I ran my 41st half marathon last weekend, the Dallas 13.1 Series. Pretty cool to have run as many as I am old. It’s been a crazy week or I would have posted about it sooner, but Peggy and I had a blast not sweating like pigs because it is 112 degrees outside. The run was good too . . . I didn’t start to even feel it until mile ten. Baby steps, Internet People, baby steps.

After the half, I jumped in the shower and headed north to play with my Martini Twin. But this time playtime was called paint the former bedroom and currently new wine room the color of Cabernet Franc. So, not only did I get lower body workout, my arms and shoulders got a workout too. We did pretty awesome if I do say so myself! Daisy approves, it is her new favorite room.

And now that I am finally rid of my gross bacteria, I have e.coli. [Insert big sigh here] [And big glass of wine here]

Sister Runner Amy and I ran the White Rock Half Marathon on Sunday. It was cold, we dated Galloway more than we didn’t, but we finished. At this point in my life, putting one foot in front of the other and moving in a forward direction is my goal.

Goal accomplished.

And then SRA made me work until my fingers nearly dropped off.

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!

We totally look like twins:

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.

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.

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!

I ran the slowest five miles ever this morning. At one point I was going so slow a walker passed me. Massoman even finished and circled back in his car to make sure I was okay. I was. I even saw a shooting star through the fog; I love early morning runs.

I’m good with the slow pace today because my plan is working. And just what is my plan? I trash my legs Monday through Thursday for two hours in the forms of leg torture, weight lifting, running or cycling, I recover Friday or Saturday with a Cherry Berry trail run or an easy ride, and Sundays I race or do a long run. I’m not sure if this is a good plan, but it seems to be working so far, although ‘so far’ has only been 2 weeks.

Now about that 1:59:59 half marathon . . . the race people have me down for an official time of 2:05 and now I don’t know what to do. I’m pretty good with my watch and I am always within 2 or 3 seconds either way of the chip time, so I’m a little confused how I could be five whole minutes off. Michael says I should use my watch time because he witnessed as the race people messed around with the clock after the race started. But I’m an “official” type of girl; I need to see things in writing to satisfy that “I really did it” feeling – especially when it comes to a PR and running a sub 2 hour half even if it is by only 1 second. So, now I’m really bummed.

One option would be to run another half marathon soon and make sure I run it under 2 hours so I have a new, new PR. There is one coming up on November 23rd that is along the Trinity River similar to the Fort Worth half. The only problem is I’ve committed to a 20-mile bike rally on November 22nd and I’m not sure if I could PR in the half marathon the day after a bike rally. I am also running the White Rock Half on December 14th, but that is so far away and I’m afraid it might be 100 degrees again – chances are slim that it would be  – but it’s Texas, it could happen.

Today, I think I ran the smallest half-marathon in history of half-marathons. There were about 30 people registered for the full marathon and about 60 or so registered for the half. I’m not quite sure even if everyone showed up. I was pretty sure I’d come in last – and I’m not sure yet, but I still think I came in close to last.  See, here is a picture Michael took at the start and this is pretty much everyone.

The race started at the La Grave baseball field in Fort Worth and the course was an out and back along the Trinity Trail and ended back at the baseball field. A lot of the course was crushed gravel and, other than getting a few pebbles in my shoes, it was like running on a springboard compared to concrete.  And the weather was near perfect at 50 degrees. I was happy. I’m also happy with my unofficial PR time: 1:59:59.

There were a few glitches, the biggest with the timing system and I’m not certain I will even have an official chip time, but there was a guy jotting down everyone’s finish time as they crossed the line. There were also moments along the course when I was totally alone and wasn’t sure if I was going in the right direction. Michael said the lady who won the half was chewing the race director out because the course was marked so poorly in a few places that making decisions on where turn drastically affected her time. (It was an out and back course – and being the most directionally challenged person in the world – if I figured it out then anyone could figure it out.)

I really enjoyed myself this morning. The trail was beautiful and I absolutely loved not being boxed in at the beginning. I forgot how much I love Fort Worth. I will definitely sign up for this race next year.

Donkey is not as happy with my time as I am, he wanted me to run longer so he could nap in the stadium a little more. More pictures here.

If you want to guarantee yourself an extra hot race day, just invite Runner Susan. Because every freaking race I’ve run this year it’s been one billion degrees outside. Okay, so technically it was around 80 degrees by the finish . . . but it felt like one billion.

It was a really packed race and that was a little surprising since I’ve run this race before with half as many people. I guess it’s good that people are getting fit. I meet up with Richie at the start line, we were right behind the 2 hour pace group, and it was my full intention to stay with Richie the whole race, but I was only able to hang with his 9 minute pace for about 4 miles. Then he was history. It didn’t take me long and I settled into a comfortable pace and was able to finish in 2:10:37 (unofficial). UPDATE: Official time: 2:10:34. I’m good with that time; my mind was other places today.

I saw Kevin from 5ks and Cabernets before the race, it was good to see him, he finished in 1:38:59. That’s like super crazy insane fast. Richie took off before I could get a picture – I’m starting to think he’s afraid of my camera.

Oh, and I washed my shoes and they performed as good as new. I figured after my drenching in Chicago, the washing machine was nothing.

Usually after I finish another marathon, I look forward to the weeks or months of enjoying sleeping until a normal hour of the morning. Not this time, I have some unfinished business and tomorrow is a new beginning of torturous workouts that will start my day at 4am once again.

I don’t have an entire plan layered out yet, but I know one thing for sure – I’m not going to let go of everything I’ve worked so hard for these past few months.

Next race: DRC Half Marathon, November 2nd.

I don’t have a whole lot to say about this half except I got a big blister at mile 2 and the whole entire rest of the race sucked big time. Over the last five years I’ve tried every possible combination of every imaginable blister preventive measure and nothing stops my left arch from blistering. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t and I never know why. I pouted from mile 2 through mile 13 and it made for a very long race. My legs were also tired from leg torture on Thursday, and that didn’t help, but they were strong and my cardio was strong and I was pissed that I couldn’t run faster. Finish time: 2:24 – don’t know my spilts yet.

You would think that after FIVE YEARS OF HAVING THE SAME BLISTER IN THE SAME PLACE my foot might be callused or scared in that spot. But no, I’m special and I get to have the same stinking blister FOREVER. Now, I’ve just got to figure out how to make this thing go away by next Sunday so I can be done with crazy part 2. And I will be, healed or unhealed.

On a positive note, I wore my NY marathon race shirt as inspiration and several people congratulated me. At mile one someone running the other direction said to someone “did you see that girl in orange shirt, she ran the NY marathon” and I thought to myself “yes that girl did!” Around mile 9 a cyclist going by nearly knocked over a few runners to open her jacket to show me her NY marathon shirt. It was funny.

Here are a few pictures my friend Linda, aka “The Devil”, who ran the 5k, took as I finished. Sorry if the blazing white skin hurts your eyes, I hear vampire is really in this year and I totally want to be in fashion. It’s the little things that count.

I ran ten miles this morning, albeit not as fast as I would like – but it was stupid windy and 77 degrees. Poor me. I still felt pretty strong and did a fair amount of walking towards the end.

Here is what my next few weeks look like: tomorrow I have plyometric leg torture, Wednesday 5 miles, Thursday leg torture again and Saturday the Texas Half Marathon.

The following Sunday, Feb 17th is the Austin Full Marathon and the following Saturday, Feb 23rd is the Cowtown Full Marathon. So, it’s half, full, full for the next few weekends. Am I crazy? I did not get a long, long run in during this marathon training go around (thank you cold, illness and laziness) so I figure I’ll just use races as my long run and bippity boppity bacon I’ll be fast someday.

I’d like to qualify for the Boston Marathon sometime before I turn 40, which doesn’t leave me much time, and I don’t think only running one marathon a year is going to get me there. So this year, I’d like to run at least five full marathons and a whole gob of halfs. So that’s my plan for 2008: race, race, race, race.

I don’t know people, I’m just not feeling the love in this new template. How are those swirlys treating you? Do your eyes hurt? I’m all about the minimum and the white space, but I wanted to try something different. I’ll work this more later.

I also need to start working on getting my legs out the door and on the road. It’s either been cold and rainy or cold and foggy all week. I’ll do cold, but I don’t do foggy or rainy very well. I forget how much I have on my schedule for my long run tomorrow, but I’m sure it’s a lot. Tomorrow we’ll reach 52 degrees with a little sun. I like that forecast and it gives me no excuse to sit on my butt. Which is exactly what I’ve done all day today. Mostly because of the dinner party we went to last night, where they served five bottles of wine between six of us. FIVE. I’ve cut back on the adult beverages so much that I’m not good for any more than 2 glasses of wine these days. I’m a whimp.

Here’s a little love you can feel – pictures of Sister Runner Amy and I at the White Rock half.