February Marathon Training…

I can’t believe we are already into March and I am only eight weeks away from the Memorial Marathon.  February was a great month, I logged 103 miles for the month, continuing on track for exceeding my goal of at least 1,000 miles for the year.

We got serious with hills in February.  12 miles of brutal hills in northeast Norman on a bone chilling Saturday morning.  It was about 21 degrees that morning with wind chills at about 11 degrees.  I have never been that bundled up to run in my life.  It was an organized training run with the group from OK Runner and Craig had hot chocolate at the first water stop.

This is the elevation from that run, although I don’t think you can tell just how extreme those hills actually are.  We averaged a 9:05 pace, excluding our water stops, so we were pretty happy with the run overall.

The month lead up to the Cowtown half marathon, but that recap is still to come.  We ended the month with a Leap Day recovery run.  4.41 miles at an 8:41 pace, which in my mind seems pretty tough and mot really leaning toward a recovery of anything..

Cowtown Half Marathon Recap…

So, I headed down to Fort Worth for the Cowtown half marathon.  I was super excited for our girls RUNcation.  (I swear that is a real word, I saw it on another blog recently.)

So we loaded up on Saturday and headed down to the race expo to pick up our race bibs and swag and shop for new Sweaty Bands.  We were meeting up with a group from OK Runner for dinner at Prima’s Pasta & Pizza. 

Imagine our surprise when we got to our table and the waiter asked us if we had any bottles of wine that we needed him to open for us.  Seriously, we are from Oklahoma, where the liquor laws are quite a bit backwards from any other place in the country.  Bring your own wine?  Well we Oklahomans had never heard such a thing.  Our immediate disappointment was replaced with delight when he directed us to the liquor store across the street where we could go buy our wine and then come right back for dinner.

We ran across the street and then got back and had a great pre-race meal.  I had the spinach lasagna with a Caesar salad and two glasses of wine.  Looking back I should really jut stick to one glass of wine the night before a race, the wine and my nerves made for a restless night of sleep.

We did get some good pictures:

Me & Rochelle

Abby, Kelsey & Patti

Angie & Kim

After dinner we headed back to the hotel and got our stuff together and called it a night.  We were getting up at 4:45 so we could catch the 5:45 shuttle to the starting line and with four girls in our room, we had to make sure we had plenty of time for everyone to get ready.

Next up Race Day!

There’s No Way This is Cheating…

On February 26th I headed down to Fort Worth for the Cowtown half marathon.  Before I recap the race I just had to talk about the big controversy of the weekend.

I was lucky enough to meet Scott Downard the night before the race.  He works at the local running store and runs about a million miles a week.  He hadn’t registered for the race and was going to use the race bib of a friend who was registered but ended up not being able to make the race.

On Saturday night he hadn’t even decided if he was going to run the full or he would just run the half.  Apparently it hadn’t been a very good week.  We joked around about what would happen if he won the race, if he’d have to tell the truth about how he was not the person his race bib said he was.

He woke up feeling good on Sunday, he paced a friend through the first 10 miles of his first half marathon, and when the time came for the course to split between the half and the full marathons he decided to go for it.

Well here’s what happened.  He won it.  He ran 26.2 miles in 2:31, that is crazy fast.  We had all finished the half and were cheering people in and got to see him come by with his police and bicycle escort, and we saw him win it.

The name on the bib said Jerry.  After he crossed the finish line he told the race director who he was and he was promptly disqualified.  The guy that crossed the finish line second was awarded the top prize.  The guy that finished second was about six minutes behind Scott.

Basically, when this picture was taken the guy that they gave the 1st place to was just passing mile marker 25.  He got beat by a mile.  A mile.

Later in the day when we all meet for lunch he was very humble about the whole thing.  He knew that if he won that the possibility of being disqualified was there and he was okay with that.  As his blog says he didn’t want to waste the opportunity for a nice long run.

The media was all over the story, and most of it is negative.  He was called a cheater mostly.  Really, he went out there and ran 26.2 miles in 2:31, he is anything but a cheater.  Maybe race directors should rethink their policies on transferring race bibs.  Although when it comes to elite runners, I would think that these races would want all the bad ass runners they can get.

Here’s a few of the stories about the race:

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/olympics-fourth-place-medal/marathon-winner-disqualified-because-didn-t-sign-race-014434559.html

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/02/28/marathon-winner-disqualified-because-he-didnt-register-for-race/

Race Week

I love the week leading up to a race weekend. I love how I get butterflies in my stomach whenever I think about getting to the starting line and the gun going off.

Here’s a list of what is making me nervous and excited about the Cowtown Half Marathon this week…

• What am I going to wear?

• What do I need to pack?

• Will it rain?

• Where are we going to have dinner Saturday night?

• Will they have the pink sparkly Sweaty Band I want at the race expo?

• What are the race shirts going to look like?

• What am I going to wear? (This is important when you do races with people that like to take pre-race and post-race pictures.)

What I don’t do well with during race week is resting. I am working on taking advantage of my rest days, I really am. It is hard though. When someone says you should run for 30-40 minutes easy a few times during the week leading up to a race my first thought is “What’s the point?” I have said many times in the last six months that three miles isn’t worth getting my clothes dirty for and now I am telling myself to only run 3-4 miles easy.

It’s a good thing I don’t do these things all on my own. I have a FANTASTIC group of girls heading to Fort Worth with me; Kim, Abby, Rochelle, Patti, Laura, Angie and Kelsey. What could be better than a girls, trip planned around a half marathon? I hope we have room in the vehicle I am borrowing from my BIL.

I only have to pack a few things:

• Shoes

• Socks

• Race pants & capris

• Long sleeved shirt & short sleeved shirt

• Sports bra

• Garmin (It didn’t happen unless it happened on my Garmin, right?)

• Rain jacket (I am hoping to not have to break this out.)

• Gloves

• Ear warmer

• Regular jacket

• Hat (Only if it rains.)

• Sweaty band

• Spi belt

• iPod (I never run with music anymore but you never know what I’ll feel like on Sunday.)

• Camera

• Sunglasses

Well that doesn’t seem like too much stuff. Maybe I should print this out so I don’t forget anything.

I LOVE RACE WEEK!

Happy running. 

Making Baby Gifts…

Technorati Tags: crochet

I learned how to crochet a few years ago.  The daughters of the CEO of the company I work for own a yarn shop.  At one of our company picnics we could learn how to knit a scarf.  I didn’t really spend much time working on it and about a year later the girls’ girl scout troop went to the yarn store to learn how to knit.  I volunteered to go and knitting just took off for me.

About a year ago I decided that I wanted to learn how to crochet.  I knew how when I was a kid, but hadn’t done it in years.  It is amazing what you can learn on youtube.

It seems like everyone is pregnant lately. 

My cousin Greg and his wife Tabatha had a baby two weeks ago.  I found the cutest pattern for a blanket and a hat with a sock monkey theme that I made and sent to them.  I got a picture of Landon with is new blanket and hat.

I think he will have to grow into the hat a bit, but he looks so cute!

My friend Kendra is pregnant.

This is us at the Norman Conquest bike ride last summer, pre baby.

I decided that the pattern I made for Greg and Tabatha was a good one so I made another version of it for Kendra.

I have another one to make for my friend Tara.  I am so excited that she is having a baby girl so instead of blue it’ll be pink, of course.

 

 

Soccer Sugar Cookies…

Technorati Tags: sugar cookies,soccer,Ateco

I haven’t baked any sugar cookies since I baked dozens of holiday sugar cookies for a couple of our sales reps to give to their customers before Christmas.  I had been suffering a little burnout.

I also had some technical difficulties with my royal icing with the Christmas cookies.  I had run out of my Williams Sonoma meringue powder and it appears to be unavailable now.  In a pinch I went to Hobby Lobby and picked up the Wilton version.

Worst baking purchase ever.  I had all kinds of trouble with this.  While the icing still tasted good on the cookies, getting it on the cookies was a nightmare.  I had trouble with it piping, and even when I thinned it out for flooding the consistency was just strange.

I immediately ordered my second favorite brand Ateco from Amazon.com.

So much better!

I had a friend ask me about soccer sugar cookies.  I did a little research for pictures of soccer designs and thought “No problem!”.  After I committed to making two dozen I did a little more research and discovered that all the feedback on making soccer sugar cookies was negative. 

While they were a tad tedious, I was very happy that I decided to purchase some non-toxic pens to draw the pentagon on the cookies to begin the pattern.  If I hadn’t done this I would have been in big trouble.

Pentagons are not easy.

The birthday girl is number eight on her soccer team.  I just love what the black icing does to kids when they eat it.  Overall I think they turned out very cute.  It was good to make sugar cookies again.

Up this week?  Cupcakes for a wedding shower on Friday and a baby shower on Saturday.

Something New; Week Six…

First let me say that I have made stir-fry before.  I got my wok a while back on sale at T.J. Maxx and I have used it quite a few times.  For a vegetarian, stir-fry is a quick and easy meat free meal.

I have tried to cook with tofu before.  I have been very intimidated by it.  It has never turned out well.  It is frustrating because my favorite Asian restaurants, O Asian Fusion and even Pei Wei have tofu on their menus and it is always wonderful.

I decided to do a little research and see what kind of help I could find for tofu.  Turns out if you buy extra firm tofu and then wrap it up and add some weight to it you can remove any excess water which helps in the consistency when you cook with it.

I decided to try this and give it another go.  Note to self, if you put something too heavy on it you can damage it a bit.  Next time I try something less heavy.

In all I had quite a bit that wasn’t too smashed so I cut it up, and put it in the fridge to marinate it a bit while I got everything else ready for my stir-fry.

It turned out very well.  I used a Hoisin based sauce and I added brown rice noodles to it.

Mushrooms, broccoli, carrots, zucchini, and edamame. I thought it was yummy, Josh didn’t like the tofu much.  Oh well.  I do need to practice restraint when it comes to stir-fry.  I made way more than I would ever be able to eat.

I have renewed my confidence in tofu, and look forward to trying it out again.