Patriot Half Marathon

On Memorial Day, and at the end of twelve weeks of training, I successfully ran a half marathon. By successfully, I mean that I finished!! I had two blisters and a medal to show for it! And the feeling of accomplishing a goal. Which is the reason I wanted to run one in the first place. When I first told Price I wanted to run one, he looked at me confused, paused and finally asked "Why?" I answered with a shrug, "it's good to have a goal".

Alison, who's known ironically for saying once, "My goal is to do nothing", also ran the Patriot Half.

I would have never made it through the training without a running buddy. We made it up to ten miles in training and decided to let adrenaline and the running high carry us through the last 3.1 miles.

Rockwall is hilly if you didn't know. So it was a pretty rough route! These numbers will really mean nothing to most, but we trained about an 11:40 minute mile. That allowed us to gab endlessly about the kids, the husbands, c-scope, the perils of domesticating, preschool, big school, private school, food, real estate, work, to do lists, weekend recaps, dogs, etc. It was pretty much like a coffee date. Just really early, all breathy and no coffee.

Well I decided for race day I wanted to not gab and run faster at a 10:40 minute mile that would allow me to finish at 2:20 (hr:min). So on race day, I found my pace group and stuck like glue to them. Until about mile 6. They could drink water without stopping I guess. I had to stop and take a second. It would get me even more out of breath to drink and then I'd have to catch up and that was making me struggle a bit. Then at the beginning of mile seven it started getting really hilly. And then I could never catch back up to them. I could still seen them for a while but I had to say to myself, "let it go, just run to finish".

At the top of that first major hill, was my sweet marathon-running friend, Maria Paula. Oh not a better time in the whole race to see her face! It gave me some umph! Well she continued to show up here and then, yelling and screaming like mad for ME! It was awesome. She also found Alison along the way too!

During the last four miles, it got kinda lonely. I was kinda regretting my decision to run without my buddy. Thoughts that kept coming into my head were:

1. Veterans and military peeps are awesome. Signs along the way said 'thank a veteran today'. And I did. All the ones we knew, Price and I thanked that day.

2. How do people run a WHOLE marathon? Those people are crazy! How on earth do they do it? I could NEVER do a whole marathon. (But I'm not going to say never...)

3. A dog is beating me. The cutest little golden Pomeranian dog. Made me think of Foxy.

4. Why the hell did they pick such a hilly route?

5. We got so lucky on weather! The sun stayed behind clouds most of the whole run. It was humid a little but it was May! We expected that.

And then 1-5 again. And again. And multiply that by 5... at least! It's hard to think at all during long runs.

Then at mile 12.5 or so, there's Maria Paula again. She ran me all the way back to my family which were just yards from the finish. Yelling and screaming again like mad! In case you didn't know, she's pretty high energy. Again, that gave me the umph I needed! Seeing my peeps? Double umph! Presley handed me some Gatorade, I finished strong. I was handed a medal, I sat on the curb a sec, chugged the Gatorade and (somewhat) gathered my senses. I hobbled back just in time to see Alison finish.

So my exact time was 2:28:44. Just eight minutes past my "goal". I'll take it!

We celebrated afterwards at La Madeline where I enjoyed a double entree of a veggie omlette and crepes. And I polished off both plates.

After a brief turn around at home it was business as usual. We went and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon at Aunt Shelly's. I knew if I stopped for too long I would get stiff. The big kids swam, Temp frolicked in the water here in there. We cooked out and then it was back home to hit the hay. Ironically I couldn't sleep. I finally got up, popped some Advil and FINALLY drifted off to sleep.

It was a good day!

Juicy

I didn't blog last week.  Here are my excuses.

We got a ruku.  As if this family needs to watch any MORE TV!  But alas.  Price and I watched a couple documentaries last week.  Enter, freak out mode.  What are we eating?  What is in our food?  What are we allowing the girls to eat?  What is our world going to be like when our kids are old?  Sigh. 

The first one we watched was Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead.  So we ordered a juicer and started juicing.  So where was all my free time last week?  At the grocery store.  Price and I went on a three day juice fast.  We lasted until the second night.  And then we juiced most of the third day, just ate dinner that night.  I decided to just eat normally until after my race this Monday!  (eeeeeeek)  But I might jump back on board afterwards.  We'll see....  Swim suit season is upon us. 

The second documentary was Vegucated.  It was about vegan eating.  I would like to think I could eat no animal products.  I would just like to experiment and see how I felt.  I come from a long line of indigestion sufferers.  But just don't know if I have it in me to do it. 

We started another one, but I didn't allow myself to get too involved in it.  I was still in double freak out mode from the other too.  I feel better this week.  My head is almost buried back in the sand.  A place that feels most comfortable for me.  Actually I'm tightening up on the diet of the wee ones, avoiding diet cokes, and trying to not eat out as much.  Even if the process of the grocery store makes me want to poke my eyeballs out.  I can do hard things.  It's my domesticating duty. 

Now, if you'll excuse me.  I must go hydrate with some good old fashioned H2O.

Maverick

Maverick.  Oh my. 

We finally made the difficult decision to rehomed Maverick thru an aussie rescue group.  And I just found out today that he's been adopted!  We've prayed that he'll be with just the right owners for him.  Poor little crazy dog!

We'll miss him. 

Pinterest

Pinterest inspired me to cook.

And then all my domesticating hopes and dreams ended with four hard, dry chicken breasts and burnt stove top stuffing.

One pinner never said, "If you really want to waste your time going to the grocery store for these ingredients, throw it all in the crock pot, and then return to find something that'll surely break your teeth, make this!"  And my husband definitely didn't think it was "the best thing he ever ate!"  Because he never tried it.  But he did take us to dinner. 

New look

This is Temple's new look. It's really lovely and so warm and inviting. Actually she just gives it to me. She loves people and always vies for their attention. She especially loves men. Something I hope she grows out of. At least a little.

See what I mean?

Teagan is such a sweet sister. She'll be a great mother one day not any time soon.

Teagan rolled Temple's hair in curlers and then I put some in Teagan's hair and was going to snap a pic of the back of their heads. But because my iPhone is on its last leg, and it has a major delay, it caught her kissing Tempie on her cheek. Thank you, piece of crap phone. I'll let you off the hook this time.

New glasses

Presley now has options! We got her a couple extra glasses. I think she's enjoyed having new ones. They aren't as scratched up as her first pair so she can actually see through them. We got them at walmart instead of Costco like the first pair. But we had to go back to Costco to get them fitted and get the ear pieces bent down. They were sliding down her face and she had to hold her head back funny to see thru them and it was driving me crazy to just look at! So I'm sure it was driving her crazy too.

Price and I made her get the pink ones. She didn't want to but now I think she likes them just as much as the purple ones. And they are transition lens so they will turn to sunglasses which will come in handy this summer!