Would you like a Half Marathon with that Pinot Noir?

Why yes. Yes I would. Thank you very much. Would you like some too?

This weekend I went to Oklahoma City to visit my friend, Michelle, and the only thing that got in the way of our wine drinking was a half marathon.  You know, that half marathon I trained for by exclusively doing yard work. We had so much fun. And so much wine.

After I arrived we headed out to watch Michelle’s Mom perform at the Oklahoma City Arts Festival with her tap dancing squad. And I was quite surprised how much fun it was and how good they were. Those seniors are tap dancing fools – It was a blast! Michelle’s Mom is the one in the boa. She is adorable with that boa.

We walked around the festival a bit and headed over to a lovely restaurant where we had lunch (a fantastic Gorgonzola burger & fries, shhhhh) and a little bit of wine.

After lunch we headed to the Expo to get our packets where the line to get in was 50 feet long. No kidding, almost out the door and the convention center. Yeah. Ummm, not waiting. So, Michelle and I snuck in the back doors only to be sent away because the fire marshal was monitoring the people level in convention center.  So guess what? Instead of waiting in line for an hour, we headed back to the restaurant for more wine. And by the time it was ready to head back over to the Expo, we were taking pictures all over the place, including in the restroom.

If you are ever stressed out about heading into a crowded Expo, I highly recommend a few glasses of wine first. We walked right in, grabbed our stuff and were out of there in less than fifteen minutes.  Perfect! Because we had some more wine drinking to do.

We went back to Michelle’s and hung out on her lovely patio with her husband, Phillip, and drank some wine, ate a fabulous home made race-fuel pizza, and played out with her dog, Daisy. Daisy is the cutest thing ever! And it’s a good thing Daisy and Cherry-Berry can’t make babies because their combined happiness would cause rainbows and fairies to pop out of the sky and the Earth’s entire population would turn into a bunch of panting leprechauns. I’m not making this up; it’s just the way it is.  So we’ll just let them be lesbian lovers until it’s time to adopt.

Of course, by 11PM the pictures started to look a little like this:

And it seemed like a really smart idea to stock out fuel belts like this:

Of course, the next morning at 4AM it looked like we pinned our race bibs on inside out and upside down. Thank goodness Phillip was kind enough to straighten things out.

OK Half Marathon from Runner Susan on Vimeo.

He was also kind enough to make us his super-secret hydrating potion for the drive over. Needless to say, that was a good thing. In fact, the potion was so good, over 24 hours later and I’m STILL peeing. I’d give you the recipe, but being that it’s super-secret and all, Phillip would have to kill you.

We met Michelle’s friend, Gwyn, and were dropped off at the race. Since the race started about ten minutes after we arrived we hopped into the first corral we spotted. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that we realized we were in the very first “elite” corral. We didn’t say anything and no one pulled us out, because obviously, we looked like all the other really fast Kenyans.

We started strong, we ran well and had a great time. Along the way Gwyn taught us about running the tangent. How is it that I’ve been running for a bazillion years and I’ve never heard about running the tangent?  I’m not sure how much of a difference it made, but it made sense and kept our minds focused on our next move and not on the person directly in front of us.  We finished in 2:18. Which I’m really happy with considering I didn’t really train at all. Except for all that digging and planting.

Of course, after the race we were graciously greeted with a fabulous chilled chardonnay. I can’t think of a better way to end a race.

And it wasn’t long before the pictures started to look like this:

Sometimes I think it’s better to be fun than fast because if they were all fast, I don’t think I’d run very many. I can’t wait for the next one, although I’d be okay if it was not 79 degrees with 90% humidity! More pictures in flickr.