Retro Music at Sun Peaks

Last weekend we drove to Sun Peaks Mountain resort outside of Kamloops to spend the day sitting in the sun and enjoying some 'retro' music. They'd brought in a bunch of cover bands to some old classics - we enjoyed music from 'Bob Marley', 'Tragically Hip' and 'ZZ Top'. There was quite a buzz around the village, and we took a stroll and grabbed some goodies from the bakery, and a couple of drinks on the patio of the nearest bar!

The highlight of the day though, might have to be the blissful 2-hour drive home. The skies cleared, the air was warm, the moon was bright and the colours of the dusk were magical. And it's moments like this that we LOVE having a soft top sports car! A jazz CD playing on the stereo just topped the whole experience off to perfection!

Barnhartvale Road, between Kamloops and Highway 97. Normally we ride along this stretch on the motorbike, so it was lovely to actually go at a more 'sedate pace' and enjoy the views!

Meli stayed the night at Auntie Liz's, and we picked up an extremely happy (And pooped out) pup the following morning (and this is a big deal because I now have a photo of her actually looking happy for once - she always seems so serious and grumpy in photos!)

Kona Kase Happy Mail

This is the third month I've received the Kona Kase and I'm loving it! Apart from the obvious fact that it's fun to get happy mail I'm loving the variety of products and the opportunity to try out new brands I'd never tried before and oftentimes never even heard of!

I think I tend to judge an item on how quickly it disappears...and this month the Health Warrior Chia Bar was the first to go. De-lic-ious! I'm a big fan of Chia with all it's antioxidant and protein packed goodness. It was naturally sweet and chewy and I admit it was kind of fun to find little seeds stuck in your teeth half an hour later swelled up and gelly like!! (That might also sound gross, but just try it!)

I also loved the Garuka Bars. Named after one of the few remaining mountain gorillas in Rwanda, it was packed full of simple ingredients - in this case lots of peanuts. It was sweet and salty all at the same time, with a strong taste of peanut butter. Another thumbs up here!

Kona Kases are geared to providing fuel for athletes and whilst there's usually a good dose of yummy 'treat' snacks all months so far have also featured some more specific sports fuel - this month was Body Glove Surge Gel and some Chews from Pro Bar. I may pass on the Gel only because it was coffee flavoured (and I don't like coffee) but I'm looking forward to trying the Chews - lemon lime flavour seems very appealing.

Also in this months box were Granola, Caveman cookies, Enjoy Life Seed & Nut mix and some Perky Jerky!

I still think the modest $15 monthly fee is super reasonable for the Kona Kase - and actually works out much cheaper than that if you sign up for a 3, 6 or 12 month subscription which is what I did.

If you'd like to try Kona Kase (and I'd heartily recommend it!) then you can get $5 off your first box by clicking here, and using the code ReferKona095 when prompted. Enjoy!

Okanagan High Rim Trail Hike & MIMM

Well this is the first time I'm linking up for Marvelous in my Monday - such a great idea from Katie at Healthy Diva Life (and in case my Mum is reading this - yes Mum, I know my schooling taught me marvellous is spelt with 2 L's - it's just that Katie doesn't!! - and from here on in, I'll be going back to my British roots and spelling it 'right' ;-) So I'm all over my Marvellous Monday - it's BC Day here (er, in British Columbia Canada - eh!) and it's a Statutory Holiday - nothing more marvellous than a day off work. And usually I often only work part time on Monday's, but for the next month I've been contracted for a bunch of additional hours so I'm working my bee-hind off! So a Stat day is extra-lovely.

We had a marvellous relaxing weekend. On Saturday we finally drove out to a local trail we've been meaning to check out since we lived here (it's only been 4 years!). The Okanagan High Rim trail is actually a 55km trail running from Vernon to Kelowna. We live in Lake Country which is about 1/2 way between the 2 and there are a couple of access points to the trail near where we live. The views from our house are the hills which the High Rim trail runs along. We took about a 20 minute drive up Beaver Lake Road in Lake Country to the nearest access point (which if you're local and looking to find the same access point I believe it was near the KM10 forestry marker on the main Beaver Lake Road - look for the brown & white hikers sign on the left hand side, where there's a decent sized pull out with parking room for several cars). Since we did pretty much all the steep climbing up the hills in the car the hike on foot was a lovely, mostly flat trail. Since it's a pretty wilderness type trail, and from what I can gather, fairly sparsely used I wasn't expecting much of a trail. We've been up in that same area on the motorbikes and have frequently lost our way on trails that turn to dead ends....

But the trail access on either side of the road were well marked. We set off south from Beaver Lake Road and followed the trail for 3-4 kms before turning round. Most of the trail section we were on was marked by pink and black striped ribbons, and the occasional wooden marked stapled to a tree, but really the path was pretty obvious. On a hot summer day it's so refreshing to be up in the hills - the air is cooler, and everything around you is lush and green. Much of the hike was through fairly thick woods so no views to speak of, but man, did it smell good! We encountered a few downed trees and some serious wet patches that had us tippy-toeing around but it was pretty easy going. Meli, rather obviously LOVED it! So many smells, so many sticks to chew and so much freedom. She was a little taken aback by the cows we stumbled into (As was I, all I saw out of the corner of my eye as I turned a corner was something big and black and moving - it was a split second before I realised it wasn't a bear and calmed back down. Because we've seen bears up in them there hills when we've been on the bikes! AND Chris had had this crazy nightmare only the night before about us getting attacked by a bear!) 

We crossed over a couple of cute little trail workers bridges, and there were even a couple of hand painted interpretative signs about the trees we were passing so there's been some love and attention given to this trail at some point - it's amazing it's so little used or even heard of!  I'm so glad we finally made it up to the High Rim Trail - and whilst I'm not likely to hike it as a multi-day trek anytime soon, I'm looking forward to getting back up there and hiking another section too - I anticipate we could get much of it done by hiking north and south from each access point in turn, so over time we'd be able to cover almost all of it! 

Race Recap: Dirty Feet Trail Run, Vernon

Last Sunday Chris and I ran the Dirty Feet trail run race in Kalamalka Lake Provincial Park. Dirty Feet host a number of trail running and mountain bike races throughout the summer (plus snowshoe runs in the winter). This was my 4^th Dirty Feet race and once again I cannot say how well organized it is, how incredible the sponsors are and the very reasonable registration fees – it’s all just flat out awesome!

I was signing us up at the last minute and I’d normally sign up for the 10km distance but when I was registering I noticed the race start times; 9:30am! Whoa – with temps in the late 20’s all week and with no forecast for change I wimped out of the 10km and instead signed us up for a wee 5km! Still just as awesome but since I’d been struggling with the temps this last week in training I couldn't mentally wrap my head round a 10km starting so late in the morning (I was dying out there at 7:30am!!)

We headed out early on race morning to leave ourselves plenty of time for packet pickup since we hadn't been able to get there ahead of the day itself. Kal Lake Provincial Park is such a pretty place on the shores of Kalamalka Lake. Interesting most (all I think actually) of the shoreline within the park boundaries is only accessible on foot – at least a 5 minute walk from any trail head or parking spot and some of the beaches are nearer a ½ hour walk!  The start/finish line for our race was around 5 minutes down a steep hill to one of those beaches – it is an awesome spot!!

The thing with 5km races is they’re over so darn quickly. Chris made a break for it right at the start line. There’s some steep uphills in the first mile or so, but his mountain goat tendencies got him out near the front. I stayed front(ish) of the main pack with plenty of walking uphill to start – it’s inevitable of course with trail running but they always seem to start on an uphill – right when I’m struggling to find my groove and get my breathing comfortable! At about the 1.4 mile point we crested the last of the hills and it was a downhill course there on in. And I love my downhills! I came in at 33 minutes having ran hard for the last 2 miles or so, switching back and forth with 2 other runners close by me (I beat one, and one beat me across the finish line at the end!)

One of us won a medal. The other is barely surviving!!

Dirty Feet races lay on a mean snack table post-race – gotta love the big buckets of gummy bears, jelly beans, chips and crisps, granola bites, along with bananas and orange segments and plenty of eload and water to wash it down with. After grabbing a handful from the table we took the extra half dozen steps further for a dip in the lake to cool off. The water was gorgeous and clear, completely still and deliciously refreshing. I normally play around in the lake rather than actually swim, but today I set my sights on a buoy offshore and swam out and around that!

We took our time after the race, cheering other runners in. Since there was also a 10km and 21km distance happening at the same time there were plenty of people coming in after us. We just laid out our towels in the sun and took in the atmosphere (and snacks!)

Finish line with a view! And the perfect way to cool off!

It was sometime after that Chris was speaking to the organizer about something else when she mentioned that he’d come in 3^rd overall Male in the 5km!! Then of course it was even more reason to hang around – my man got a medal!

And another thing… that totally rocks about Dirty Feet – their draw prize tables!! Seriously these guys rock the sponsorships and the table was chock full of clothing, vouchers, gadgets and more from the sponsors (it’s laid out ahead of time so you can ‘shop’ the prizes and check out what you hope to win! When they’re doing the draw there’s quite the adrenaline pumping when you’re hoping no-one ahead of you grabs the item you've got your eye on!) Anyway Chris, not only scored his medal and gift card to our local North Face shop for his third place result, he then got an early draw ticket and picked up a really nice long sleeved Arcteryx tech tee shirt – sa-weet! As for me, I was lucky to win a prize - I think my ticket came up about 5^th from the end so it was slim pickings to choose from, but it goes to show how awesome all the gear was – I still lucked out with a nice pair of tech running socks!

Another awesome race, and this is race 8 of 13 for me in my 13 in 2013 challenge this year! And once again I was out proudly representing Team Tough Chik, and for once with weather that was truly appropriate for my team tank!

I'm linking up to Jill's Fitness Friday today!

 

FitBloggin recap - part 2!

Day 1 of the actual conference started bright and early for me with a lovely 6 mile run...

There are plenty of trails along the river and I just stuck to those passing across 2 bridges to make a great lil’ loop on either side of the river, then cutting up through historic downtown for a little early morning urban sightseeing!

I skipped the first session so I could shower and change but I was ready to get stuck into many of the awesome sessions on offer. I grabbed my breakfast and whilst making my choices from the fab buffet table I spied a golden cowbell. I'd read online prior to the event the DietsinReview were organizing a G+ Hangout live chat with Dolvett - the sexy trainer from Biggest Loser and if you found a golden cowbell it was winning you a free seat in that chat!! WooHoo! I got me a cowbell and I can swoon over Dolvett (but I probably need to find something interesting and witty to ask him aswell!) Anyway back to the sessions, first up was Motivating your Community to choose healthy lifestyles, followed by a session on tackling the taboo of therapy. Most sessions were 1½ or 2 hours and there was usually a ½ hour break between them which gave us plenty of time to switch rooms or grab a snack (and adjust clothing depending on the AC setting!). Lunchtime many of the sponsors had collaborated on a mini fashion as we enjoyed our lunch. It was served buffet style and you went into the ballroom and found yourself an empty seat at a table – all the tables had ‘theme’s – and you picked what theme fitted you – we went with the ‘really hungry’ table – which was amusing since for the first few minutes we barely spoke to each other – seriously hungry people here! (we got a little more social as our plates emptied!)

Hanging with the Laughing Cow at the vendor expo and me and my golden cowbell!

My afternoon sessions included a discussion on clean eating, Optimizing your post-workout recovery and turning your blog into a business. I generally preferred the sessions on blog techniques and the business side of growing your blog - typically these sessions were more presenter led rather than discussion and for me personally I got way more out of it that way as you can spend more time listening to your presenter and their expertise. Friday evening were the Ignite presentations – around 15 I think – Ignite follows a standard format – 1 presenter, 5 minutes, 20 Powerpoint slides auto-advancing every 20 seconds – it’s an awesome format I’d not seen before but very engaging and great to hear from so many different presenters about a wide variety of topics – many were fun, some had a more educational component to them (the best you can do with 5 minutes!) – I loved the presentation on adrenal fatigue by our new friend (and room neighbor!) Susan. I also loved the presentations that spoke of peoples stories and journeys to health, weight loss and/or fitness – I am always a sucker for these – they are so inspiring! The evening reception also included a delicious Parfait bar sponsored by Attune Foods and Driscolls Berries – there were tonnes of fresh berries, granola, seeds, shredded coconut, chocolate and you were left to ‘build your own’ – mine may have featured a large dose of chocolate (which was really awesome actually – broken pieces of this pro biotic chocolate)

Saturday morning was another bright start – 6am Yoga session with SweatPink. Given the early time it was a popular class and I really enjoyed it. I had time to grab my delicious breakfast (fresh fruit, bacon, pastries – all the things I love!) before heading off to a Discussion session on ‘How to set health & fitness goals’ with Erin. I was LiveBlogging this session – in fact volunteering for this role was the reason I was at FitBloggin’13 since I received a complimentary conference ticket in exchange for volunteering. It was a busy and popular workshop with a tonne of information – great for the participants (and me!) but crazy busy for me as I tried to capture everything. Live Blogging is an awesome way to get the information from the conference ‘out there’ for those that weren’t able to make it – and I’ve enjoyed reading up on some of the sessions I wasn’t able to attend, and I thoroughly recommend checking out the write-ups on the blog.

I had a tough time with my choices of sessions on Saturday. In the end I went along to a Crossfit WOD (awesome - never done it before, now keen to try a full class as this was a mini demo class), How to Create a Media Kit and a workshop on Google Analytics (and kinda, managed to duck into the first half of a session on Improving your blog through SEO) As a pretty low-key blogger here at ‘What Happened Next…’ these tended to be more applicable to those with bigger and more pro blogs but since I help Chris with the behind-the-scenes stuff for InSpiral Coaching’s blog it’s fanatsic information as we work to grow his business in the future – there’s so much to learn, and the presenters were fantastic.

Sadly the conference was drawing to a close and Saturday night was a reception hosted by those fabulous people at Nutrilite – yet more goodies from them, mini iPads and Tiffany necklaces as door prizes (not for me sadly) and some delicious hors d’oeuvres doing the rounds by the waiters. There was some karaoke and some dancing, plenty of margarita drinking and time with new friends. At the end of the night I headed back to my room exhausted and happy.

This was the amazing swag we got from the sponsors - Reebok shoes, sports bags, t-shirt, sweat towels, months worth of supplements, protein bars, cereals, nuts, an awesome water bottle and so much more!!

FitBloggin was an awesome experience - just the right mix of workout classes, blogging technique workshops and health and fitness workshops. Many attendees have been on amazing weight loss journeys and so there were a number of classes on that topic, so those weren't so applicable to me so much. I concentrated mostly on the blogging classes and was blown away at what a big business this is. Whilst I may not be growing this little blog much I'm keen to help over at InSpiral Coaching and my hope is that we can build that into something bigger with time (and knowledge & skills - exactly the kind of skills I was learning about at FitBloggin!) I'm keen to return next year!

Happy Friday! I''m linking up to Jill's Fitness Friday again this week.

Back on track with Menu Planning

Wow! What a crazy few weeks! We were away more weekends than we were home, with visits to Abbotsford, 2 long weekends in Whistler and finally 6 days in Portland this weekend just gone. I think I can finally breathe a bit - we've got 2 weekends in a row at home - yay!

Of course that traveling played havoc with any attempts to meal plan - I was just shopping a a day or two at a time and again I'm reminded at how unsatisfied and disorganized I feel when I shop like this, how much more it costs, how easy it is to just reach for a crummy unhealthy option and how much time is taken mithering about what we'll eat!

This week after lots of excesses I'm taking another week to detox after the success of my last one - I want to feel better from the inside out! So it's back to LOTS of fruits and veggies (and not a lot else!!) I enjoyed shopping at the Farmers Market this week - here's my haul of new season baby carrots, beets, garlic, cauliflower, garlic scapes, raspberries and baby spinach plus some creamed honey! I'm excited to try out a couple of new recipes aswell - and I've got to figure out what to do with those garlic scapes - I'm thinking pesto and maybe a potato salad - but I'll let you know how that goes!

Salads and greens from the garden are highly featured - we're in danger of our garden going to seed after a little neglect from our time away! So we're eating it as fast as we can, and juicing and smoothie making on overtime!!

Here's how our menu this week is looking;

Here's my recipe for our Lettuce Wraps and my favourite Gazpacho is based on the fabulous recipe from Pioneer Woman - normally I always end up adjusting it depending on what we have in the fridge!

I'm linking up to Jill and Laura's Meal Planning Challenge.

FitBloggin' & Trout Lake Farm

I’m still catching up on sleep from my weekend at FitBloggin’13. We got back after a 12 hours drive late on Monday night and my sleep patterns haven’t caught up from our fun, but sleep-deprived weekend! Chris and I both attended this conference for Fitness, Wellness and Healthy Lifestyle Bloggers in Portland OR. The event was hosted at the gorgeous and rather luxurious Nines Hotel right on Pioneer Square in the heart of downtown.

We actually arrived a day early to the event and took a tour hosted by Nutrilite to their Trout Lake Farm in Southern Washington. 

Whilst I may have hesitated that the day might have been festooned with sales patter it was probably the highlight of my weekend. From the moment we boarded the bus at noon on Thursday to getting dropped back at our door later that night we were nothing but pampered by our wonderful hosts. The drive from Portland to the Trout Lake Valley was around 2 hours along the Columbia River, stopping en route at Multnomah Falls for a quick photo op’ and enjoying probably the best packed lunch ever along the way to Trout Lake. The valley sits in sight of the majestic Mount Adams and is only around 7 square miles and is entirely organically farmed with no threat of overspray or pollutants. It was such a beautiful serene place, lush with green and abundant fields of crops. We were met by the farm manager and took a quick field visit into the…well, fields! We saw crops of echinacea, lemon balm (OMG – how amazing did this smell – I picked a few leaves to just try and suck in this fabulous scent!) and others, plus a few crazy moments of ‘see how many people you can fit on a combine harvester’. There was something about the sky and the clouds that day that made everything so dramatic – I think I snapped around 100 photos at Trout Lake alone! After some refreshments back at the farm building and a quick fix of wifi (this was the funniest thing about travelling with a bus load of semi-pro bloggers – everyone was on social media on their phones and mobile devices every other moment!) Nutrilite blew us all away with an outrageously generous gift bag (An Athleta bag which has just become my new favouite bag evah btw!) full of their products! Literally hundreds of dollars worth of supplements! I’ll be excited to try them out once life has settled down (because right now no amount of supplements is gonna fix the over-indulgence I enjoyed this last weekend or 3!!). After bidding farewell to the farm we were back on the bus via Hood River and the 3 Rivers Grill for an early dinner.

3 Rivers Grill – oh my! Firstly I gotta say what a funky little town Hood River is – lots of older brick building and steep streets perched high along the shores of the Columbia River. The 3 Rivers Grill served us a fabulous 3 course dinner with wines from Mt. Hood winery. I had a salad to start, entrée of Steak and 2 desserts (perks of travelling with a husband who doesn't have a sweet tooth!) – a fruit panna cotta and a chocolate moussey-cake thingy! All paired with a lovely Pinot Gris. Our hosts from Nutrilite sure knew how to pick a good restaurant – this is exactly the kind of place I would have hunted out if we’d been travelling on our own.

After a fun packed and thoroughly enjoyable ‘lazy’ day (just what we’d needed after our 12 hour drive down to Oregon from BC the day before) we were delivered back to our hotel in time for conference registration and name-badge decorating. (where we picked up another goodie bag full of stuff; tshirts, cereals, nuts, protein powders and bars, sweat towels, socks, coupons (picked up my free packets of Babybels and Laughing Cow cheeses on the drive home!),  from all the other conference sponsors – Amana, Attune Foods, Reebok, Enell, SoyJoy, Blue Diamond Almonds, Jumpsport to name just a few!).

We finished our evening relaxing and enjoying a drink at the trendy rooftop bar atop the hotel - checking out the fab views, sipping margaritas and enjoying the cool summer evening breeze - aaaahhhh, bliss!




There is so much to say about my experience at FitBloggin' I'll be writing more about it soon!

I'm linking this post up to Jill's Fitness Friday