hole #5 — and then he started pulling away from me. He was up by one on each of the next three holes until I got another hole-in-one on Hole #9. Then Tanner got a lucky hole-in-one on lucky Hole #13. It was downhill from there for poor Tanner, and despite trying to make a comeback, in the end, he just couldn’t keep up with my calm demeanor and pure skill. The final score:
Katie Whitworth – 46
Tanner Ward – 47
Tanner Nichols – 49
Even though I finished behind Katie, I had finished ahead of Tanner — and that’s all that mattered. After some slight pouting, he finally admitted defeat, and I humbly accepted my victory. Here we are on Hole #18, in one of my proudest moments of the year:
Man, it feels good to be the best.
I’ll be back tomorrow with three more items checked off the list!
Tanner Ward 