Try Something New Every Day – Day 6

I shot a deer yesterday. With my bow. I know it’s not deer season but I couldn’t help it. My bow was in my hand and there she lay 20 yards away. The shot was just too easy and I could not help myself, I had to pull the trigger. My sight pin was perfectly on her vitals and I slowly pulled back on the trigger. Thwack! 12 points! I was having a blast shooting my first 3D archery course!

“Golf for Rednecks”! That’s how my friend and fellow Mossy Oak ProStaffer described 3D archery and it’s probably true. Like golf you can get as serious about the competition as you want too. You have everyone from kids, to professionals that do this. Some people do it to perfect their hunting skills and some people don’t even hunt and do 3D because of the pure challenge and fun of it! Josh assured me that this was a tough course and that I did a good job. I wasn’t too sure though as the first half of it was spent sighting my bow in but I did start shooting pretty good once I got it dialed in! It was a perfect course back in the mountains and it felt so much like hunting that I could definitely see myself getting addicted to it!

I’m having a blast with my self-challenges during my try something new for every day quest! Feel free to contribute your own ideas for me to try. I have some great ideas coming up but I’m always open to outside views as opening myself up is part of the whole idea behind this.

Don’t forget about the Women in the Outdoors event coming up on July 11, 2009 in Bastian VA!

Mossy Oak Marathon (unofficial)

I have never attempted to run further than 8.1 miles in any one given time in my life. I've only been running seriously for a few months now. I did start running occasionally last year but never stuck with it, for long, until this year. I have built up to running daily but I normally run a couple miles a day and 8 milers are my longest runs. With all of that being said Thursday July 2, 2009 I will be running/hiking/walking/crawling the Mossy Oak Marathon ( unofficial)! The run is a celebration of our freedom to do crazy things like this and to show my passion and support for Mossy Oak, along with testing my own human spirit! The Marathon is not official as I will be the only participant and there is no way I can actually run the whole thing but it will be me putting in 26.2 miles in one day! From my home in Rural Retreat VA to my workplace in Wytheville VA is exactly 13.1 miles. I plan on getting up early Thursday and heading to work, via feet not car, taking a short break to refill my water bottles and eat and then heading back home. I expect this to take anywhere from 6-9 hours but I'm hoping to surprise myself! Stay tuned here to see how I do! Talk about trying something new every day!

Try Something New Every Day – Day 5

Yesterday was a pretty brief day for trying new things for me. I had a great day consisting mainly of hanging with Harry and Jessica. There's nothing new there but it's one of my favorite things to do! However I did do two new things! I ate my first Mediterranean food and I did some mountain biking at Big Survey! The food was delicious by the way! I should have written down what it was because now I can’t remember what it was called. As far as how the mountain biking went, it was great! I learned that I'm still in nowhere near as fit as I need to be but I have improved! The trails I rode on only went a few miles and weren't that difficult, but it was a blast! I have a long way to go to become a great biker but I plan on getting a lot more experience over the next while! Nothing major planned for today as I'm going to be resting for my marathon attempt coming up on Thursday!

I have dubbed the marathon unofficially the Mossy Oak Marathon as my only friend out there will be my Mossy Oak backpack carrying everything I need!

Try Something New Every Day – Day 4

Yesterday morning I woke up bright and early, jumped out of bed and started slamming water to get myself hydrated. This was the day I was to do my first early morning trail run and I was planning on doing 10 miles. I watched a few minutes of TV while hydrating and then jumped in the truck. Seven Sisters Trail reaches and elevation of 3310 and I the wind always seems to blow up there so I had on a light running jacked and my Under Armour beanie. Neither of them lasted long at all as it was a much warmer morning than I thought it would be. I had elected not to eat anything before my run as that would burn more fat off of my “beer belly”. It’s getting smaller every day but I’ll take any help I can get! It turned out to be a good demonstration of how tough running mountains can be without proper nutrition though because I wore out quick and had to push myself so hard to beat my best time ever through the course. I was going to do the 5 miles over the mountain and then run it backwards but I ran out of time due to my company picnic being that morning as well and had to come out at the campground area and jog back up the road. It was a great run and I definitely saw more animals out by doing it first thing in the morning. Despite the fact that it was a hard run for me I still had a great time and will try it again soon! The next time I do it though I will make sure I have time to do the 10 miles out and back route, which I’ve still never done. After my shirt got completely soaked with sweat I had another first, I ran shirtless in public. I got lucky and only have to apologize to two cars unfortunate enough to have to see it but it sure felt good to me!

I got home as quickly as possible and ate, re-hydrated, and hung with Jessica and Harry for a little while and then we all got ready and went to my company’s annual picnic. We didn’t stay to long there but the food and the people were great! Harry and I started getting tired and needed naps so we left after just a little while.


After the naps we got up and played for a while, Jessica had to go to work, and then I did another first. I hung shutters on the front of our house! Jessica’s going to be so happy! She’s been wanting it done and I finally got around to doing it!

Today I’m going to start doing some biking for cross training and to give my legs some rest due to me attempting a marathon on Thursday! I can’t wait to give the marathon a try! However I’ve decided that as much as I like running I need to be a more well rounded athlete and I need to keep things fresh so I don’t burn out or get injured.

I send my love to you all and some advice… get outside today, it’s where all of the adventure and excitement is!

Try Something New Every Day - Day 3

Last night I did something I hadn’t done since I was a little kid, I camped out in my own backyard. It wasn’t an entirely new thing but as an adult I would never have considered such a thing until my self-challenge. I actually had a blast and was so at peace out there. I can’t say I slept great but I felt refreshed and ready when I woke up this morning so I guess that’s all that counts! I learned that my tent, only the 2nd time I had used it, works well as do my sleeping bags but I need something to go under the bag to make the ground a little softer. All in all the experiment worked though.

As I promised yesterday I awoke early this morning, came inside, put in my contacts, and took off on a jog for the first time ever. I’ve only ran mornings a few times and all of those times I had ate breakfast, showered, and been fully adjusted before I ran. This morning was different though and so was the run. I don’t know yet if it’s made me a morning runner but it was a great way to start the day! I had a smile on my face the whole time. I didn’t set any PR’s but after a half-mile or so I started loosening up and had a good steady run after that. When the run finished I came home started some coffee and grilled myself a steak for breakfast! I’d never even thought of grilling anything for breakfast before and it was a nice break from the norm!

I really haven’t done much of anything else outside of my routine today but it’s been a good day anyway. Had a slow but decent day at work, then came home and hung out with Harry. After I put the little guy to bed I did some work on my mountain bike, not technically a first, but the first time I’ve really did much with this new bike. I’ve thought of some new things I’m going to do with the bike during this challenge and I just need some cross training and some new fun anyway so I wanted to get the bike ready. After struggling with it for a while I think I have it set up halfway decent but I got tired of fooling with it so I stopped. I had been using my allen wrenches from my bow case and realized I hadn’t shot my PSE Bow Madness in forever. I broke it out and shot for a while. My arm fatigued easily but the bow is still as amazing as ever, I love that bow! I have a few things in mind for tomorrow so stay tuned to this blog to see what’s next! As always feel free to post any ideas for my challenge here or email me at tnunley@gmail.com.

Try Something New Every Day Challenge Day 2

Today is the second day of my self-challenge. I’ve been cooking up new ideas for this, and I’ll get in to one of them later in this post, but for now let me tell you what I’ve done so far.

I started off the day by arriving at work and parking in a completely different spot, backwards. No big deal but again anything is worth trying and it signaled that today was going to be different. After that I proceeded to do pretty much all of my work in a different order than I normally do. Some things are time sensitive and I couldn’t do that with them but it was nice to break out of my same ol’ same ol’ routine. In addition to working backwards I also ate my lunch for breakfast and my breakfast for lunch. That was a bad idea for me, by the way, and it left me hungry all day. To make up for it I ended up snacking on junk food all day and that’s not a good thing. At least I did my regular run at lunch, of course I did it backwards from normal and went further than I normally do! I had pretty much a run of the mill day but doing thing differently spiced it up a little and made my day much easier. I also daydreamed up some more ideas for myself as well.

After I left work I went and picked up Harry. We came home yet a different way and I enjoyed that as well. I found another scenic country road and I’ll probably never take the old boring route we had been again. After that I arrived at the house, backed out of my driveway and set the odometer. I proceeded to drive out a nice country road for 13.1 miles. Yup, if you double that it’s 26.2 miles. Yup, that’s the length of a marathon. Yup, sometime in the next 30 days I’m going to walk/run it. I estimate it will take me anywhere from 6 to 9 hours to do since I’ve never done anything nearly that long before and my fitness level is nowhere near good enough to think of running the whole thing. I’m a little bit crazy! I haven’t worked out the whole food and water thing just yet but I think I’m getting close to having it all figured out. Just driving it took 37 minutes and was a real eye opener. I didn’t really think a marathon would be that tough to just walk but I think I’m in for an unpleasant, but awesome, surprise! I can’t wait to try it!

Anyway, my night is not over and I plan on camping out in my backyard tonight! Technically I have done that before but not as an adult and not at my own home. I’ve got my tent set up and ready to go and I’m looking forward to doing something completely off the wall! In the morning I plan on waking up early and running, something I’ve never done before, and then grilling myself a steak… something else I’ve never done before. After that I have no idea, but not knowing what the day holds is an adventure itself!

Try Something New Every Day Challenge

The try something new every day for 30 day challenge. That is what I'm giving myself. I, like a lot of people, am sometimes guilty of stumbling through life instead of really living it. I like adventure and most of the time I'm willing to try new things but I never actively seek new things. That will change. I’ve found myself stuck in the same ol’ routine on a daily basis. Don’t get me wrong I love my life but why not seek out new things that will only lead to my enjoyment! So with that being said I’m giving myself the try something new challenge. I will be trying things both big and small. I will be trying athletic, and mental challenges, trying new foods, and anything I can think of, to challenge myself. Something's will be things I've wanted to try and never got around to and something’s will be tried to get myself out of my comfort zone. The goal of this is to inspire myself and others to really live their lives! You don't have to jump the Grand Canyon to have an adventure. Things as simple as trying a new restaurant are fun too! My challenges are both big and small to show how just doing ANYTHING different can lend some excitement to your life! I will be trying to do several new things per day but the goal is to do at least one. I will be updating my blog daily as well to let you all know how I'm doing. I'm really looking forward to this. Please feel free to post ideas of your own for me to try.

The only rules I have for this is that nothing can be illegal, expensive, or harmful to others or myself. Something’s may have a danger to them but I have a family to think about so I won’t be gunning for Evil Kneviel!

After I wrote the above information I decided to start this today. I wanted to start small so I tried finding another route home from Harry’s babysitter. For months now I’ve knew there had to be other ways to get from the babysitter’s to our house but I don’t know the area well enough to know what the alternatives were and I always came up with some excuse to not just give it a try. In the essence of showing how easy these challenges could be I picked today to find another way. I have to say that it was a perfect beginning as the first route I tried turned out to be a very easy, scenic, drive and it will be my preferred way to go between the two places from now on! This too will turn in to a routine so I will try some other ways soon though.

Stay tuned for updates as I promise some of the other things I try will be more exciting…

Women in the Outdoors July 11, 2009 Bastian Virginia

Don't forget about this great event! Come one come all and sign up soon. There will be great classes taught and plenty of fun to be had, I'm looking forward to seeing you all soon!

Women in the Outdoors and More!

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. The truth is I've had several things going on but I've really just been enjoying my summer and spending time with my family! Things have been great recently! I keep getting in better shape and I feel better all of the time. Josh Blevins is coming over tonight so that we can finalize our presentation for next months Women in the Outdoors event in Bastian VA! It's a great event and we're really excited to be a part of it. I should have more details coming up soon. Mossy Oak events should be heating up soon and I will start posting the info I have as soon as possible.

I have one more piece of news. I will be reaching a much larger base of people soon as some friends and I are starting another band. As of now the plan is just to go out and play modern rock covers but we'll see what happens once we get it going! The lineup looks like it could be an all-star group but nothings finalized at this point. I hope you all are enjoying your RAINY summer, talk to you soon!

National Running Day

Today is National Running Day! I'm "under the weather" right now but I'm going to do some running today any way. Use today to get yourself started if you aren't already. There's no better day than today! You don't have to even run, just go for a walk. The important thing is to just get up and get going!