The Chase Race 2 miler, my all time favorite short distance race. This year I didn't get a personal record but still managed to snag 3rd in my age group--mostly due to everyone being sore and tired from having ran the Little Rock half or full marathons the weekend prior. Due to extenuating circumstances I wasn't able to run with Elsie in the one mile pet race afterwards.
I also had a last-minute but VERY welcome house-guest from the UK in the form of Dr. Sue Black who had unfortunately gotten stranded by Delta Airlines in Atlanta (there were approximately 15 people that missed the connecting flight to Austin for SXSW)--after some searching by TWBrit for alternative ways to get her where she needed to be that didn't involve a greyhound bus trip out of Houston in the middle of the night, I asked him if she was ok with a road trip from Little Rock to Austin. Yes, there were flights from Atlanta to Houston, Dallas, and Little Rock that night but no more to Austin until Sunday (this was Friday night!). I managed to help get her where she needed to be and hopefully didn't terrify her too much with my driving.
The next weekend was the Big Rock Mystery Run, the awesome blog Arkansas Outside has a great write-up explaining what it is and also provided fantastic photos of the event for FREE! I ran this with Brenda and Maria, had no intentions of racing it from the beginning, this was a fun run for us to get out and play on some trails with other like-minded (read: insane!) people. Saw some gorgeous parts of the trail that I didn't know existed and a tunnel with knee-deep, icky water that I never hope to see again, lol. Some parts were so steep we had to use our hands to clamber up. Brenda ended up falling on her butt twice in the same spot on a creek crossing (sorry Bren! It was funny after we figured out you were all right). I demonstrated some of my cursing skills on a climb that was killing my calves. All in all, great fun, can't wait to do something like that again!!!!!!!!!!!!! Here's a link to an Arkansas Outside photo of me, yes I'm the one with the crazy hair and dorky grin :D.
Finally this past weekend was the Spring Fling 5k, again no personal records or even course records set but I did manage to shave a minute off from the Valentine's Day 5k so there's some progress being made to being somewhat faster(ish). Felt like I was gonna puke from mile 2 all the way to the finish line so that means I gave it my all, which on this day was a 24:14 (chip time), enough for 15th female overall and first in my age group. Afterwards, way afterwards--too much stuffing my face with homemade goodies kind of afterwards--7 of us went out to run another 10 miles. Yes, we ARE insane.
My medal was being held by Julie for this pic, her hands are much prettier than mine!
There's a lot more to talk about but it's mostly centered around the women can run clinic that I'm attending and that's gonna be very long-winded so I want to write about that in its own post (just not tonight).
Oh and there's been a lot of this going on! Puppy cuddles and naps rock :-)
