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.