But doing it anyway. What can I say? Jeanne and Nod are awesome! So awesome, in fact, I want to adopt them and force them to live with me forever and ever.
It would have been nice if we had a little bit of sunshine and the weather was warmer, but it didn’t interfere too much with our weekend plans: shop, shop, shop, eat, drink, shop, hot tub, eat, drink, drink, drink, sleep, shop. Repeat x 3.
Throw in an icy half-marathon, a makeover, teaching Ms. Not Born to Run how to wear a bra Texan Style, an obligatory Starbucks rescue or ten, and you’ll have our weekend. Full and Fun!
Are we not in Texas anymore? They said the windchill around White Rock Lake was -2 degrees. Wind blowing sideways. Really. Sideways. The bridges were covered with ice. Ice, in Texas. Ice. Real, live icy stuff. Where is global warming when you need it? I don’t know if that is accurate or not, but it seriously felt like we were in Antarctica. I have never, ever, ever, ever been so cold. The last four miles of the race absolutely brutal – there wasn’t a place on my body that wasn’t numb. I’m still cold. Really. And I’m chaffed so bad I’m still oozing puss. Gross, I know.
My time: 2:14:05 – which, considering the wind was blowing sideways and it was either move or die of frostbite, I’m okay with. If it wasn’t for Jeanne and Nod I would have bailed. I’m so glad they are here!! And I can’t wait to share our shopping extravaganza reports with you.
Are we the cutest Popsicles on the planet or what? Jeanne did great, Nod did great, Donkey did great, I did great. When in Antarctica, survival is the only thing that matters.
More photos here. And funny thing is, this was the smallest part of our vacation. I almost forgot we ran a half marathon. Silly me. More on that later. Fun. Fun. Fun. I love them both – I want to adopt them and force them to live with me.
The Midol has mysteriously disappeared or someone is hiding it from me. Either way proves no good for anyone even remotely near me. That, combined with the two hours I spent shopping for a bathing suit yesterday and I’m about ready rip my arm off and sam hell beat the next person who walks by me and weighs under 120 pounds.
My plan to lose a few pounds was lost this morning. I was planning on running another half marathon – but last night we were covered with very serious thunderstorms. And this morning when I got up at 4 AM to check the weather it was still raining. No, make that pouring. I don’t do rain because I don’t do blisters. So I went back to bed. When I got up at 7:15 it had stopped raining, but I only had 15 minutes to get to the race that was an hour away. Now I’m pissed I wasted $75.00 on the registration.
So if you don’t mind, I’m going to find my way to the kitchen and eat everything that isn’t nailed down – then I’m going to and try and waddle on the treadmill for a bit before it’s time for dinner.
WARNING: This post does not make much sense because I spend a lot of time talking to myself.
I had so much fun last weekend running the half marathon, I’m itching to do another. Of course, I don’t think I could run too many during Girls Weekend; I’d break down sooner or later. Hopefully later. Anyhow, there is a local half this weekend and I’m trying to decide if I should run it or not. It’s a smaller race but VERY hilly, which would be good training, but the hills would be tough. I’m not a good hill climber on my feet or with my bike, so maybe it would be good for me. But then again, I’m not about hills. You see my dilemma.
Half marathons are probably my favorite race distance (at the moment) – and if I ever took it somewhat seriously, I might even get faster. But what is our lesson here? Faster does not mean Funner.* Okay, back to the point, why am I even bringing this up? Because, (and this is where the runners need not freak out – I’ll explain why in a minute) I promised the Chef I would ride the Hotter N Hell Hundred in August. And in order to finish this race I’m going to have to start the training plan he’s put together for me soon – and he has a long ride on the schedule for Sunday – half marathon day. I’m not one with the bike yet, but I REALLY need to start thinking about getting one with the bike – or I might just be dead on the bike. I haven’t made a decision yet, but I think I might run this half marathon and then start the HHH training on Monday. Sound fair? I think so.
Okay, so let explain why Runner Susan is still Runner Susan and not Rider Susan. Because as soon as HHH is over, my plan is to start training for another race – maybe even a marathon. I’m thinking Houston in January of 2010. Nothing is set in stone, because I need to do some shorter races too, because I have yet to prove to myself that I actually have fast twitch muscle fibers that can do some damage in a shorter race. Now, I just need to figure out if I’m Type IIa or Type IIb. This is where you can tell I’m rambling because I’ve had 3 cups of espresso. And yeah, I know I should spell check, but I’m too wound up to take the time to do anything productive.
Right here is where I was going to talk about how we helped the local vet save the neighbors goat, Vinny. Seriously – it was dark, the owners were out of town, and the goat was on the ground with its eyes rolled back and barely moaning – near death I tell ya. I held the mouth bit while the Chef held the horns so the vet could shove a tube down his throat and relieve him. But then I decided it really didn’t really make sense in the context of all this running and riding stuff so I left it out. But in case you are wondering, Vinny is alive and well because of our goat-saving kindness.
So, Internet People, what do you think? Am I crazy? Delusional beyond caffeine? Does this post make any sense at all?
*Yes, I know funner is only a word in Australia, but I think it’s kind of fun to throw in foreign words every now and then – makes me smarter than I look . . . and goes along with all the run-on sentences, superfluous commas and unnecessary explanation points!
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.
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.
Our original plan was to run the half marathon as Superheroes, but since ILikeToast was a spoilsport and took his manties back to Australia we had to come up with another plan.
A plan that was a little more natural for us. And that plan was supermodel racing. And, of course, as supermodels, we didn’t want too run fast or get too sweaty when the photographers have hired 20,000 people as extras for the photo shoot. They even had confetti.
When we were the superhero wonder twins our goal was to finish in 2:00 – 2:15 and we were double banded to prove it.
The rest of the race we were chased by paparazzi, and naturally we obliged every photographer with our grace and beauty.
We finished in 2:27:55 and received our supermodel medallions and proceeded to the post-race party where Katy would be performing cover songs of AC/DC.
I’m sure with each of us not training for 14 days and only getting 3 hours of sleep the night before added a few minutes to our time, but it’s not often you get to run with the great and powerful IHATETOAST . . . and at this race, the longer the better. You can view more pictures by clicking here.
Stay tuned because the Wonder Twins will be participating in the Jogger Egg Nogger 15k on the 20th . . . and boy, those will be some good photos because we will actually be drinking egg nog along the way!
