Fighting Over OIAJ

Would you believe that there was once a day when I didn't know what OIAJ was?  Yes, I remember that day. Of course, at the time, I didn't know that it was one of the most amazing inventions in the food world. I was at the gym that day, running on the treadmill, when two of my running friends were talking about how much they liked Oatmeal in a Jar.  They were going on, and on, and on about this thing until I finally said, "Okay, what in the world is Oatmeal in a Jar?"  They looked at me like I was crazy.  They couldn't believe that I didn't know what it was.

They explained that they heard about it from Kath Eats Real Food and that it was an amazing and easy way to eat oatmeal.  All you do is take an almost empty jar of nut or seed butter, add some oatmeal and other goodies, shake it up, and put the full jar in the fridge overnight.  Then, when you wake up in the morning, you just take the jar out and eat the now ready oatmeal. No need to cook it.  No kidding!

I seriously thought they were crazy.  Really? Because eating uncooked oatmeal did not sound yummy to me.  Time went on, as it usually does, and lo-and behold what do I have in my hands?  An almost empty jar of peanut butter, and, of course, like the rational person that I am, I immediately think of Oatmeal in a Jar.

So there I was, holding an almost empty jar of peanut butter, having the urge to make OIAJ, but there was one problem.  I had no idea how to make OIAJ.  Sure, I knew that it involved putting oatmeal in a jar, silly, but it couldn't be that simple, right?  There had to be a recipe or a special technique or something.

So I Google it.  I go back to Kath Eats Real Food. I Google it again and decide, "What the heck.  I'll just make up a recipe with things that I have laying around the kitchen."  So in the almost empty jar of peanut butter, I added:

• 1/2 cup of old fashioned whole oats
• 3/4 cup rice milk
• 1 tablespoon of raisins
• 1 tablespoon of sliced almonds.  

I shook the jar up, and put it in the fridge.

The next morning, I added some sweetener to the jar, stirred it up, and ate it. It was really yummy. It was so yummy that everyone else in the house that was listening to me going on, and on, and on about how yummy it was, wanted one too.  Well, it's not like we have a whole lot of almost empty jars of nut or seed butters laying around in the refrigerator. So I had to promise that we would take turns eating OIAJ each time we had an empty jar of nut butter.

Everything goes fine with the next two jars, but only if you consider fighting over OIAJ as everything going fine.  Googie gets one. Bubba gets the next one. Then, the third jar. Not to be left out, Hubby wanted his own OIAJ.  So I made one for him with dried cranberries, milk, and crushed pecans.

Next morning comes along and as the kids and I are leaving the house, Googie is frantically pointing and yelling, "Mom, Mom, Mom look what Dad is doing. Look now. Look!"  So I look and see Hubby emptying the OIAJ contents into a microwave bowl.  "He just doesn't get it, does he, Mom?"

"Honey, it's called Oatmeal in a Jar not Oatmeal That Was in a Jar Then Dumped Into a Glass Container, Microwaved, and Eaten Out of a Bowl.  You just don't get it! Yikes, I could have just made "normal" oatmeal for you and given the OIAJ to someone that really appreciated it."

So, now, we are back to fighting over the next OIAJ. I'm not sure who will get the next one, but I'm certain I know who won't be getting OIAJ for quite some time...

My New and Improved Marathon Playlist

I had a great playlist that I used for my last marathon, that is, until I grew tired of it, memorizing all the songs, knowing what song would come next in line, getting tired of the songs. So I thought I would just rearrange a few songs here and there, add some new songs, and "voila!" I would have a new playlist for my next marathon.

Unfortunately, as I found out when I started to put together my new playlist, it wasn't as easy as it sounded, but, finally, success. My playlist is ready, and as I promised in my previous post, here it is. It includes songs that I like, songs that have a beat that work well with running at a 9:00-10:00 minute mile pace, and it includes enough songs to cover about 5 hours of running time, hopefully more than enough time for me to finish the marathon.

I tested this playlist in bits and pieces during the past two weeks.  I had to change some of the songs around a few times, and I am now confident that what I have here is my new and improved playlist.

Well here it is:

Putting Together a Running Playlist for a Marathon

For the longest time I thought that it was silly to listen to music while running.  First, a lot of the running books I have read talked about how it was dangerous to run while listening to music, something about being distracted and not being able to hear what was going on around you.  Then, there was the whole idea of focusing on your form, on your breathing, and on your pace.  And of course,they reasoned, running with music made it difficult to actually enjoy the run. So I ran without music.

Yes, I actually did run without music. And while running without music, I was enjoying the scenery, saying "hi" to other runners, talking to people that were outside, and listening to the wonderful sounds of traffic nature, but the day I went on my first sixteen-mile run, I realized that I would need music to run or I would drive myself crazy.

That's when I started to research music players.  I spent countless hours trying to figure out what music player I needed, how much storage capacity I would need, and how long the batteries lasted.  In the end, I ended up picking the cheapest player I could get that was small, had a capacity of at least 8 gigabytes, and had a decent rating on the various websites.  After that, I thought I would bring the player home, put some music on it, and take it out for a run.

Little did I know that picking the music player was the easy part.  Next, I had to figure out how to put music on it.  It involved downloading software, formatting the player, figuring out how the software worked, and by trial and error I was able to get the player to start working.  Yes, now I was ready to put music on my player.

After a few more hours of loading my CD collection into my computer and transferring the music to my player, I was ready to listen to my music while running.  But wait, not all the songs I owned were good for running.  I quickly found out that a song wasn't good for running simply because I liked it.  No, it wasn't that easy.  The song needed to have the right beat.

So I started my search for good running music.  I checked various websites and asked other runners what songs they liked to listen to while running.  I learned that everyone had their own ideas about what made good running music.  I also learned a lot about beats per minute (bpm) and how important it was to find songs with the correct bpm for your running pace.

This was a good start. I was able to put together a playlist, and I began to run with music. For the record, while running with music, I was still able to enjoy the scenery, I could still say "hi" to other runners, I could still talk to other people that were running with me or were outside, and I could still hear what was going on around me. But after running to the same playlist for close to a year, memorizing not just the songs but the order they came in, and actually beginning to not like a few of the songs on the playlist, I needed to quickly come up with something different.

Therefore, I put together a new playlist for the half marathon I ran this past weekend.  It worked so well, that I decided to put together a brand new playlist for the marathon next month, but this whole experience has been harder than I imagined.  First of all, it will probably take me about five hours to complete the marathon, which means that I will need at least eighty songs on my playlist.  I need eighty songs that are good for running, that I will enjoy while running, that I like, and that I will not tire of quickly.

Currently, I'm still working on the playlist and have about sixty songs picked out.  Once I finalize the playlist, I will post it here in the blog.

Running a Half Marathon as a Training Run

This past weekend I ran the Air Force Half Marathon, and since I am currently training for the Columbus Marathon, I thought I'd use this event as a training run.  It would also give me experience using the new running belt that I was planning to use for the full marathon as well as to try out some new running strategies, namely the strategies where I just run the race for fun and don't even try to set a P.R.

The weather was amazing.  It was a clear day with no rain, which is great because I already have run two races, a half marathon and a full marathon, and a few training runs, in the rain. And although I have claimed that running in the rain is fun, I completely believe that running in clear, cool, sunny conditions is funner.

I have to say that this race was the most fun I'd ever had running, and I really love to run.  The only goals that I had set for this race were to have fun, take it easy, and finish strong.

At the start line, I lined up right behind the 2:20 pace group, since that was my finish time for my last half marathon race, and because I was hoping to run into one of my friends that ran the race last year at the same pace.  I didn't have luck finding her, but I did get a chance to meet some really cool people at the start line.

One of the most exciting things about this race are the flyovers that they have at the start of the race and during the race.  Right before the start, a parachutist came down with the American flag, and some really cool planes (I admit it, I don't know what types of planes they were, but they were pretty cool), flew overhead in formation.  Then, about three minutes later,  a wedge of geese, not to be confused with a wedge of cheese, flew overhead, and we all started to clap and cheer for them just as we had cheered and clapped for the the really cool planes that had flown over a few minutes before.

Finally, we were off, and about four minutes later, I crossed the start line.  I started out slowly.  The 2:20 pace group had taken off.  I kept reminding myself that this was just a training run, and to not hurt myself trying to set a P.R. and then not be able to run the marathon next month because I had overdone it at this race.  That would not be good, right?

Anyway, like I said, I was running slowly when all of a sudden I caught up with the 2:20 pace group.  At that point I decided that I would go ahead and stay with the group, since they seemed to be going at a leisurely pace and I was having fun hanging out with them.  The pace group leader was great at keeping everyone in the group focused and on pace.

Then, all of a sudden it was mile 8, well that's the way it felt anyway.  I was running, and then it's mile 8.  Weird, huh?  At that point I realized that maybe I had gotten faster from last year and that maybe this pace was not fast enough for me, so I picked up the pace.  I was passing people right and left, and I wasn't even trying to pass them.

Soon I was seeing people from the 2:10 pace group, and that really freaked me out.  There's no way I'm running this race at that pace, right?  Next, I'm at mile 10 and feeling strong.  Well, from this point on it's basically just a 5K race, I tell myself, so I pick up the pace again, and end up finishing the race at 2:13:31.

Okay, I was really excited. 2:13 is not going to make headlines in Runner's World magazine, but it was great news to me.  Maybe this strategy of not trying to set a P.R. is the correct strategy.  I didn't push myself, had fun, and set a P.R.

After the race I found some of my Team in Training friends.  We were hanging around, drinking our free beer and I was like, "Maybe this is the way to run a full marathon.  You run 13.1 miles, stop to eat pizza, drink some beer, and then go out and run another 13.1."  Maybe I was crazy.  Maybe I was high on endorphins, but I really felt great; however, before I actually set out to run the course again, someone handed me another beer coupon (maybe to shut me up?), so I had no need to run the race again.

This weekend, I will be running a 20-mile training run, the longest run before the actual race.  I just hope I feel at least half as good as I did after this race.

It's the Most Wonderful Time

No, I'm not talking about vacation time or free time (not that I even know what free time is), what I'm talking about is Back to School time. This year, we didn't have a great summer filled with wonderful memories, great vacations, time at the pool, or relaxing moments in the backyard.  We actually had a pretty stressful summer that actually went by too quickly.  I barely had time to do the things that needed to be done, let alone have time to do the fun things we wanted to do this summer.  Anyway, because of the terribleness of our summer, this year, Back to School time means back to a routine, back to business, and interestingly enough it has also led to more things getting done, and less stress.

Right now we're on our third week of school, and things have gone along rather smoothly.  The key has been making sure that we all get to bed early and get up early.  This way we have been able to get our school work completed before 3:00 p.m.  Makes a lot of sense, right?  I mean most schools operate this way.  The students go to school for six hours and are usually done by 3:00 p.m.  So I figured, why not?  Why not try doing things this way.

This was actually a new idea to us because as a homeschooling family, not only do we decide how we will be educating our children, we also get to set our own daily schedule.  And when you don't have someone telling you that the children have to be in school at a specific time in the morning, it's easy to start the school work later and later each day, until you push the start time all the way to noon, and end up with a hectic afternoon schedule with tired, grumpy children trying to focus on their work while all the other children in the neighborhood are back from school.

Setting a homeschool start time early in the morning has been one of the best decisions we have made for our homeschool this year, and even though we don't get to ship our children off to school for six hours a day, Back to School time has been the most wonderful time for us.

Summer Break, Broke, Broken

With wonderful plans for my summer break, with not many of those things accomplished, and with the summer break almost to the end, I would like to know where the summer break has gone. And even with not making much of a dent on my list of things to do this summer, I have been busier this summer than any other summer before. I've even been busier this summer than I have been during the school year when we spend our days homeschooling while also getting all the other regular life things done.

Why is it that I've been busier during this summer than during the school year, and I have nothing to show for it? I wonder where the time has gone.  Sure, I've been extremely busy finishing up the homeschool year, organizing, decluttering, training for a marathon, and driving the kids all over town for their various summer camps.  Oh wait, that's right, I think it's the driving all over the place that has taken up my time this summer, and my money; have you seen the price of gas lately?

So, instead of resigning myself to a broken and broke summer break, I think that I will be spending what's left of this summer not driving my kids all over town.  I'll be on a  hammock in the backyard, reading a book, with a cold beverage in hand, trying to enjoy what's left of the summer break. But first, I will write that one down on my to-do list.

My Achilles' Heel is My Achilles Tendon

Just like the Greek hero Achilles' weakness was his heel, so too is mine right now; however, my hope is that unlike Achilles, this will be a temporary condition for me and I will be able to heal my heel and continue training for my second marathon. No downfall for me, I hope. Yes, I just recently completed my first marathon about a month ago, and after finishing my first marathon, and while still high on endorphins, and during a moment of insanity, I decided to sign up to run another marathon this year.

Finally recovered from my first marathon race, I started training for my second marathon.  Things were going quite well with my training until about two weeks ago when I injured my Achilles tendon.  It was such an easy thing to do: get injured.  I thought that after two weeks off from running, and another week of very low mileage, I was ready to get back to my normal, pre-marathon training mileage.

Yes, I know exactly how I hurt my heel.  It has something to do with the terrible too's of running: too much, too soon, too fast. Not just that, but running too much, too soon, too fast while training on hills, in other words, I was asking for trouble, but believe you me, I sincerely didn't realize that I was asking for trouble at the time, even after repeatedly being lectured by the Team in Training coaches about how to avoid injuries. Therefore, because of my lack of judgment, I now have to cut back on my mileage, slow down considerably, and avoid running hills.

I applied ice to my Achilles tendon almost continuously for close to a week, I rested my foot as much as possible, stretched my calves all during the day, taped my heel with KT Tape, and used compression socks.  So far, so good.  Right now, I've been training very cautiously.  I make sure to warm up well by walking slowly, stopping to stretch my calves really well, and then I run/walk until I can run continuously for a few miles on the treadmill.  Running on the treadmill instead of running outside makes it easier for me to control my running speed, to control the surface I'm running on, and to avoid hills.

I'll continue to take it easy until my foot starts to feel better, which I'm sure will be soon because my foot only hurts in the morning.  And I'll try very, very hard to be patient.  Hopefully, I learned my lesson about the terrible too's.

The Circular Package Beckons Me

I used to be a soccer mom, you know, the type of mother that lives in her minivan while driving her children around town from soccer game to soccer game.  After years of being a soccer mom, I gave it all up to be, instead, a taekwondo mom.  Now, instead of driving around from soccer game to soccer game, I get to spend my days at the taekwondo training hall. 

Most of the time I like to wait inside the building talking with the other parents, reading a book, and watching the children train.  It sure is boring waiting in the parking lot alone in a minivan during a thunderstorm, wondering if I should wait it out in the van or run for refuge inside the air-conditioned training hall and get soaked.   But that’s just where I found myself the other day.

Stuck in the minivan during a violent thunderstorm, waiting for my son’s taekwondo class to end, unable to open the doors or roll down the windows of the van for fear of ruining the interior by allowing a burst of torrential rain into the van, fearing the gas tank nearly empty and the battery dead, suffocating in the stale heavy air in the van, the allure of a circular pack of mints with the name Ice Breakers® was too strong.

Ice sure would be amazing. Wonder how it would feel in this stifling air to have just one of the tiny mints inside the package actually be made of ice: a tiny ice chip to cool me, to settle the unsettled, to quench the thirst, to help me forget the lack of a breeze in this self-inflicted prison cell inside my van. 

Popping the lid of the package open, I find a dozen tiny ice chips.  I violently and quickly throw one into my mouth.  The coolness was immediate.  The thirst is gone. The rain slows down long enough for me to open the door and feel a strong cool blast of a thunderstorm breeze blow on my face, or so it seemed.

Yes, I’ve gone certifiably insane, I decide.  It’s time for me to either make a dash for the building, go to the gas station to fill the tank, drive around town for awhile to make sure that the battery is charged, or continue to suffer in the van, being taunted by a package of mints.

Guess which one I chose.

 
 

I Can't Even Hear Myself Think

With Goggie all tucked into bed, with my computer finally working, with Bubba and Hubby at a Boy Scout meeting, it was actually quiet around here for a few minutes, long enough, I thought, for me to sit down and write the most amazing blog post imaginable.  My brain was full of amazing ideas: wonderfully witty words to entertain everyone.  The Great American Blog Post.

Then Bubba and Hubby walk in the door, and the quiet walks out the door.  To make a short story short, the world will have to wait for that great post, that is, if I can hear myself think long enough.

First Harvest

I know, I know, it's been a week since my last post, but it's just been crazy, crazy, crazy at our house these past few days.  Not only has the weather improved (no more rain, no more tornadoes, and finally warmer weather), we're getting to the end of the school year.  And not to be outdone, the garden is off to a great start.

Here you can see our first planting of radishes ready to be harvested.  

And here you see them right after being harvested.

I was never a fan of radishes, that is, until I started gardening, now I love radishes.  They are one of the funnest vegetables to grow, mostly because they can be planted in the early spring, they grow quickly, and they don't get diseases or pests like some of the other vegetables do.

These radishes were amazing in a radish salad of radishes (obviously, right?), orange segments, red onions, fresh mint, olive oil, and salt and pepper.  Yum!

I can't wait for the next crop of radishes to be ready so I can have that salad again.
 
 

Putting Down Roots

This past weekend, before the tornado that hit our area on Monday, during a few minutes without rain, we were finally able to plant the baby plants that were still in their pots, hanging out in our patio. The pepper plants had grown so large, that they were almost the same height as the support ladders.

The tomatoes were already tall enough to be threaded through the trellis netting.

Here's Bubba planting a marigold.

And here you see one of my containers.

The garden made it through the storm we had this Monday without any noticeable damage.  Tomorrow I'll see how the garden survived today's storm.  We are currently experiencing large hail and strong winds.
 
 

It Wasn't a Tornado

Photo courtesy of NSSL

Yesterday, hungry and exhausted after a long day of homeschooling, considering going out to dinner, we instead decided to head out to the grocery store to pick up a few things for dinner.  The weather forecast was calling for severe thunder storms, but I figured that, one, the storm would not hit (it wouldn't have been the first time the forecast was wrong) or, two, that we could stay ahead of the weather, go to the store, and come back before the storm hit.

At the store it seemed like my plan was working.  It was looking like the storm was either not going to come or that we would be done shopping and back home before it struck.  Then, all of a sudden, as we were almost done at the checkout register, we saw the sky turn completely black on one side of the parking lot, while the sky was still blue in the other side, it started to rain heavily, and the wind started to blow very hard. And just as quickly as it had started, the storm stopped, the sky cleared, and the wind died down.  It was quite eerie.

We quickly loaded the groceries into the car and drove home while listening to the news reports on the car radio about a tornado warning right where we were.  We really didn't see anything strange until we were about a block from our house and found a tree that was partially blocking the road.  The neighbors were out moving the tree from the road, so I decided to turn in the other direction, and that's when we came across this tree.

Obviously, I wasn't going to get through that way, so I had to turn around and go the other way, where the neighbors were clearing the road.

Here are a few of the trees that were destroyed in our street.

And then, we have our beautiful linden tree, may it rest in peace.

 Here's another view showing how it was damaged beyond repair.

We couldn't save the tree, so we had it cut down.

This is all that's left of our tree.

We also lost some shingles off the roof, and limbs from some of the other trees in the yard.  Thankfully, that was all the damage we had.  One good thing that happened was that a toy the children had thrown on the roof and that had been stuck there for quite some time, was blown off the roof all in one piece.

Well, apparently, we had a few small tornadoes hit our area last night, and the weather service is calling for more severe weather tonight and tomorrow.

Forty Days & Forty Nights of Rain



Source: www.wunderground.com


Well, actually it's been more like forty-two days of rain. How do I know?  Well, since I haven't been able to go outside and work in my garden, I have used my time to check the rainfall we've gotten since March.  I even crosschecked our statistics against the most notoriously, rainy city in the United States: Seattle, WA; and what I found out wasn't pretty.  We actually have gotten more rainfall between March and today than Seattle, WA has gotten during the same time period.

As a gardener, I can appreciate the importance of getting enough rain to help the plants in the garden grow; however, as a gardener I also would like a few nice, non-rainy days in which to work the soil and do some planting.  The last frost date in our area is officially here; but where-o-where is the last drenching-rainfall date?

This past weekend, I spent a day shopping for my vegetable and herb plants in anticipation of the last frost date.  I brought home a nice little collection of baby plants that were excited to arrive at their new home, but they've been spending their time still in their little pots, waiting to put down roots.

Aren't they cute?

They want to be in the garden

Last week, on a rare, non-rainy day, I was able to check things out in the garden and found some growing activity.

Lettuce

Radishes

Carrots

I even found that some of the herbs from last year had made it through the winter.

Tarragon

Oregano

Chives

Additionally, the onions I planted last month seem to be doing well, and I'm sure that after all the rain we've gotten, the potatoes are probably doing well too, but I won't know for sure until I can get out there to check.

Onions

Hopefully the rain will stop soon.  On the bright side, I planted some grass seeds in a few bare muddy spots in our yard, and with all the rain we've gotten, the grass seedlings will be growing rather nicely, I'm sure.

CSA Challenge

Normally, I like to plan about a week's worth of dinners ahead of time, go shopping for the ingredients, and cook nutritious dinners for my family all week long; however, we now belong to a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program through a local farm, and my original way to plan our week's meals has been turned upside down.

So, instead of picking a recipe and then shopping for the ingredients like I've been doing, I now have the ingredients and must pick out a recipe.  This whole process makes my brain hurt!  Thankfully, Hubby is the type of person that sees an ingredient and immediately gets inspired; he's a walking, breathing, living cookbook, and that's a pretty handy thing to have around the house.  Soon, with all this experience, I should be able to do the same thing too.

Every week, we get a box of organic produce delivered directly to our house. Since it's too early in the season to get a bountiful supply of locally grown produce, the CSA supplier supplements the boxes with organic produce from outside the area until enough local produce is available to fill the boxes.

This week, in our CSA box, we received the following:

• Green Garlic
• Spinach
• Mustard Greens
• Dill
• Bananas
• Apples
• Tomatoes
• Celery
• Carrots
• Lettuce (Romaine)
• Strawberries
• Zucchini
• Mangoes
• Lemon
• Lime

The challenge is to use all the produce from the box before it spoils. So far we've already made a spinach salad with strawberries, sautéed zucchini, Caesar salad with the romaine lettuce, sautéed mustard greens with green garlic, and some of the carrots.   Today, in order to use the dill, we will be having Greek spinach pies made with phyllo dough and feta cheese.  I also have plans to make a vegetable beef soup, which is a great way to use up miscellaneous vegetables.

Let's see if we're successful in using all the produce before it spoils, but, if not, I guess we'll just have really expensive compost for our garden.  Let's hope for the former rather than the later.

 
 

No More Whine

Quit your whining and complaining.  And stop that temper tantrum right this minute.  Okay, so I couldn't resist this one, it was too good to pass up.  I was at the wine shop today for their Saturday afternoon wine tasting and came across this bottle of wine.  Pretty clever way to sell wine, and, seriously, with a label like this who cares if the wine actually tastes good, right? I didn't get to try this wine, but it might be fun to go back and get a bottle of this to save for a special occasion, that is, as long as I remember not to throw a Tempra Tantrum.  What a mess that would make!

Anyway, if for some reason I were to throw a Tempra Tantrum, I would end up needing a:

 

 
 

Eyes on the Prize

With spring finally here, the rains finally behind us (I think), and the beginning of summer not too far off, it’s been very hard to get the children focused on their homeschool.  Googie has been making great progress in his schoolwork all year long and only has about three or four weeks of lessons to complete.   Bubba has finally started to make some progress in his homeschool too.  But, all of a sudden, like Newton’s First Law of Motion, my children’s homeschooling motion is being acted upon by the external force of spring weather.

 

Just when they can actually see the prize: a summer filled with no school work, no cares, and endless fun; they start to dawdle, complain and waste time.  What would've taken one day to complete before the change in weather, is now taking almost a week to complete.  So, like Violet Beauregarde’s mother in the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I find myself saying, “Eyes on the Prize, Violet.  Eyes on the Prize.” And when they start to complain that the work toward the end of the school year is always the hardest, I just smile and, like Willie Wonka told Violet in the movie, I  say, “Confidence is key.”

What I need is another force to act upon my inert children.  A force greater than the wonderful spring weather that we’ve been having.  I’ve tried threatening them with summer homeschool, but to them it just sounds like an empty threat.  I either need to find a way to make the threat more convincing, or I need to find something else: a different force.  The question is: what could that possibly be?

Completing My First 26.2 Miles

I did it, I actually did it, I finished a full marathon, all 26.2 miles of it. And after getting over forgetting about the pain, and after getting a great massage, and after a few margaritas, I can say (with confidence) that it was a great experience, a humbling experience, an experience that I will never forget—instead of the pain part, I obviously forgot that part.  I say this because, although, it hasn't yet been a week since the marathon, I'm already making plans for my next marathon.  I blame it on the endorphins, and on that massage.

So how did it go?  Well, the weather leading up to the marathon had been pretty awful: constant rain with no chance of dry weather. Being a nervous wreck during the ten days leading up to the marathon, I spent a lot of my time checking the weather on every imaginable weather web page I could find, looking for updates every thirty minutes, trying a different web page, hoping for a better forecast, but the forecast was always the same: scattered thunderstorms. Therefore, instead of hoping for fair weather, I started to pray for not-so-bad weather.  A steady, light rain would be fine or even just rain without thunder and lightning. Yes, as long as there was no thunder or lighting, I would be happy.

Convinced that I would not let the weather get the best of me, I packed for every possible weather scenario.  In addition to the regular running attire I had planned to wear, I packed a disposable rain poncho; a trash bag; a jacket which I planned to discard during the race; and a lightweight, water-resistant, running jacket that folded into its own little pouch, and which fit nicely into my running belt.

 

The morning of the race, our Team in Training (TNT) group assembled in the hotel lobby so we could take a group photo and walk over to the start line together.  Once the photographs were taken, and everyone was ready to go, we began to walk over to the start line. 

And, unfortunately, my weather readiness was not disappointed.  The moment we arrived at the start line, the temperature went down by about ten degrees and it began to rain, but, no problem, I had my poncho and jacket. The start line was jam-packed; it was hard to move into position.  Supposedly, they had set-up starting corrals, but I never really saw them.  I just saw a bunch of porta potties and spectators blocking the way and not letting the runners get through to the start line.  I’m not really sure how we did it, but somehow we pushed our way to the start line, and ended up in position one minute before the gun went off. (You'll have to excuse the blurriness of some of these pictures.  It's hard to take pictures while running)

 

And we were off—theoretically.  At this point, my heart was probably moving faster than my legs, since it took about ten minutes for us to actually cross the official start line, after which I started to run slowly jog, and strangely enough passed quite a lot of people.  In a way it was a bit of a morale boost, but, in a way, dodging walkers and discarded clothing items as if on an obstacle course got old pretty quickly.  After finally making it through that obstacle course, we started to run on a bridge, but I actually hadn’t registered the fact that we were on a bridge, and began to feel lightheaded  (no doubt because I hadn’t had any sleep the night before), and I started to worry that I might pass out, until I overhead someone talking to her friend saying, “Can you feel that?  The bridge is shaking!”  It sure was a relief to realize that I wasn’t going to pass out any time soon.  

 

Soon, I took off the poncho, even though it was still raining.  It just was too hard to run with that poncho on, and, anyways, it really wasn't doing much to keep me dry at this point. Next, I took off my throw-away jacket, and was considering actually throwing it by the side of the road, but could not let go of the jacket.  Some invisible force kept that jacket permanently attached to my hand.  I was going to drop it off at the next water stop, no, the next one, no, the next one.  I kept this up until I just told myself that I would hold on to the jacket until I got to about mile six where Hubby was going to be.  Mile three passed, mile four, mile five.  Then I heard two familiar voices shout out, “Nicole!”  I looked over and saw my friends Holly and Susy. I was screaming. I was jumping up and down. Then I looked farther down and saw Hubby standing there taking pictures.  To say that, that moment was the highlight of the race, would be an understatement.

 

Unless you count being serenaded by Elvis.

Or seeing Big Foot holding a sign which read, “Run, Human, Run.”

Or this guy, huh?

 

And then, just as I was starting to question my ability to finish the marathon, I see this guy:

It was around that time when my legs cramped up, and I stopped.  I think I hit the wall, well that’s what I thought it was.  I mean, my legs cramped up and wouldn’t move, doesn’t that sound like the wall?  My legs hurt really, really badly.  I gave birth to a baby without pain killers, and still didn’t remember that kind of pain.  It was so bad, I started to use my Lamaze breathing techniques, which freaked out some of the runners because everyone (yes, I actually do mean everyone) that was passing me at this point stopped for a moment to ask me if I was okay.  

Finally, one of the TNT coaches showed up around this point and asked me how I was doing.  I told him that I was just fine, but that my legs hurt really, really badly and that I thought I had just hit the wall because my legs wouldn't move and isn't this what hitting the wall meant? He just told me that I was crazy for thinking I could run a marathon needed to drink more water, and eat a few more energy gels.  Fortunately, they were handing out energy gels at this point of the race, and I started to stock up on them.  By the end of the race, I’m sure that I had consumed at least eight packages of energy gels, twice the number that I had packed for the race.

Pretty soon, I started to feel better, so the coach abandoned me ran back to check on the other team members.  Waddling along bowlegged, taking my time like it was a simple Sunday stroll, I mentally clawed my way to the finish line, when all of a sudden I looked behind me and saw Kim, another TNT member.  We greeted each other, she continued on, and not too long after that, I got my second wind and started to run. It was a miracle!  My legs started to work again.  Before I knew it, I was at mile 25.5 and Susy and Holly were standing there cheering me on again and giving me another boost, which helped me get to the finish line.

I earned this medal, and I also earned the sticker: the 26.2 sticker.  Now my 13.1 sticker doesn't have to hang out on my minivan all by its lonesome self.

The runner girl accomplishes her goal, runs her first marathon, crosses the finish line, sets a personal record of 5:25:11, THE END...

Coming soon, to a race nearby, an amnesiac runner girl decides to conquer what she had always thought she wanted to do: run her first marathon race.

Yes, I already signed up for my next race. I think that it's official, I have lost my mind.