Pre-race selfie! We were ready to run, even if we were nervous!
Yay! We did it: Ryan and I finished the Rock n Roll Denver 5K on Sunday and both got 46:24 as our time! Even though I know that Ryan can run a 5K in a much faster time, he stays with me to make sure that I finish. I know I would have a harder time finishing the 5K if he weren’t there to help pace me.
Admittedly, we had gotten out of our running habit a couple weeks ago, so doing the 5K race on Sunday was a bit of a shocker on our systems! However, we pulled through, and somehow did a lot better on the timing than expected: before the race, we were doing roughly about two miles in about 40-50 minutes, so Sunday’s race time was definitely a PR for us.
I had butterflies pre-race though: seeing all the other runners around me, I felt like I was out of place. However, I had to remind myself that we all start our running/walking journeys in different ways and at different times. Some people at Sunday’s race have probably been runners all their lives; others might have been doing a 5K/10K/Half Marathon/Full Marathon for the first time!
Pretty nice medals from Rock n Roll!
Overall, I am glad we finished the race and definitely hope we can find another 5K to complete next month or in December. Yay running!
Urethra Franklin beer from Renegade Brewery at 9th/Kalamath in Denver.
Before I moved to Denver, I preferred wine or mixed drinks. Beer was rarely ever on my radar before Denver: my earliest memory of beer was when I was a kid and noticed one of my uncles loved drinking Budweiser. I snuck a taste of the beer and immediately went, “Blech!” So ever since then, I wasn’t interested in beer…
…until I moved to Denver. I didn’t know beforehand that Colorado was very proud of its craft beer culture, but once I started making more friends in Denver, I discovered the diverse world of beer. I met Adrienne Rinaldi, aka Beer Snob Chick, and started attending Brew Asanas (yoga & beer events organized by Adrienne); I gradually went to more networking events and experienced many more varieties of beer; and then finally, I met my boyfriend, Ryan.
Ryan enjoys a good IPA but loves trying other kinds of beer out as well. I discovered early last year that I, in fact, could not stomach IPAs as well as I’d thought, so these days, I stick to porters, lighter ales, and recently discovered sour beer. Yum!
I remember last year, Ryan had complained about how the tickets for the Great American Beer Festival (aka GABF, #GABF) had sold out within minutes of going on sale. He had wanted to go with a couple of his friends, but to no avail. When the ticket dates were announced for this year’s GABF, we banded together and attempted to get tickets. I sat at the computer at 10am in late July, ready to get tickets no matter what; after all, I love a good challenge! The Ticketmaster website was slow and it *seemed* like tickets were all gone, but I kept hitting ‘refresh’ and finally got to reserve two tickets. Exciting!
Hehe, Ryan with the Kane Brewing sign. Kane Brewing is located in New Jersey.
So as a belated birthday treat for Ryan, I bought the tickets for us to attend GABF. I didn’t think much about any ‘prep’ until the week before, and kept hearing about pretzel necklaces from others, but Ryan and I received mixed messages about whether we were to bring our own pretzel necklaces or to just bring our own yarn to string pretzels onto at the festival.
We attended GABF on Thursday, September 24th, which was the first day of the festival. Luckily we both had the day off (and the next day!), so we could enjoy the evening with no worries about the next day. We were already downtown pretty early and decided to start lining up around 3:30pm; as it turned out, many other people were already lined up for the doors to open as well. As the crowd grew larger, we realized we made the mistake of NOT bringing our own pretzel/food necklaces: we saw a large array of necklace combinations from other attendees, including necklaces with beef jerky sticks, cheese sticks, and even some fast food hamburgers!
Lots and lots of attendees at GABF! Photo by Ryan.
Once the bagpipes started up around 5:30pm, we were one of the first attendees inside. Despite downloading the GABF app beforehand, we at first didn’t have much of a strategy and just approached one row of breweries and sampled all the beers down the line. After that round, we decided to be more strategic and hit up breweries from other states such as Virginia and Indiana before hitting up Colorado breweries. I definitely enjoyed a lot of the sour beers I tried! There were quite a few pumpkin beers and also chile pepper beers.
Of course, all the Colorado beers were fantastic. We even tried cannabis-infused beer from Dude’s Brews Co.! Alas, we couldn’t try EVERY beer there (we think it’s near impossible for ANYONE to do that, even if they attended all three days!).
Despite there being so many attendees, we ran into a handful of familiar faces as some of our friends were also attendees or volunteers pouring the beer samples. We were happy to finally catch our friend Jared at the name.com booth at the end of the night; he was busy filming video montages at the festival for name.com, such as this video about all the beards at GABF:
Overall, the night was so much fun! We were happy to have the opportunity to attend GABF and hope to attend (or volunteer) in the coming years.
Improv is all about being in the flow, staying present, and relying on your teammates. Image credit to hyena reality at freedigitalphotos.net
I started attending an Improv 101 class at Grafenberg Playschool last month. Before this class, I had an inkling of what improv was (I mainly knew about “Yes, and…”) but did not know what exactly I was getting myself into.
Thanks to the connection between Ignite Denver and Grafenberg Playschool, I now have the chance to experience improv. We are almost finished with the class at this point and preparing for our class show (along with some other improv groups part of Grafenberg) on September 28. Over the course of the past several weeks, I have learned a lot about how improvisation techniques can help me out in my day-to-day life:
Improv has taught me to go with the flow. My class is a group of seven people (including myself), but oftentimes we have to do two-person scenes. I can’t predict what my teammates will do next, so when they throw their lines at me, I have to just go with the flow and think on my feet. This helps me in my life because, well, I am very much the type of person who likes to plan things out. When my plans get derailed, I get frustrated and upset. Improv has reminded me to just go with what happens–things are meant to go that way anyway!
Improv teaches me to focus on the present. If I don’t pay attention to what my teammates have said (or what object work they’re doing), then I’m left feeling lost. I have to stay attentive to what others say or act out during each exercise and setup, or else I’ll just embarrass myself. With all the distractions in day-to-day life these days, I find it VERY hard to stay focused on one task at a time. I am glad that at my improv class, I have to really just pay attention to what’s at hand and not be staring at my phone while listening to Tom (my instructor).
Improv teaches me to not take things so seriously. We have done some interesting exercises and have also said some things in our class that are just way over the top! However, I have found that each class helps me loosen up and not get so high-strung over the nitty-gritty. We all laugh at ourselves at least once in the class, and that’s just a good reminder for me and for all of us: LAUGH! Everything will be okay, regardless of what happens.
Improv helps me get out of my box. In terms of creativity, improv amps things up a notch. To me, improv is like NaNoWriMo: thinking on the seat of your pants and hoping that whatever storyline my teammates and I are developing along the way will actually make sense (or at least be entertaining to the audience). So far, we have come up with very out-of-the-box storylines! I almost want to take a few of the scenes and write them into my next novel…
Improv teaches me to rely on others. I don’t know enough about improv at this point, but I feel that improv is only improv when there is more than one person involved (with a few exceptions). So I rely on my teammates, regardless of whether we are doing two-person acts or doing multi-player scenes. I must trust my teammates that we are all going to do fine in each act, and vice versa. This is an important reminder for me especially in my business and in my volunteer committments that delegation is important in order for me to not overload myself, but also to remind me that we all have different strengths.
I am excited for our show on the 28th, and I hope that you will come support us at the Awesome Improv Show! RSVP for the event on Facebook. Donations accepted and we will have free beer!
Update on October 5, 2015: We had a beautifully funny show last Monday (September 28th), despite the fact that our team dwindled down to only four of us. Team Tomato Soup still had an amazing premiere at Grafenberg! Admittedly, we were nervous beforehand, but Tom got us warmed up and ready to improvise before the show. Last week was also my first time attending an improv show, and I must say, it was VERY entertaining. Although I’ve learned in class that improv is not *always* about comedy, I still laughed the whole night watching the other teams perform.
Alas, my time with improv is short-lived though, as I have several other committments that take up my time. I am sad to end classes with my awesome teammates (we all work so well together in improv!), but I know that there’s a time and place for everything. Grateful to have had this opportunity to try out improv! I’ll probably step back into the scene sometime again (and nobody said that Team Tomato Soup can’t perform together outside of classes either…)
Ryan and I started the Couch to 5K program at the start of July and we are now rounding out Week 9 (the final week) of the program. As I had mentioned before, I had completed the Couch to 5K in 2010, and I remembered how exhilarating it felt to finish the program. At that point in time, I was already in pretty good shape, so the program was just the extra cherry on top.
However, I didn’t maintain my running after that, and although I had signed up for a couple of 5K races in early 2011, I didn’t do too well with my running (at one race, I pulled a muscle in my back and had to walk the entire race with a weird gait).
As I have probably mentioned over these past several years, I have slowly gotten out of shape until last year, when I stepped on the scale again, I saw how much I had gained back in four years. Ack! So since last year, I have been working out again and slowly losing the weight again (and hopefully for the last time!). But the journey has been a lot of stop-and-go this past year: Ryan and I worked with a few personal trainers last year and they helped us get back into shape! But then we had to discontinue with them because of expenses and the holidays.
Then we tried going running on our own and that didn’t pan out too well either; we just found ourselves walking more than actually running. I was getting frustrated with our stop-and-go exercise routine come June of this year, so after our trip to NYC, I suggested we hop back onto the bandwagon with the Couch to 5K program.
This time, it’s working SO much better. There have been tough times in the Couch to 5K journey, e.g., I still can’t figure out a proper breathing technique for myself, but we have kept up with the schedule and our phone app’s “coach” has been helpful in keeping our pace and timing well.
I made a list of goals this week about what all I want to accomplish over these last few months of 2015: one of those goals is to run two 5K races! We are gearing up to register for the Rock ‘n’ Roll 5K next month; hopefully we’ll find another 5K for November or December!
A cheesecake at high altitude; just baked this today. Fingers crossed!
Today was the first time in over ten years that I baked a cheesecake. I remember when I first learned this recipe, my oldest sister helped me with the whole process: mixing the cream cheese and sugar together, beating the eggs, combining ingredients for the sour cream topping, etc. I was a teenager and I wanted to learn how to bake, so this was what my sister taught me for my first baking lesson.
I have kept this recipe with me over the years but never really thought to try baking the recipe again until Ryan and I met: Ryan’s favorite dessert is cheesecake! Last year I attempted this cheesecake recipe with three mini spring pans and that failed miserably; didn’t really help that the oven at my old apartment was quite finicky, so we ended up tossing those failed mini cheesecakes. 🙁
But today, I decided to tackle the recipe again and actually added in the lemon zest (I never added lemon zest as a teenager). Here’s hoping the cheesecake tastes as heavenly as I remembered it!
