Three Things Thursday

1.  Last weekend I played in a soccer tournament with Comeback Sports out at Chamber's Bay.  Although technically I have never played outdoor soccer, so that whole "comeback" business doesn't really apply to me.  Anyways...the team was mostly made up of our indoor soccer team, with a few friends added in.  I believe there was 13 or 14 of us.  We played in the "rookie" league- but either we are REALLY bad at soccer or the teams we played against miscalculated their abilities. 

The rules in outdoor soccer are quite different from indoor, so it took me a little while to get the hang of it.  I think I prefer indoor just because it seems to be a more intimate game.  I didn't really like playing with so many people out on the field, and how spread out we all were.  Plus all of the extra rules seemed confusing to me.  Maybe if I played it a few more times I would learn to like it.  For now- indoor please!  I had a lot of fun though, and the weather was beautiful and sunny.   Oh, and I am pretty sure I saw a guy wearing these purple Run Love compression socks on the field.  He looked cute in them :) 

2.  AFTER the two soccer games last Saturday, Will and I were signed up to run the Top to Bottom 5K race through Metro Parks.  The soccer games were at 11am and 3pm, our race was at 7pm- good Ragnar training!  This would be Will's first chip timed event and I thought it would be a fun race that we could do together.  We arrived at Mckinley Park and got our racing bibs and free water bottle, then decided to use the restroom before the race.  There was only 1 functional toilet at the park so that took quite a while!  I noticed people setting up our race course while we were waiting and I remember thinking to myself that seemed odd. 

Ready to race!

Anyways, we lined up and the race announcer told us the course- go up there, turn around, go this way, around here...blah blah blah.  I was glad I wouldn't be in the front because it sounded confusing!  The gun sounded and we set off down the hill, then back up.  It was a REALLY hilly course, but I figured for 3 miles I could keep up a pretty decent pace so I just pushed myself.  It probably would have been much easier to do that if I hadn't played 2 soccer games earlier in the day!  All of a sudden we were running down the hill towards where we started and the people were shouting to just go down around the corner to the finish line.  I checked my garmin and we were only around 2 miles!  So I sprinted towards the finish line (on grass) and I could feel somebody right behind me on my heels.  I didn't want to get passed but then this guy was right next to me (he was about a foot taller than me!) and he says "Let's GO!" and we raced to the finish.  He beat me by a hair, but his legs were twice as long as mine!  Fun race, not a 5K though!  I think it was about 2 miles.  They posted our results and I was the 33rd person in out of 160, and Will was 54th.  The times they posted do not make sense to me at all.  Oh well.  After the race we headed up to the Top of Tacoma bar and had some beer and nachos.  Fun, exhausting day!

Will- DONE!

Me- DONE!

We earned some nachos and tasty beverages for sure!

3.  I made peanut butter protein bars created by Jess from blonde ponytail last week.  They turned out really good, she brought us one at the bloggy dinner last month at the Spaghetti Factory and I knew I would have to make them myself!  There are only 4 ingredients in them!  So easy.  I used chocolate protein powder because that is what we always have at the house, but you could probably use whatever flavor you prefer.  I am a little obsessive about calories and nutrition so I calculated mine out- I cut them into 30 bars and each one has approximately 200 calories, 9.5 grams of protein and 22 carbs.  You can get the recipe here!