Hey Friends!

I had the BEST day today. I went up north to the San Gabriel Mountains where my Sponsor, Puracyn is headquartered. There, I spent the day filming for a video they are putting together. I met several members of the Puracyn family, who were all super nice and funny. We started in the mountain where Mic, the cameraman took footage of me running in the hilly trails.

Here he is giving me instructions on what to do:

Right before my first run, I spotted a giant black rattlesnake slithering across the trail into the bushes. It freaked me out and I had to do my best to block it out. It was so long, all you can see here is its mid-section:

I ended up having to do several takes running up a long, steep hill and I have to say, it was pretty tough. I ended up getting quite a workout!

I also had to memorize and say some lines. I’ve never done this before so it was a little scary since I didn’t have much time to learn the lines! I didn’t want to hold Mic up too much by messing up a lot so I immediately started cramming the script into my head. The good news is, I am generally good at memorizing things 🙂

We did a few more short runs and then taped me talking to the camera. I had to do this a lot of times, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

Once we finished the speaking portion, we drove to the company founder’s ranch to do the rest of our filming. It was a really amazing place. There were dogs running free everywhere. They had a really beautiful pond with koi fish in it. I loved that I spotted a dragonfly whizzing around.

Mic picked a location for me to bike and then I got on the Puracyn bike for several takes! This was so fun because I had so much space to ride and the ranch was really pretty and peaceful.

Once Mic was happy with the biking footage, we moved on to the pool. It was a hot and sunny day so I thought, hey, that’s going to be so refreshing! However, the pool was not heated. In fact, the water was FREEZING!!! I’ve swam in really cold ocean temperatures without a wetsuit and always seem to be able to adjust to really cold temps but this pool seemed like the coldest I’d ever experienced. I had to wait a while for Mic to get his camera gear ready. Even though I wanted to get warm, I couldn’t resist the diving board. Every time I looked at it, I felt like I had to jump off it. So I did. And every time I came out of the water I would scream from the cold. Then I did it all over again.

After the swim portion, we were all done. I had such a great day and couldn’t imagine that it could get any better. But it did. On the ranch, they also had horse stables and a ring. When they heard that I had never been near a horse before, they asked if I’d like to take a tour of the stables. I said “Yeah!” When we got there, it was amazing. There were maybe a dozen stables with horses names on each door. The horses were really big and beautiful. It turned out that their very special and talented horse trainer was there and she asked if I would like to ride one. WHAAAA??? Um.. YEAH!! I couldn’t believe I was going to get to ride a horse right there.

The trainer’s name was Obbie and she was incredible. I thought she was going to hold onto the horse and walk him around with me. NO. She just gave me instructions of what to do and it was crazy. This was the most incredible thing. Me riding a horse for the first time.

Every time I got something down, she would stop and tell me something new to try. It was a jam-packed lesson. Hold the reins this way; kick with the opposite foot; give him a pat; lean that way; straighten your legs; make a clicking sound with your mouth at the same time… Oh my gosh, it was harder than learning the controls of a new DS game! But so fun!!! I eventually got “Dunny-Boy” to trot. That was awesome.

Wow, so after all that, it was almost 4pm and almost time for us to leave. We went to get cleaned up and load up the car with my gear and tons of Puracyn products (yeah!). Just before we left, Danielle, one of the team members, told us she wanted to show us something. So we followed her to another room and I couldn’t believe my ears and eyes. Everyone was singing happy birthday to me as they carried a cake full of candles. My birthday was a week ago and I have no idea how they even knew it had passed but I was really blown away. They made me feel so special all day long, it just kept getting better and better.

I had the most incredible day and experience- one that I will never forget, thanks to the Puracyn team. Here’s how the day ended:

I’ll be sure to post the video as soon as it’s ready!