Half Marathon (part 2)

So we finally got to the hotel after our long walk dragging our luggage.

After a quick bedbug check (anyone else creeped out by the possibility of those in hotels? Eww the thought sends shivers down my spine...), we relaxed a bit and started talking dinner.

We decided on the hotel buffet (called "More" haha). It was $30 for both of us and very good. So many different things to try. I'm the type of person who gets a tiny amount of every single thing that looks good. I was happily surprised at the inexpensive food in Vegas - I was expecting to spend much more.

After dinner we went right back to the room. The plan was a very early bedtime because the race was so early. Plus we were beat. With the time change, it was midnight EST by the time we turned out the lights.

We both had weird dreams about the race and we were up before our alarm, which was set for 5:30am Vegas-time. Breakfast for me was brown sugared oatmeal and some fresh fruit from a certain popular coffee place. The lines were crazy! At that hour, none of the buffets were open and everyone wanted to fuel up before the race. I also ate some nuts for some extra protein.

Back at the hotel room we finished eating and got ready to go. The race started at 7am but being in the second to last corral we were looking at more than a 30 min wait. The start and finish were at Mandalay Bay. We jogged over from our hotel, stretched a little (tough since there were so many people and no good places to sit on the ground), found our corral and waited.

This is me in my pink shirt, waiting in the corral :)

Our shoes with orange timing tags - I'm wearing capris, C is wearing long pants

The view ahead of us (looking south)

The view behind us to the last corral

We heard the tail end of the national anthem (the starting line was pretty far from us) and the race started but our corral didn't move. We were anxious to start.

Then I realized I really had to pee. Uh oh.

I tried to ignore it. All the corrals were lined up going south on the strip and curled around to the north side. While we waited we watched the runners, that had just started, going past us in the north lane. It was fun to watch all the different costumes. So many Elvis-es? Elvi? haha

I still really had to pee.

I decided the feeling was not just in my head and told C that I was going to run and find a porta-potty. Much hate for those (yuck) but it was necessary. C was worried but I was optimistic. I'll be back in time! By that time we were slowly moving forward toward the starting line. I ran as fast as I could, was in and out super fast, and back with C before she moved very far at all. Whew. I can't even explain how happy I was that I chose to go then. I would never have made it.

The purple banner is above the starting line - getting closer!

I was extremely excited at this point - almost there!!

And we're off! The sea of jogging heads in front of us

The guy above the G in the starting line pic above was the singer, dressed as a blues brother, in a band that was playing. There were bands scattered throughout the race but less than I thought there would be. It was still so much fun jogging up the strip. There were a lot of spectators and cheer leaders.We slowed down at the second or third water station for a quick drink and kept going. I had my garmin and I was keeping an eye on our pace to make sure I wouldn't totally burn myself out. My goal was to jog for half of the 13.1 miles and I REALLY wanted to do that.

Once we got past the actual strip and on to some of the side roads, there were a lot less people on the sidelines and it almost seemed like we were at the very end of the whole thing - kind of deserted. But, there were thousands of people behind us. We kept checking ;)

This is heading back south, you can see the stratosphere in the distance

MILE 8! We had not taken a walking break at all at this point!

This guy was at approximately 8.5 miles if I remember correctly

It was a little before this point that things started getting tough. My goal was to run for half, which is 6.55 miles. We had passed that by a long shot and were so amazed at ourselves already but we wanted to push on for as long as we could. It was getting difficult.

Part 3 coming soon!

Half Marathon (Part 1)

I am glad I bought a crappy camera to bring with me (I would have felt terrible if I damaged or lost my good camera) but whoa boy, did I take some crappy pics. Posting them anyway - bad pics are better than no pics, right?

C and I had non-stop flights to and from Vegas. We got stuck sitting in a full 3-seat row both times which was a pain but we survived :) When we landed on 12/4, we took a shuttle right to the health and fitness expo to pick up our race packets.

red carpet into the expo

the line for our corral

The expo was interesting but was a lot more sparse than I imagined it. At least some of that was probably due to the fact that we were there at the tail end of it. We didn't stay long. On our pass-through we found stretchy belts with a zipper pocket to carry things while jogging. I bought one to carry the camera the next day and it worked well.

We thought about catching a taxi to our hotel (we were going from the venetian to the luxor) but decided not to. It was a lot longer of a walk than we realized. We had to cross the strip back and forth for construction areas and large crowds. Really it would have been fine but we both still had our luggage. I was soooo happy to finally see the hotel.

the view of the strip out our slanted window

This is taking me forever to post so stay tuned for part 2! :)

So Awesome

We finished! We did much better than we ever thought we could and we completed it in a lot less time than we thought too :)

It was an awesome experience and I'm totally thinking about doing another one in the future. I have more pics and want to share more details but I've been annoyingly busy (with work, buying xmas gifts, housework, etc.) since I got back and the times I haven't been busy I just haven't felt like blogging.

Another post coming soon I hope!

(and I'm behind again - 285 posts in my reader - time for some more catch-up)

1 Day Left

Whoa baby - 1 day until the half marathon on my ticker. I'm not nervous really but I am worried that I won't be able to do this. I'm freaked about not being able to finish or hurting myself trying.

I bought a new crappy camera (so I don't mind too much if it breaks, gets stolen, lost, etc.) to take on the actual run with us so I plan to have pics to show when I get back!

Speaking of pics, this is one I took on our last run with my new crappy camera. We do long runs at a local bike path and it looks so dreary now that winter is here. I know it's a pretty bad pic but I took it while I was actually running and I think the way it focused is interesting. Makes the path look neverending, which is how it feels a lot of the time :) haha

Our flight to Vegas takes off in 9.5 hours. I hope this turns out to be awesome.

Disappointing Last Run

I think I'm in denial that I'm going to Vegas this weekend. It doesn't seem real.

This past weekend was our last long run and it was pretty disappointing. We were supposed to do 10 miles. We wanted to do more like 11 miles. We ended up doing about 8 miles. In two hours. Which is slow, even for us. And I forgot my garm.in at home so we had to guess at approximate mileage. Damnit! I was kicking myself.

C and I were both really tired. I wasn't in pain at all but I was beat. C's hip started hurting toward the end which sealed the deal.

I don't think we both ate well enough that day and the day before in order to have enough energy for a long run. C said she had hardly eaten anything earlier that day because she woke up really late and we left for our run around 2:30pm. I did make a point of eating a good amount that morning but I was sick the night before.

At around 3pm on Saturday I started getting this bizarre aching feeling in my... girl parts. It was annoying but I was trying to ignore it. Then about an hour later I got what felt like AF cramps but higher, to the left of my belly button, which came on in waves accompanied by intense back pain/cramping. It sucked. The worst of the pain I was crying through but it passed in minutes. It peaked about 4 times from ~4pm - 10pm that night and then lessened to a dull ache.

Apparently the appendix and gall bladder are on the right side, and I've been to the ER before (years ago) for weird pain like that and they weren't able to do anything for me except give me pain killers that made me throw up, so I decided there was no need to go. R is super supportive and caring when I'm sick. He took care of me.

Since I felt yucky most of the day, I barely ate anything, and I think that contributed to our crappy run the next day.

I'm feeling a bit better now but occasionally have twinges that worry me since I'd rather not feel pain again like I did on Saturday. I'm feeling a twinge, that may or may not be related, right now in fact.

Oy. This better not interfere with the half marathon trip this weekend.

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Thanksgiving went well, despite the fact that stress is at an all time high at work and I worked most of my 5 day vacation-that-was-only-a-vacation-in-so-far-as-I-didn't-have-to-drive-to-the-office.

We hosted dinner for 10 adults and a 1 year old. I cooked a 16+ pound turkey in Alton-Brown-brining-style, like I do almost every year. In addition to turkey and ham, we have all the "standard" stuff like mashed potatoes, candied yams, stuffing, *can*berry sauce (it's a must), cranberry salad, gravy, etc. There was way too much dessert, 3 pies and a cake that my MIL surprised us with (she was only supposed to bring the ham).

The 1 year old finger painted her food all over her section of our dining room table and my dog had a wonderful time cleaning up her mess on the floor and chair.

He wishes we had a baby, too.

Finally Caught Up

After being so very far behind in reading blog posts in Oct (1000+ unread posts), I've finally caught up.

Seriously like 2 mins ago when I read the very last post queued in my reader. My reader currently says 0. Yay!

I'm sure I'll get behind again but it feels good to be caught up for the moment :)

I have a lot of blogs in my reader (225 actually) and earlier this year I categorized them all because of a question posed by a fellow blogger about how many blogs is too many to follow and comment on regularly.

My categories are:
Dormant (haven't posted in months or ended) - 40
No Comment (blogs I like to read but I very rarely or never comment on. Things like popular "mommy blogs", food or fitness blogs, humor blogs, etc.) - 75
Comment (blogs I sometimes comment on) - 47
New (blogs I've recently added to my reader and have not decided what category they should go into yet) - 25

The final category is for bloggers I feel I have a "connection" with. They read my blog (can be often or rarely) and/or "follow" me and I make a special effort to follow their blogs in detail and comment as often as possible. There are 38 in this category.

Does this sound bad? I hope not.

I do it this way so I can keep this crazy hobby manageable :) Some blogs I look at like a magazine - I read and am interested but I'm probably not going to write a letter to the editor. Some blogs I look at like a FB update from a long lost classmate - I might comment, I might not, it depends on the subject and how much time I have at the moment. And some blogs I look at like a phone call from a friend - I listen, try to understand, commiserate, cry with them, rejoice with them, and reply.

My categories are very dynamic. Blogs are moved around often due to adding subscriptions, moving abandoned blogs to "dormant", and connections with the individuals behind the blogs that I read changing. The connection doesn't have to be profound, sometimes it's even one-sided, but these are the blogs I reserve most of my time for.

When I have 1000+ unread blogs, it's so easy to quickly read the "no comment" blogs in a few minutes. It's very easy to skim and skip over posts that don't look interesting in this category. The posts that build up into gigantic piles are the ones that I want to spend my time reading and commenting on.

For anyone reading this: Do you have a system like this? How do you manage all the blogs you follow?

Progress

"Sign up for a 5k, it will totally motivate you!"

I didn't believe this at all, even though I read it everywhere. When I signed up for my first 5k in the early spring it didn't serve to motivate me, it only stressed me out. I was sick for weeks leading up to it so that is definitely part of the reason but it really didn't motivate me.

I've proven myself wrong though. Being signed up for the half marathon has DEFINITELY motivated me to stay on my current training program. If I didn't sign up there would have been so many times in the last month that I'd have procrastinated or skipped running. There has only been 2 days that we haven't run (or run/walked) so far and that was because of specific events - one was Halloween weekend where we hosted a party for about 20 people on Saturday and then I went with C to our mom's house on Sunday. No long run for us that weekend but I did spend most of the entire Saturday standing and cooking and decorating and cleaning. :)

Anyway, we've been kicking ass and I still can't believe we are doing this. C is officially registered as well now. We have air and hotel booked. I received my race number and final instruction email. I'm in corral 31 - it's gonna be a long, chilly wait at the starting line!

We've found, to our surprise, that we can jog longer distances than we ever thought we could.

• On Oct. 3rd we jogged 3.5 miles straight for the first time.
• On Oct. 12th we jogged 4 miles straight for the first time.
• On Oct. 17th we jogged 6 MILES straight!! We couldn't believe it. We still can't.

Since then we've gone up and down in our run mileage, sometimes walking part way, and we are still getting faster, little by little.

Here's one of our recent awesome (for us anyway!) runs:

11/17/10
Run Time: 1:08:05
Run Distance: 5.00 miles
Ave Pace: 13:36/mi

Mile 1: 13:30
Mile 2: 13:31
Mile 3: 13:55
Mile 4: 13:39
Mile 5: 13:28

Originally when I contemplated the half marathon I thought if we could run the first 3 miles and walk the rest we would still do pretty well. I didn't really see myself being able to run very much further than 3 miles. Now I know I can. Now I think we have a good shot at running the first HALF of the half marathon. Holy crap.