Real Whiticar returns

I met my friend Whiticar two years ago in June.  How do I remember when I met Whiticar?  Well pretty easy, we met while volunteering at the Northface Endurance Race.  Becky and Whiticar were partners in crime marking and keeping track of the marathon runners. Becky mentioned that he should come running at Run Club and voila! 

Whiticar is hanging out behind Becky

I guess he had so much fun hanging out with us that he decided to come to Run Club!

Whiticar started to become a regular runner at run club.  He is a great guy and we loved hanging out with him.  Some Tuesdays he would run a bit longer since he was training for his first Marine Corps Marathon.  

Well we couldn't let Whiticar run without cheering him on and making a sign for him at the Marine Corps Marathon!

He did great! Go Whiticar Go!!

Well turns out that Whiticar wasn't going to be such a regular at run club anymore.. he was getting deployed to Afghanistan!  We would miss our friend Whiticar!  

 So we had a farewell and good luck dinner/drinks to wish Whiticar well.  While he was gone, we made some flat Whiticars to run with.  This way that it will be like Whiticar is running with us.

Becky, Megan and myself all had our own Flat Whit to run races with.  It was a great way to keep in touch with real Whiticar.  We would post our running with Flat Whit to facebook and run some races with Flat Whit.  Flat Whit even became a flat Half Fanatic!  Yeah he had lots of races last year. :)

Well Flat Whit is now retired.  No more racing for him because look who is back!!!!

Yep, real Whit is back!  So great to see a friend come back to Run Club!  

Welcome Home Whiticar!

GW Parkway Classic Volunteers at your service!

This morning I woke up before dawn not to run a race, but to volunteer at a race.  Today was my first water stop volunteering job.  Sure I've marked bibs on endurance athletes,, handed out candy to marathon runners, but never have I handed a runner water. Runclub was volunteering at the GW Parkway Classic 10 miler.  So I decided to sign up for a job.  We showed up well before the first runner toed the start line.

Bill and Megan unloading the truck.

Becky on Garbage duty.

We set up tables and loaded up lots of cups with water and Gatorade.  Ah the sticky messy Gatorade..I was hoping not to deal with this product.  I can't stand the sticky mess.  I also hate to run through where Gatorade has been..my shoes always stick to the ground.  ugh!  Turns out this morning I dealt with the Gatorade with little problem.  

Lots of runners were out today.  It was fun handing out the Gatorade to them (yep that is what I handed out the drink I was trying to avoid).  We were so popular that our side of the road ran out of Gatorade.  

People were so jealous of my rake and my jacket.  When I stop teaching I think I may work on a road crew..the bright yellow really brings out the blonde in my hair.  

 It was wonderful seeing so many runners supporting Boston.  Lots of signs for Boston.  Runners are great! I also loved the fact that so many runners thanked us for volunteering! The water stop went by pretty quickly and before you know it I was raking up cups.

As I was raking look who I saw coming down the road....

 Yep the juggler is back!  Ugh...  I guess I don't have to worry about him now.

We loaded up the trucks and we were finished.  Poor Becky had a run in with a dolly and unfortunately the dolly won.  Came up and smacked her on her forehead.  So Megan and Becky were stopping off at Patient First to make sure she would survive.  Don't worry she has a hard noggin' :)  

So glad I spent this Sunday morning hanging with some of my running friends!  

On another note, I have my first runners tan going on.  I have a lovely red  V on my neck along with some red arms.  Next time I need to remember to wear some sunscreen.  

once again..

Once again I didn't eat properly the night before a longer run..grrr...I know! I know!  I said that I learned my lesson a few weeks ago about eating right the night before a run.  Sometimes it takes me a few times for the lesson to sink in.

Last night some of us headed over to a co-workers house for happy hour.  I wasn't planning on staying too long so I wasn't worried about food.  I had some cheese and crackers and chips and salsa.  Really the stuff that dinner is made of :)  And of course I washed it down with some beer..didn't want the crackers to get stuck in my throat! :)

I knew when I woke up this morning that I was in trouble.  I felt sluggish and just didn't want to head out the door to run.  I knew I should have eaten dinner last night.  Oh well, lesson learned again!  I headed out after lunch.  My legs felt heavy and tired.  It really was the first run after a few weeks of no real running.  (I'm not counting my 3 miles on Tuesday nights for run club)  I wanted to try out my new fuel belt that I purchased for  marathon running...I can't see me running 26.2 miles with a handheld.  Well turns out that the fuel belt and bottles are not that bad.  I was picturing a lot worse.  My main problem is getting the freakin' bottles off of the belt.  Guess you know what I will be practicing doing.  Then I also have problems with putting the bottle back in place too. It turned out to be rather funny.

I ended up getting in 6 1/2 miles of running.  Not bad considering that I was super tired during the run.  Note to self, eat dinner!

Tomorrow I will be volunteering at the GW Parkway 10 miler.  Should be fun!  It will be my first time working a water stop.  Love supporting Runners!

Good People

Tragedy can happen anywhere and at anytime.  Monday was supposed to be one of those days where you have to pinch yourself to remind yourself that it was real.  Marathon Monday!  Many people have this race on their bucket list.  Runners trained months to qualify for Boston and many were running for their first time.  Then the unthinkable happened.  I sat watching the coverage along with everyone else not quite able to wrap my head around what had happened.  How can you ruin people's perfect day?  How can you cause so much trauma to runner's support systems (family and friends) and in many cases to peoples legs.  The very thing that just carried them 26.2 miles!  It just baffles me!

As I was talking to different people on Tuesday, I realized that you can't focus on the bad things in life..but the good that comes out of life.  I know easier said than done since I wasn't there.  One co-worker asked me how the running community was feeling after Monday.  My answer, the same as most people, shocked, sad, angry.  Another co-worker told me how mad she was, to which I told her you can't focus on the bad.  Bad things happen and there is not much we can do.  What you need to focus on was the fact that it was amazing how quickly people responded.  How after running 26.2 miles a doctor turned around after he finished and dug deep to help where needed.  People came together Monday afternoon and helped each other out.  Shop keepers were giving runners orange juice as they were huddled on the sidewalk in shock. It was a great reminder of how awesome runners and people in general can be.  It is easy to focus on a bad decision we have made, or something bad that happened, but sometimes we just have to focus on the good. Sometimes we learn the most about ourselves and others when we are faced with the unexpected.  We have the opportunity to choose how we deal with both good and bad things that happen in life.  It is always easy to accept the praise and awards whether it is from a race well ran, a new PR or a job well done.  What may be a bit more difficult is to look for the good in a dark time.  Well, looks like many runners are looking for the good.  Tonight I went to run at run club.  We had a moment of silence before we took off.  I wore one of my many race t'shirt in honor of Boston.

There is something just great about hanging out with runners!  My friend Rob talked about how I shouldn't be nervous for my first full and that I will do great!  We also talked about how I'm not a hugger but I do hug at run club.  Something about friendly runners makes me more comfortable with hugs!

My friend David got his shirt from running 10 runs at run club!  He was very excited!

All of this reminds me that I am proud to call myself a runner!

running? What's that?

So not a lot of running this week.  I was forced to run at run club by Becky.  I was so tired I didn't think I could get the energy to actually run, but we slogged it out.  Slow and steady...ugh..  This has been a horrible week.  I have felt like crap since Sunday afternoon.  Well turns out I figured out why on Wednesday morning.  Holy headcold Batman! On my way to work I stopped to pick up some cough syrup/head cold stuff.  I had a staff meeting, but really my head was much more important than arriving on time to a staff meeting.  Turns out I wasn't really that late, so all in all a pretty good move.

I tried the Musinex cough syrup.  If you see this stuff walk by it...it does nothing and it taste horrible!  Think nasty cough syrup from your kid days..yuck!  And it doesn't really do much either.  All that nastiness for nothing.  So the day is going on and I am feeling worse and worse..before I left school I decided to call off.  All I was doing was blowing my nose.

The poor kid that I am tutoring after school probably thought I was annoying.  I must have gone through a quarter of my tissue box while working with him for an hour.  I headed home and slept.  No running on Wednesday.

Thursday I have now gone through 1 1/2 boxes of tissues.  Hello!  My nose is not supposed to be a faucet!  I hate not be able to breathe.  I will take pretty much anything! else other than a stuffy nose.  Some odd reason I really love breathing.  I found myself in a benadryl coma for most of Thursday.  Nothing beats a good coma day.

Friday and I am able to breathe better, but I still have an annoying cough.  I think I may try and run a few miles around the hood tomorrow and see how I feel.  I can't let another beautiful day go by without putting on my running shoes.

Tonight my mom and stepdad are  coming over to my house.  They are heading out on a cruise and I am dog sitting. Riley is going to be so excited to see his friend Charlie

So if I end up not running much tomorrow I will have two dogs to play with and walk.  

A PR with a Lesson...

Sunday morning came really early.  Hard to believe that I can get up at 4:45 for a race but not to run around my place on weekends.  I headed up to pick up Glen while Becky and Megan were driving to the metro to meet us there.  No problems this morning.  We headed over to the Washington Monument to try and find Gary for a run club picture.  Well looks like his tracking device still works because 30,000 people and we found him.

After that Megan headed for bag check and we secured the line for the bathroom.  Lots more portapotties this year.  The line didn't take that much time and we were all headed for a corral.  Glen was running the 5K since his foot was bothering him and he didn't want to temp the running gods by running 10 miles.  

We made it to the start and I didn't think it was nearly as crowded as it normally was.  I had my lovely homemade arm warmers on.  Which didn't last past mile one.  It was a bit windy and cool this morning.  The cherry blossoms were not yet bloomed.  I feel bad for the people who were in town hoping to see the blossoms during their run.  

I ran with Becky until just after the 5k mark.  She was running really strong.  I was keeping up with her instead of running my own race.  I know I do so much better if I run my own run, but sometimes I just forget.  It was Becky's first 10 miles and she did great!  Because I started out too fast I think I had problems keeping the pace up for the rest of the run.  My legs felt like lead at some points.  Could it be from the lack of sleep the night before?  Could it be that I have just be exhausted all week long?  Who knows.  I do know that I didn't feel this run like I felt the Rock n Roll USA Half run a few weeks ago.  Oh well..never know what you are going to run on race day.  

The miles were going by..I normally run a pretty steady pace, today I felt like the last half I was just dragging..I didn't have the same group of people around me..or I wasn't paying attention to who was running near me..but I just felt like I was running ok then slow and then back to ok pace wise.  I did see the beer and oreo people at mile 8.  They were out of beer and oreos.  lol  I also saw 3 people just bite the dust on the course.  One girl tripped over a garbage bag.  You could hear her hit the pavement.  One of my favorite signs was "Blisters are braille for Awesome!" I did not see the juggler.  I know he irritates me..but I sort of missed him.  

I crossed the finish with a sprint.  I heard someone yell out " way to spint to the end!"  I didn't get my sub 2..but I did knock of 3 mins from my old PR last year.  So hello 2:02  Just wasn't my day for a sub 2 I guess.  

Megan..a.k.a Kristi ran with my friend Kristi's bib since she couldn't make it to the race.  'Kristi" had lots of cheers on the course.

Becky did a great job on her first 10 miler!  She rocked it!  So proud of her!  

We met up with Jeff and Marie afterwards and of course we had to have some french toast.  Nothing says race day more than french toast!  

Who PR'd?  These two girls!!

Cherry Blossom is my least favorite race...this year I think I am ok with the Cherry Blossom.  They had water after I finished.  The bananas were looking good and I didn't have an old lady try to give me a black eye because were were running so close and her elbows were all over the place.  So I think that makes for a good Cherry Blossom.  I will never call it my favorite race, but I will say that I might have just changed my mind a bit about Cherry Blossom 10 miler.  

I"m now questioning if the fast start was the sole reason for my dragging legs for the other 7 miles.  I came home and my stomach has been horrible all afternoon.  Maybe I am just fighting something and today wasn't my day for a sub 2.  But I still got a PR so I will take it :)  

Next up..The Color Run with the nieces...should be fun.

Five things Friday

1.  Cherry Blossom expo is finished..I picked up five bibs and didn't purchase a thing at the expo.  I did do some window shopping though...

2.  Warmer weather..today was a beautiful day..Sunday looks to be the same..hope it doesn't end up being too warm.  (seems like I am never happy with the temps..complaining with the cold and now begins the complaining with the warmer temps..gesh...)  Wonder if the Cherry Blossoms will be out??  I guess I will find out on Sunday.

3.  Short run tomorrow and some cleaning followed by a prerace dinner with friends.  Can a Saturday get any better than that?  There is just something about a racing weekend.

4.  I am craving some ice cream lately..doesn't worry me too much I go in phases where I don't have ice cream for months and then all of the sudden I can't get enough.. choco chocolate chip is my current flavor.

5.  Catching up with old friends.  I talked to one of my old college roommates for a bit the other day.  Ah the fun times we had together.  Always great hearing an old friend's voice.  I love the fact that it has been months since we last spoke and we can just pick up like we see each other all of the time.  Love my old roommates :)

Aww look how young we were!

Cherry Blossom coming right up

This weekend is the Cherry Blossom 10 miler.  If you have been reading my blog for awhile you will already know that this is my least favorite race ever!  I'm sure that after Sunday I will have a list of why I do not care for the Cherry Blossom race, but right now I am trying not to think about it.  I am just concentrating on the fact that I will be running with friends!  That is always fun!

I just heard, while driving home, that the weather is supposed to be in the 70's!  That sounds good!  I'm sure it won't be that warm in the morning, but always something to look forward to.  It was soo cold today and I was hoping that it wasn't going to be like this on Sunday.  I also hope that the weather is starting to warm up so that the cherry blossoms will be in full bloom this year.  Last year they had an early bloom so no blossoms left while we ran.  Afterwards we are heading to to get some french toast.  I think I may be addicted to french toast after a run.

I'm hoping that I sub 2:00 on Sunday..and if that doesn't happen I hope I feel good during the race.  This Tuesday when I was running at run club, my legs felt like they had lead in them.  At one point I didn't think I was really running.  I hope since that happened this week that on Sunday it will be smooth sailing.  I know usually with the excitement of race morning how can you have legs of lead?

Tomorrow I'm heading up to packet pickup to pick up everyone's bibs.  I'm hoping that it is not too busy.  Normally when you go on Saturday you can end up standing in line for hours to pick up the packet.  Hopefully a Friday pick up will help me love the Cherry Blossom race just a little bit.

March was a great running month!

Well March might have been a bit cold, but I was on fire with running!  I did a really good job hitting my long runs!  So much so that I PR'd at my half marathon and I had my highest mileage so far this year.  I'm sure with MCM  in October I will only see my running numbers increase, but for March I am really happy.  I am on target for hitting my yearly goal of 600 miles.  I am secretly hoping to surpass this number since I will be training for 26.2..but shhhh don't tell anyone.

Spring Break was last week.  I did a lot of nothing.  I did get in a 9 mile run before I headed up to PA to visit the parents last Thursday.  I did not run in PA.  Which is not unusual.  I hate running when I go home.  First is is soo cold.  There was white stuff falling from the sky, so I knew I wasn't going to run.  I used to pretend like I was going to run while back home and I would pack all of my running gear.  Most times it would just sit in my suitcase.  So I have now stopped pretending that I would run and just accept the fact that I do not run when I go back home to visit.  I'm fine with that.  That is why I squeezed in the long run before I left.  Smart move on my part.

When I was home I didn't do that much.

We celebrated Easter on Saturday so that we could head to Pittsburgh and hit up the casino on Easter Sunday.  What?  Doesn't everyone go gambling on Easter Sunday?  Surprisingly we were not the only ones there..the place had a lot more people than what I had expected.  I didn't win anything (but really do you expect to come home with a bunch of extra cash?)  I did win back some of my money long enough to entertain myself for some time..I walked away with 30 cents more that what I thought I would leave with...that's right I'm rollin'.  Can you still buy penny candy?  If so I can buy thirty people one swedish fish each!  Yeah I'm a big spender!

a bit crazy and the Marine Corps Marathon

I think I must have fallen and bumped my head last week.  Or maybe I have gone a bit crazy.. I have signed up for my first full marathon!  

Yep I will be running the Marine Corps Marathon as my first full marathon.  I have been trying to decide if this is a good thing or if I might be just a bit nuts.  I have said that I would never run a full.  I have said that there is no way I would go from 13.1 to 26.2.  But I guess something has been slowly changing.  A few months ago I would still say hell no! to 26.2..but in the back of my mind a little voice would say "don't say never.."  then it would start to say "maybe you should see if you can do a full".  "How will you know that you can or can't run it until you try"... I may have to strangle that voice after October 27th!

I have been following all of the excitement with registration.  I have a few friends that were going to try and register.  So I saw everyone's posts about the horrible problems with registration.  And then I thought..next year I'm going to try and run a full.  Next year I will see if I can get into MCM.  Then I got a facebook post from my friend Keith asking if I am running it.  Umm..no I don't think so. I  will be there with pb cups for you though.  He said ok, but he could hook me up with a charity bib.  That was it.  The end of the conversation.  Normally that would be it, I move on and look forward to cheering everyone on.

But that wasn't it.  It just stuck in the back of my mind.  Maybe I should just try to run it this year.  I could raise some money for Fisher House, which is a great charity that supports our troops and their family during a difficulty time.

While on my way home to Pennsylvania I talked myself into running my first full this year.  I thought about how it would fit into my schedule.  I have two half marathons in Aug and Sept. so it is not like I am just being lazy during the summer..sure I've never ran 26.2 miles but I didn't think I could run a 5k, or a half marathon either.  I will never know if I can run 26.2 until I try.  I may not be very fast but I can put the work in and train over the hot hot summer months.  Ugh...  Then I thought how excited Megan was to run her first MCM.   She was glowing at mile 23 (is that possible??)  I don't think I will be glowing, but I might be able to step up to the challenge..(well I guess I better be willing to step up to the challenge because I have signed up.)  I also thought I have just finished my 10th half marathon..how many half marathon does it take to run before your first full?  I have friends that would say zero..since they didn't run a half before their first full. (That really sounds nuts to me!)  I feel like I know a lot more about my body now than I did a few years ago when it comes to running and I am guessing I will know a bit more about myself after October 27th.  I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I am actually going to run a full...

I called Keith and got the info for the charity bib.  It seems that our team will have five of us from my high school.  We will be representing class of 1993-1996 (yeah I will be the old lady of the group lol)  He told me that if I sign up he will change the team name to the Lil' Indians (our high school was Indiana High School, home of the Lil' Indians..)  Well I don't want to be the one that prohibits the name change!  Great I'm in..yikes!  So looks like I will be running 26.2 in the fall....wish me luck!

My friend Shawn sent me this text


















So here's to feeling like a bad-ass!




If you would like to donate some money to the cause you can click here..

Never heard of Fisher House..well here is a bit about Fisher House..

Next up:  Cherry Blossom 10 miler!