Week In Review

Monday: 60 min bike ride early in the morning, immediately followed by a 50 min easy-paced run

Tuesday: 60 min swim workout, followed by a 30 min bike ride

Wednesday: 35 min run in morning followed by 20 min yoga; 20 min open-water swim in afternoon (much better than the first attempt!)

Thursday: 30 min yoga in morning; 80 min bike ride in afternoon

Friday: REST DAY

Saturday: ~9 hrs riding my horse working cattle (which involved lots of leg work-- my inner thighs were quivering they were so tired by the end of the day!)

Sunday: another 3 hours on my horse

So the weekly totals turned out to be:

BIKE- 2 hr, 50 min

RUN- 1 hr, 25 min

SWIM- 1 hr, 20 min

YOGA- 50 min

OTHER- ~12 hours horsin' around

I had planned on doing a 9 mile run on Sunday, but was so spent after Saturday, plus we had more cow work to do. I'd also thought that if it was nice out (which it totally was on Saturday) that I'd go for a short swim in Frenchtown Pond. But alas, Saturday's work was much more extensive than I had thought it would be! But all in all, I got at least 2 workouts each in swim, bike, and run, plus some yoga. Plus all the work on my horse. So I'm pleased.

What was all that horse work about?, you may be wondering. Well, we had roughly 200 mother cows and their babies and 8 bulls all in one 300 acre pasture. We had to gather them all up and herd them to a 2-acre pen. From there, we had to find the baby calf and its mother (a "pair") and move that pair up a short hill into the corrals where we wrote down the eartag number of the calf, then put the pair in one of 4 holding pens. We had 4 different leases to send the pairs to-- in Superior, Ninemile, Frenchtown, and Ovando. And we wanted pairs of the same sex to all go together. (So for example, we needed 30 pairs to go to Superior, and we wanted them to all be larger girl babies.) Once we got a pen filled up with the requisite number of pairs, we then had to sort off the cows from the calves, then load them into trailers to get shipped to pasture (it's better not to stick little calves in a trailer with bigger cows, lest they get squished!)

The whole process just took a long time to do. But it was a lot of fun. It's kind of like playing a giant board game-- find which mama goes with which baby, all in a pile of black or black and white cows (hint: they have numbered eartags!) And it's a pretty good workout to be riding a horse doing all of that-- you're definitely not just plunked down in the saddle going along for the ride. My legs were constantly moving, steering my horse this way or that. My arms were usually up or out to the side guiding the cattle. I was bending over to get gates. And I got off and back on my horse dozens of times-- quite the feat for a short girl with a tall horse!

Overall the horsing around was a great workout and a ton of fun. The weather was gorgeous (though I forgot my sunscreen, so today my neck is reminding me how sunny it really was... ouch!) Most importantly, working with the horses and cattle is something Jim and I love doing together. It's nice to have an active activity with your partner-- it's often easy to sink into a routine of just hanging out eating, watching movies, or whatnot. But doing things together really helps strengthen the bond, give you shared experiences, and keep you healthy-- all plusses!

So that's my week in review. Otherwise titled "The Varied Life of a Triathloning Cowgirl" :)

(PS-- I didn't get a chance to take any pictures this weekend... but here's one of Jim when we were working in the corrals earlier this spring)