It's My Birthday and I'll Hike if I Want to

So yesterday was my birthday and I'm just gonna lay it out there. I'm 35! I'm not gonna hide it because I feel pretty darn good. In fact, I probably feel (and look!) better than when I turned 25. Sorry 25-year old Jess, but you were overweight and out of shape.

So how did I celebrate? I started my day with Workout C of Best Body Bootcamp-a superset circuit for time. I've just discovered health podcasts and listened to one about body image during this workout. It helped the time fly by and I learned something, talk about multi-tasking :-)

I continued the party by making the hubs go hiking with me. One of the great things about living in wild, wonderful West Virginia is that within a short drive you can do just that, to the top of a mountain no less!

I've been looking for a 10k to run this fall in prep for the half marathon coming up in February (Disney Princess here we come!). I came across a trail run near where we live that sounded way more interesting than a road run. I've never done one before (10k or trail run!) so I thought walking it first would be a good idea. Man, am I glad I did!

What a beautiful day we had to do it. The trail had a pretty steady ascent with some steep parts, and the first half was very rocky:

But up closer to the top it opened up to flat grassy areas. If the entire thing had been like this I would have been thrilled.

Those rocky areas tested me just walking. I am known to be a bit of a klutz, Whoops comes out of my mouth more times a day than I'll ever admit, and turning an ankle seemed inevitable at any sort of speed. Plus, it felt WAY longer than 6 miles. Of course I had a dead Garmin when we went to leave so all we had was a timer and a HR monitor. 2.5 hours and 555 calories later we were very hungry and tired.

I will admit to an ice cream indulgence-hey, it was my birthday!-but overall and healthy, active day. We discovered through text message that G had chosen this time away to start crawling for the first time. *pouty face* I guess that was my birthday gift, so the evening was spent trying to get her to do it again for us! Don't worry, lots of pics and stuff about her up next for her 10 month (gasp!) update.

Like I said, I feel better now than I ever have. Older people always tell you that you will, that you'll find yourself and get more comfortable with who you are-blah, blah, blah. But really, aren't they always right? And don't you always hate it?

Actually, I love it, and it makes me anxious to see what 40 will be like, because right now seems pretty darn good. If it gets better, I can't wait to get there.