Has it really been that long???

Wow, I was just talking to my sister and she reminded me that I hadn't updated the blog in awhile...(Just for the record, I've had sick kids, cake orders, Christmas shopping, etc. to occupy my days and nights lately.)...but honestly, I had no idea it had been 9 days since my last post! I was thinking more like...um...four....oops!

So, even though I'm right smack dab in the middle of a laundry, cleaning, and gift-wrapping extravaganza and I still have a little shopping, and Christmas baking left to do, I thought I'd better write something quick to catch you all up just a little bit!

Since I've been gone, Denise and I have run in another 5K race...she totally kicked my butt this time. It was impossible to stick together in the crowd of around 4,000, so I just ran my race and thought I was going at a pretty fast pace for the first mile or so and expected to finish about 5 minutes ahead of her since my previous best time was about 14-15 minute miles and hers was 17.

But this race was a unique one because it ran through the Christmas Trail of Lights which is a huge annual event here, and there were soooo many people, and soooo many of them were pushing strollers, and walking their dogs, and stopping to take pictures of the lights, and to pick up their dog's poop, that we ended up having to slow down and switch course many, many, times during the race. I told her that I think I actually ran about 4 miles if you counted all the back and forth across the trail I was doing! Now, the race didn't exactly start out well for either of us. We were a little later arriving because of obligations with my children, and parking was closed, so we had to park almost a mile away and walk to the race start! I KNOW!!! And about the time we were too far away from the car for me to consider going back, I realized that I had left my MP3 player IN THE CAR! Aargh!!! Have I mentioned that I hate running without music? It encourages me. It relaxes me. It makes the run tolerable. And...it paces me. About this time I also realized that I wasn't wearing my running watch either...sigh. Can you say, "Give it up and head to Starbucks?" Yeah, sounded good to me too! So, here I was running with no music, no watch, right behind a guy holding his bag of dog poop (it's very hard to be sucking air when you are following a bag of dog poop, by the way) I was completely miserable, and not enjoying the lights at all, but I still had hope to finish with a new personal best time. So, I reached the 2 mile marker tired, but determined to finish the race without walking and hopefully log a decent time despite all the "lap traffic". Guess what was waiting for us in the final 1.2 miles of the race? HILLS!!! Three or four of them to be exact, but one very long, fairly steep one that threatened to do me in. I continued out of pure determination since I had absolutely NO energy left, and no music to keep me going. But I did keep going, and just as I'm recovering from the first hill and enjoying a brief downhill section of the course, here comes Denise right up alongside of me! I was impressed! Not because I'm any great runner or anything, but Denise has only been running for a few months, and she hadn't run at all in the past month! I had at least run 3 miles a couple of weeks before the race, so I knew I could still do it even though my training had slacked off as well. We ended up finishing within a minute of each other, but the thing is, she took 3 or 4 minutes off of her previous best 5K time, and I added 5 minutes to my previous best time! The best part of the whole race was that at the end of the race, there was a Starbuck's Station set up and they were giving away free Peppermint Mochas! They were really not much more than a shot-glass full, but still...totally made the run worth it for me! So, big props to Denise for a great run! I hope you are proud of yourself. And Vanessa, if you're reading this, where were you? I think you should join us for the next race, don't you think?

And now, although I have much more to tell you, I do need to get back to the laundry, cleaning, gift-wrapping, and baking. I'll try to jump back on here later to continue the update, 'cause really, I have a big one for you! Well, it's not that big really, but it's big to me.

Thanks for stopping by!