Great Success

Eric and I ran the Bolder Dash 10k today. I had a lot of fun and got one of the nicest race shirts ever. It's the "running shirt" material, breathable wicking material. (Firefox thinks "wicking" isn't a word. Did I spell it right?)

Eric and I agreed that races shouldn't involve more than one lap around the course. Honestly, that was the hardest part of the race for me. I was running around this lake thinking, "oh crap, I've got to do this again". The whole time I wanted to go faster but knew that I shouldn't. I had two goals for the race. The first was 1:10:00. The second was 1:15:00. Our race started at 8:30am and the next one started at 9:45am and I wanted to be done before the second race started. We made it in around 1:13:00. (That reads "one hour and thirteen minutes".) We stopped for water at all four water stops which was interesting. I don't usually stop or drink when I run and that slowed us down. The race was already so tough mentally (remember the laps?) that I just couldn't run by water without taking any.

In the end I had a lot of fun. And the American Lung Association invited me to "run" up 30 flights of stairs in a skyscraper in Minneapolis in the middle of the winter. Honestly, I think it sounds like a lot of fun. Amanda was mildly hesitant when I told her she should do it too. I think I forgot to tell her about all the firefighters who run in this one. (Yeah, I thought that would get your attention.) It's also nice to run with Eric because I rarely get to spend time with someone who enjoys gadgets as much as I do. He was able to steer me to a portable battery charger for my plane ride. I did a little research and found one that will charge my iPod between 3 (that's if I buy the new iPod Touch) and 8 (that's if I buy the new nano) times before the external battery pack has to be charged. Also, (and this was unfortunate for me) he talked up the new iPod touch which has me second guessing my idea abou buying the new nano. Luckily, I think I have some time before I need to make that decision. (I'm so hapy I live in a city with an Apple store.)

Amanda invited me over to lunch, which turned out to be my breakfast also, and it was awesome. We had homemade spring rolls. They were really fun to make. I think they would be a really fun meal to make with kids because they can make their own. Also a nice thing to do at parties, interactive food. (Like fondu.) We had veggies, rice noodles, chicken and sauce in rice paper (which, ironically, was made out of wheat flour). It was yummy and I had like ten of them. Then we went shopping at Target.

After that, Amanda and I negotiated apple picking dates (hint: Kelly, I hope one of them works for you) and running dates. I asked Amanda to be my running coach. I want to go faster. And every time I run with Amanda, she goes. Then she'll say, "oh, I haven't run in like three months" and I'll say, "slow the crap down, what's wrong with you?" Obviously, we run intervals.

I'm still thinking about running a marathon. I read today some article that said, "if you can run a 5k, you can probably run a marathon". The first task will be to start running 4-5 days per week. Right now, it's more like 3. I have my Nike+ goal set to run 3 times a week until I leave for South Africa. I think after that, I'll start ramping up my efforts.