a little road trip to Akron to run a little race.

I was a proud girlfriend this weekend!

For the past few months my B has been training and running his @$$ off in order to meet his goal of breaking 1:30 (AKA maintaining at least a 6:50 pace... AKA ridiculous) at the Akron 1/2 Marathon. Akron was the place of his previous PR (1:31:02) in 2009. So we made the incredibly long and boring 6 hour drive north this weekend... but luckily this time we had Heather and Ryan to keep us company! They were running in the marathon relay with some friends of Ryan's who live up there.

So anywho... I watched Josh run. And run and run and run. I saw him at the start, at mile 3, mile 10, and at the finish. I like Akron because it's very spectator-friendly :)

I also learned some history while I waited for him.

After mile 10 I headed to the stadium so I could see him finish! I was all kinds of nervous watching the clock inch closer to 1:30 with no B in sight. Although there was a false alarm at 1:24... a dude in bright orange came barelling down the finish line and I was like Dang! B must have really kicked it up those last 3 miles.. geez. But then I realized that guy had long hair and a bandana... clearly not my B.

Finally, he turned the corner and down the stretch he came!


That is the face of a speed demon.

And HE DID IT!!!! He crossed the finish line in 1:29:03 (official). Which made him like 62nd over all...out of like thousands and thousands of people!

And of course... since he was so close to 1:28, he was then bummed that he didn't kick it up 4 seconds faster to break 1:29! But whatev, he broke 1:30 by almost a minute... pretty dang awesome. I was so proud :D And now he has a goal for the October 1/2 marathon... 1:28:59. Should be easy considering that course is flat and Akron is HiLlY.

Post-race fuel = beer and Starbucks, of course.

Heather and Ryan did good in their relays, too! We also had a couple other friends from home (not pictured) who ran the 1/2 and did awesome! My friend Taylor set a new PR at 1:49... I have some crazy fast friends. My goal for the Oct half is just to run the thing injury-free ;)

Congrats on an awesome race, B!!!!!! You inspire me to be a better runner and I'm so proud of you for accomplishing your goal!!! I love you!

some bullet points.

• -- the other day Lola decided to help momma (that's me) with the laundry. she loves the laundry room for some strange reason... but she's never gotten in the laundry basket and just chilled. silly girl. it probably didn't hurt that our dirty clothes smelled like camp fire. love her.
• 
  
• -- i ran yesterday.... wait, back up. on tuesday i went to the sports chiro to have him check out my IT band. it was sore after sunday and i wanted to be pro-active this time. so anyways, he did some stretches and the evil graston on me... except his version of graston is not really evil. in fact, it was almost pleasant compared to our last doc. anywho, i ran yesterday...3 miles... and i ran faster than i have in MONTHS! and it was EASY! i did not realize how slow being injured/having tight muscles was making me! i totally surprised myself!! i kept looking down at my watching and every time i was like really?? am i REALLY running this fast?! it was AWESOME!... don't get me wrong, i was by no means being speedy gonzalas, but i have not ran a pace like that since before i was injured. (so if you're local and have running issues, e-mail me and i will hook you up with our sports doc.. he's awesome!!)

-- hung out with my momma for a little bit last night. she's pretty cool.

-- the bullet points kinda went crazy and went everywhere and are also on top of my picture?? i don't know how to make them go away!

-- that's really about all i have to update you on. but we are good, things are good, life is good. fall is coming and i'm thrilled!!! and we're preparing for a little road trip this weekend. should be fun.

happy thursday!!!

An Alaskan Adventure: Part 5

AKA We're in Canada, eh!

Day 6 | September 8, 2011 | Prince Rupert, British Columbia

We didn't dock in Prince Rupert until around 4pm, which was a lot different than every other day where we had gotten there early in the morning and then spent the whole day there. We didn't have any excursions planned -- we had tentatively planned to go on a hike through this park there, which was $60 if you booked it through the cruise line but we had done some research and figured out how to do it for only $4 (which was for the city bus fare)..... (speaking of excursions, I've found that it is always a LOT cheaper to book them on your own.. I will write more about this later; I've gotten several questions recently about the cruise/Alaska, so I'll try to write up a post to address those soon!)

Anyway...sorry about the tangent! For some reason that I don't remember now, we didn't end up going to the park. We just walked around Prince Rupert and all the little shops and went to a museum there and had dinner at a sushi place.

I loved all the random signs around the city.

Do not disturb the shrubs and flowers....... are they sleeping? I don't understand.

We really didn't do a whole lot in Prince Rupert... it was our last stop and I think by this point we were all a little drained... a bit ready to go home... but it was a cute little town and we still had fun. The sushi bar was nice and we stopped at a little coffee shop on the way back to the ship called Cowpuccino's.... clever. We also stopped at a little Ikea-like store where I found everything I could ever need to decorate the house but tax there is crazy and I'm sure shipping it home would have been too ;) Prince Rupert was the perfect place for our last stop though. Nice and relaxing.

Towel Creature of the Day:

I loved the towel creature this day! By this point we had gotten to know Rafeal (our "housekeeper" who was awesome!) and the 4 of us girls would always all go to one of our rooms if they were trying to clean the other room. So since they cleaned Heather and Robin's room first, we all saw their towel creature first, and I guess Rafeal wanted me and MJ to still be surprised when we saw our towel creature... so when we went back to our room, we had this little guy waiting for us:

(!!!!) hehehe... love it! It was the only one that was hanging from the ceiling... and Heather and Robin's wasn't hanging from the ceiling...I'm just saying. It sort of had wonky eyes, but it was awesome.

And so, that was Alaska. We actually had one more day at sea, but apparently I didn't take any pictures... ?? And now I can't remember what we did because I've slept since then.

Hope you enjoyed reading about our great Alaskan adventure... thanks for coming along! :D

An Alaskan Adventure: Part 4

AKA 101 dalmations sled dogs!

Day 5 | September 7, 2011 | Skagway, AK

As per the usual in Alaska.... Skagway was bea-uti-ful.

In Skagway we went dog sledding... AKA "mushing"! <----- Can someone tell me how to pronounce that word because we had a disagreement about it. Is it "m-uhh-shing" or "m-ooo-shing"??

Anyways, we took a "monologue" to the top of a mountain to hang out with some sled dogs at a musher's camp.

I don't actually remember what it's called now, but Robin kept calling it a "monologue" so there we have it. Basically it's a big, old army truck thing -- and they made sure we knew it was a Mercedes.

When we got up there we met all kinds of sled dogs, and learned that even though they are huskies in the movies, real sled dogs are actually mutts. They are part Alaskan Husky and part greyhound, usually... probably mixed with other breeds too. They just use huskies in the movies because they are better looking, apparently.


We went on a little ride around the camp, powered by 16 sled dogs. Some of them have even done the Iditarod, which is an 1100 mile race... pretty much like the Ironman for sled dogs! Pretty amazing!

These dogs were soo happy when they were running! It was a really neat experience to see what all goes into dog-sledding and mushing. We met a guy who is training for the Iditarod and it was amazing to see what all goes into that.. especially the finances. He said it was going to cost over $20,000 for everything!!! and $1500 a month just to feed all his dogs, crazy!! But this was because it's his first year entering the race, after this year it will only be about $10,000.... no big deal.


After our dog sledding experience, we got to hang out with some cute little puppies!

Seriously adorable! I wanted to smuggle one home in my purse... but I refrained ;)

On the way back down the mountain, we stopped at a little over-look for a photo op.

GORGEOUS.

Seriously... geez, I love Alaska.

After the tour we said thanks to Garrett for the fabulous tour of Skagway and the musher's camp and then did a bit of exploring on our own.

Skagway is super teeny tiny, so it didn't take long.

Sunset from the ship was beautiful that night.

The scenery in Alaska is unlike any I've ever seen before. It was prettifulness everywhere!

Then....... dinner.

Dinner on a cruise ship sure is better than dinner at home. I'm just saying.

(okay, I didn't really have this for dinner... it was just chocolate buffet night! so it was just dessert AFTER dinner!)

Forgot to mention... saw none other than Kathy in Skagway!

Kathy is my friend and hair lady for the past 7 years! Last time I went to get my eyebrows done we figured out that we were going to be on the same cruise! I didn't think I'd actually see her though since there were like 2500 other passengers on there as well, but we actually ran into each other several times on the ship and at the ports! I still think it's so random that we went on the same cruise! small world.

Towel Creature of the Day:

Next (& final) stop: Prince Rupert, British Columbia

some fish & a race.

More Alaska coming soon! But first, a little weekend update.

Saturday we spent the day at the farm.. it was the 2nd annual family fish fry! I don't actually know if it's only going to happen once a year.. for all I know, we'll do it again sometime this fall. But we did it last year, and we did it this weekend, so I am dubbing it The 2nd Annual Family Fish Fry. Speaking of fall... I can't believe it is already that time of the year! Is it just me or is 2011 flying by?!

so yes, fishing. Saturday was spent fishing and hanging out with the fam.

Can you believe how much bigger Avery is compared to last year's fish fry??

She walks around and everything.

She's so cute, and she loves Gage and Morgan so much... it's adorable! She tries to talk to Gage... love it. I love having nieces and nephews....even though they are technically Josh's. But whatever, I love them. My brothers really need to get on that!

Kosmo even went swimming!! It was so good to see him back to normal!!!

The night was cut a little short after I was holding Avery and she somehow opened up a bottle of Sprite (with a twisty cap!) and spilled it all over us... it was a little too chilly to be walking around with wet pants on... :-/

Sunday morning I got up bright and early (actually, it was still dark) to run the Downtown Doubler with our neighbor Nikki.

I ran it last year. I had been wanting to run it this year as well, but I did not feel prepared. Considering I hadn't run more than 5 miles at a time since February, 9.3 sure seems like a looong way to go. But since Nikki signed up I decided to go for it... she's a new runner and had only ever run 6 miles before, so I figured we were in about the same boat and I could just stick with her.

I decided I'd break it up into three 5K's.. which is what I did last year because for whatever reason, last year it was a very mentally challenging race for me. I went into it fully expecting to walk a lot and for it to be a huge mental battle like it was last year.

Much to my surprise -- it wasn't! I felt really good mentally and I actually ran the whole thing, only stopping once for about 30 seconds to stretch.

The first 5K was pretty boring and slow..I was still warming up. I ended up losing Nikki about half mile in, so I didn't actually run with her, but it was still motivating to know she was behind me.. gave me a boost to keep going.

The 2nd 5K was my best because around mile 5, all my faster friends had already turned around so I got to see them on their way back... for some reason running past everybody else always gives me a big energy boost.

Super fast runner friends... Sheri (green) who is waaaayy super faster than I'll ever be, and Heather (pink) who is still waay faster than me, but actually runs at an attainable pace for me if I train for it. Maybe next year I can run with her!
Also ran into my twitter friends Mike and Rob before the race! good to see them!!

The last 5K was more of a challenge because I was starting to get sore. But other than my hips and my IT band, I definitely felt like I could keep going which was a good feeling!

Oh, also? Saw a ROOSTER on the course. It was just chillin' there. I noticed it from far away and I was like What the heck is that? in my head... and then I got closer and I was like Is that a rooster??? Am I hallucinating??? have I been running for too long??!?! But no, sure enough it was a rooster... Nikki saw it too. I told B about it when I passed him but I think he thought I was crazy. I wish I had run with my phone so I could have taken a picture!

So anyway--- I am pretty happy with how I did at the race! I didn't break any speed records or anything, that's for sure, but I came in right around the same time I did last year which, given the circumstances, I'll take! And mentally it was actually a LOT better than last year. I guess it's good to know that I can randomly run 9.3 miles without really training for it... I'm definitely feeling it today though! I'm afraid I might have aggravated my IT band again, so I'll be heading to the doctor this week! After yesterday I definitely want to try for a half marathon this fall!!! But I'd like to actually train for it and try to get faster and make it less painful ;)

We did it!!

And that was my weekend.

Hope your's was fabulous.




Happy Monday!