A not too muddy Muddy Buddy!

Always up for an adventure or unable to say "no"... who knows? Who cares!

A few of the usual suspects decided we should sign up for the Muddy Buddy here in Dallas on October 25th. The race is done in teams of two taking turns running and biking. There are five legs in the race. Teammate A runs, bikes, runs, bikes, runs and Teammate B bikes, runs, bikes, runs, bikes.

Seena and I got paired up... just because our first names start with the same letter. Sounded good to me! ;)

I don't think I ever raced so unprepared. I was basically told I'd be picked up at the crack of dawn on my doorstep and to show up with a helmet. That's about all I knew and all I was prepared for. My awesome teammate got us team shirts ready, she secured a mountain bike for the race and got everything organized.

The race was a blast and we rocked it. The biking - despite the fact that I think I had mountain biked a grand total of two times in my life - was awesome and I think I ran pretty strongly despite the hills. Team "Got Soap?" placed 2nd in our age group.

The Great Urban Race

A few of of us from the Ragnar team decided to sign-up for the Great Urban Race and instead of splitting everyone in teams of two, we decided to each race with our husbands. Unfortunately, everyone kind of flaked out for one reason or the other and only teams White Bread & Rice (Ardis and Wilson) and The Swiss and the Geek (Anthony and I) were ready to race!

On October 3rd, after seeing patients, going to school and unloading kids, we all somehow managed to meet at the race start.

The Great Urban Race is

similar to the reality TV show "The Great Amazing Race", we had several clues to solve, challenges to do and lots of running around.

It required a lot of strategizing, lots of running and some luck!

We had to carve pumpkins, purchase and deliver toilet paper to a shelter, taking a two-step lesson, finding license plates with specific letters, complete a smelling challenge, chow down a brownie and taking pictures doing it, etc.

Almost 400 participants and both our teams qualified for the Championship in New Orleans by arriving in the top 25, 16th and 17th respectively. It was a blast!

First race post summer... or so I thought

At the beginning of the year, shortly after moving to the Big D, I decided to register to run my 3rd 1/2 marathon, Heels and Hills and Him. It was scheduled for May. The week before the race, instead of being excited about it, I started dreading it. My typical reaction, when not prepared.

It had been raining a lot in the week coming up to the race and the day before the race messages started to appear on the race web site indicating that they'd be keeping a close eye on the weather. The morning of the race, I got up before the crack of dawn, only to find out that the race had been postponed. Not cancelled, just postponed to September. How amazing is that? We all got the chance to re-register for the September race for free, well actually if I remember correctly the 3rd party vendor doing the online registration charged us $5.

The race had been rescheduled for September 27th. I was excited about getting to run in "cooler" weather... or so I thought. Still wasn't feeling it... still dreading it... especially since I had been sick all week and only ran once all week but I started getting excited about it a couple of days before the race, when I learned that the amazing Shaheen would be pacing a 1:45 group.

Got up on race day, went through my usual routine, headed to the race site, got there way too early and met up with "the girls": Ardis, Seena, Anne, Dawnda, Sharon & co. My stomach still wasn't feeling great.

I joined the 1:45 "group" at the starting line. The "group" consisted of a bunch of amazing runners: Shaheen, Mark O., Michael H. and Claudia. Shaheen was the official pace leader and Claudia and I each ended up with our own personal pacing superstar. The first few miles, it looked like we had a party going, we were so excited, shouting, having fun. Michael kept

us VERY entertained. He actually did the Hokey Pokey running backwards right in front of us. I was working hard trying to run forward and the dude is running backwards doing the hokey pokey in front of me... needless to say, we laughed a lot!

Claudia stayed focus, she did amazing, especially given that she had run something like 14 miles the day before the race. Who does that anyway!? ;)

Fortunately, I didn't realize that it was a straight out and back course on a paved trail because I probably would have stayed in bed. Around mile 6, I broke ahead of the group a little bit and shortly there after, I passed the turning point and started passing runners heading to the turning point. As much as I didn't like the course, everyone's spirit was so encouraging and inspiring. We were shouting at each other, telling each other "good job", "looking good", etc. and there also were inspirational messages every half miles or so. My favorite being "Who's idea was this anyway?" :)

Shaheen, Mark & I

Around mile 8, Mark, my very own personal pacer caught up with me and that's when the fun began. That's right when it started to get really hot and humid. Apparently, the weather didn't get the memo that it was the end of September, or rather, it didn't care. It's Texas after all!

Mile 8 to 10 went fine but I really hit the wall at mile 10. It was horrible. Poor Mark had to listen to my "I can't do it" whining for 3.1 miles. Not pretty, definitely not my finest moment. Shaheen caught up with us in the home stretch. She figured since she didn't have anyone to pace, she didn't have to keep the official pacing time. Keep in mind that 1:45 is a fall-asleep kind of pace for her!

I wish I could say I finished strong in 1:42:49 but it was rather pathetic! I placed 1st in my age

group, 4th female overall and 22nd runner to cross the finish line.

Long summer

It was a very long, humid raceless summer! The good news is that this year, during my annual summer trip to Europe not only did I manage to pack running clothes/shoes but I actually took them out of the suitcase and used them.

There is just no ifs and buts about it, I will never get used to the Texas summer with temperature and humidity levels so high that you feel you've just stepped in an oven. Forget running into that kind of weather.

I literally dragged through my regular Tuesday/Friday 5-mile loop with Sue's group at 6 am in the morning. I mean, how early does one have to wake up to be able to run through a 5 mile loop? Worst of all, I started retreating to the dreadmill. When I start using the dreadmill a whole lot, you know it's bad.

So... running in Switzerland, in Germany and back and forth across the border even, was a nice boost to my running self-esteem that had been tanking in the Texas summer. It was nice to know I still "had it". :)

Ragnar Relay from Santa Barbara to Dana Point

This weekend was an interesting one!

I was a member of team MILFs (Mothers Into Lifelong Fitness), what were YOU thinking? ;) My team was one of the 105 teams running the Ragnar Relay from Santa Barbara to Dana Point. The team consisted of 12 runners, divided in two vans, running178 miles in beautiful Southern California over a 24 hour period.

I was runner #6 in the first van. Our van covered legs 1-6, 13-18 and 25-30 the second van covered legs 7-12, 19-24 and 31-36.

Unfortunately, the night before the race, we were told that we couldn't run leg 4 and then legs 19-24, due supposedly to permit issues but I have my doubts that permits were ever issued given the fact that those said legs were extremely dangerous to run (i.e. the PCH in Malibu). As it was, some of the legs we actually ran, were really dangerous! We had different options to make up our "lost" legs and we decided to pair up with a few of the runners in van 2 running their first legs.

My very first leg was running 5 miles into Ventura, CA my "hometown" in the US. I guess I

must have been really excited because I ran my leg at a 7:32 pace. Since my second leg had been

eliminated (I was supposed to run on PCH into Santa Monica), I opted to run with my friend Monica, who was running her first leg in the middle of the fields off Pleasant Valley in Oxnard. We ran 5.5 miles at a nice steady pace. It was nice to have a running partner to chit chat with!

My last leg, was running 6.6 miles on a trail along Huntington Beach. It was beautiful! I was pretty sleep deprived by then and didn't really enjoy the run but I kept my pace steadily a little under 8, which I can't really complain about.

Both my official legs were on trails along the beach and although the scenary was breathtaking, the van with my other teammates couldn't shadow me (i.e. cheer me on, give me

water, etc.) so it was a little lonely but I made it!

It was a great experience and I'll certainly do it again. It was disapointing that they had to cancel so many legs, it gave us a long break in the middle of the night, so I don't feel like we got the full experience but I did log a few miles and I am happy with that! :)

Mud Run 10k in Fort Worth

Today, my friend Ardis and I ran the Mud Run 10k in Fort Worth. It was brutal but lots of fun!

The weather wasn't as bad as yesterday and it was even sunny.

I wasn't too worried about the race since my goal was to finish. I knew I could handle 10k and I knew I could handle the mud. I wasn't too sure about the weather and I definitely didn't know about the military-style obstacles!

It turned out to be a great race. Lots of fun, encouraging participants and volunteers. It was rough running in hiking shoes, mudy and wet but I made it through. :)

The obstacles ranged from going over a wall, to going up a rope ladder, crawling under wire in the mud and going underwater to pass under obstacles. Here are a few pictures of last year's race: photos I'll update the link when this year's pictures are posted.

I think it took me about 1h05 - 1h10, which isn't bad all things considered. Waiting on the official results.

Ms Stampede 5k

Yesterday, I ran the Ms Stampede 5k. My very first 5k in Texas. I wasn't really looking forward to it because:

1) I despise 5k's, I don't have any self-control and start way too fast and by mile 1.5, I am ready to throw in the towel

2) The weather forecast called for very cold and windy weather

I ran it anyway because I had signed up for it and because it was for a good cause!

It turned out to be a good race. Despite the cold and extremely windy weather, the run was pretty enjoyable. We ran against the wind for the first half of the race, which was really tough, but we had the wind helping us move faster on the way back.

I was pretty happy with my time (22:48) and best of all, everyone else was slower, so I won the race! :)

Official results: http://www.racechiptiming.com/files/MSSTAMPEDEADDISON.HTM

NYE 10k

On Thursday, I was supposed to see my orthopedic doctor to hopefully get the green light to start running again. Unfortunately, we had a showing and the house needed to be in tip top shape, never mind that it was 5 days after Christmas and that we are only about a week and a half before the movers come to box things up. I had to vacate the house with kids and dogs... so I rescheduled the appointment until next week.

In the meantime, I've been running (cough cough) and it has been going well. So much so that I decided to enter my first race post injury. The first annual DAC New Year's Eve 10k. You can't pass a race when it's a mere 5 minutes from your house. Well... maybe I should have because it was in the low 30s and the windchill definitely made the real feel below freezing. COLD stuff!

The race went great, I hit a wall around 5 miles but I pulled myself together and finished in 48 minutes and something. They didn't have numbers and definitely no chips but they did the "I hand you a card when you pass the finish line and you fill it out" kind of deal. I'll be curious to see what my official time is.

Non-the-less, I managed to finish 4th overall female and 1st in my age group, 26-35. I'd definitely run this race again, it was fun!

HAPPY NEW YEAR! :)