It started off cold...then got nice. The trees finally bloomed! This beauty popped up in my front yard.
Then THIS happened yesterday.
I wish I was joking. And gotta love Bryan and Brooke, who seem to be immune to cold weather. Brooke wanted to make a snow man, in her shorts. Bryan thought it would be a great idea to help as long as he didn't have to put shoes on. It was cold, windy and we got about 3 inches of snow! Happy Mother's Day Colorado!
This weekend was jam packed with my studio's dance recital, and piano recital. It was a first for me as far as putting on a dance recital by myself. It was a lot of work, but the girls did great! I ended up with about 30 girls performing. They are all beginners but it was still a blast!
Peter played piano in the recital too. He really doesn't sit still for a picture lately, but I caught him at just the right moment for this one!
I've also been busy making a few cakes too!
I made a beach cake for a friend's 40th bday, a strawberry cake, and a triple chocolate layer cake that didn't seem to get a picture...
Afternoon church can be hard on little kids. This is a rarity in my house. My kids usually don't go to bed unless they are placed in their beds and threatened with 30 lashes with an uncooked noodle before they will nap...
I also did a 1/2 marathon on Saturday. It was a trail half, and one of the hardest runs I have ever done.
I felt like the whole thing was up hill. I know that isn't possible, but it might have been... We ran up for 8 miles and down for 5, for a total elevation gain of 2800'. I finished in 2:55 and am very happy with my time. I didn't really start training until 3.5 weeks before. I have been running all winter, but the longest run I did before this was 9 miles, so pulling off 13 on a mountain was doable, but I wasn't trying for a specific time.
Recap of the race (for those of you that care for a play-by-play, if not you can skip this and it won't hurt my feelings!)
Mile 1: Up. Not too bad, since we are just starting. My friend up in the picture in the blue shirt, Rachael, and I decided to run the whole thing together and do it as a 'training' run and try not to care about our time.
Mile 2: More Up. At this point I have the claustrophobia that always sets in when I am stuck in the middle of a pack of people and we are trying to run. There is no room to think, or enjoy being outside. I HAVE to pass people at this point.
Mile 3: More and More and MORE up. This hill really sucks. I am thinking "what did I get myself into?" All I know is that what goes up must come down, right?
Mile 4: Wrong. We got a teaser of a trail that had some nice rolling hills and was super pretty. Old forest, with a single track trail and plenty of shade.
Mile 5: So much for a break. We left the fun rolling loop for this other steep rocky hill. Everyone around me kept telling me it was another great trail with 'rollers'. Ya, right. It was just up hill.
Mile 6-7: The worst part- an 'out and backs' Single track, dirt trail that we have to run to an end point and turn around. What is the point?! I hate that! I need a destination from point A to point B. Mentally, this was really hard for me. It wasn't the steepest part, but knowing that I was running to a dead end really didn't sit well.
Mile 8: At this point I had been running 2 hours. 2 HOURS! Not cool. I expect to be done with road race 1/2 in this much time. (And probably if I trained a bit more, I would have been a couple miles further) It had still been mostly up hill to this point.
Mile 9: Here is the real worst part. Seriously. I got hungry. (why do I keep doing that during races?!) And we got to loop back to the same steep rocky part that we did in mile 3. Lucky for me Rach was in a great mood and wanted to kick up the pace on the hill. She was practically skipping up it. At least me trying to keep up with her distracted me from my hunger pangs.
Mile 10: Another out and back. For reals. Enough said.
Mile 11: We are on the way back! Yay! My legs were so jelly, and we were on the down hill, so I had to be careful not to eat it. Speaking of eating...I did bust out my lemon Luna bar at this point. Eating and running sucks. My mouth is dry and the bar was like carboard. I had about 1/10 of it and it took the entire mile to choke it down. But I had more energy and was really motivated to finish strong.
Mile 12-13: Downhill is heavenly. I dug down deep. :) I can't call it a sprint, but we did a solid 7:45 to the finish line. We finished at 2:55. And I wasn't last.
Overall, it was a beautiful race, amazing views and fun terrain. I don't know if I would do it again due to the out and backs, and the fact that they didn't close the park during the race and there were bikers and hikers out while we were racing. It is kind of annoying to worry about running into one of them when you are focused on everything else.
Finally: Do not drink an entire bottle of water at the finish line. I know better, and still did it. Then I got to be nauseous for 30 minutes after the race until my systems decided to work again.
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