Happy Runner Girl: Olympic Trials, Houston Marathon, George H. Bush and First Class...

MLK weekend 2012!!

Wow!! What an amazing weekend! It started with a 7am meet up at my friends house on Friday morning. We drove to the airport and for the first time I flew on a buddy pass...a little stressful but what an adventure! I also flew with just a carry-on and it was pretty easy! We got on the direct flight to Houston, picked up the rental car and headed to the hotel. Traffic in Houston sucks! Way worse than Denver. We made it to the hotel and then headed right back out to the Expo. It was pretty surreal seeing a bunch of the trial runners in the hotel right next to the Expo...had some dinner and went to bed.

Saturday woke up early and headed down to the trials area. So cool! We saw them all warming up etc. I even got a close up of Kara! Then we tried to find a good place to watch the race. The course was laid out that if you got a good position you could see the runners up to four times! So we tried to get on some bleachers and they were guarded pretty heavily and we didn't have any fancy VIP tags on so we didn't get in haha. Then this media type looking lady walked up to us and asked if we were looking for somewhere to sit. We said YES! Well she needed people to fill in her stands I guess for TV or something. So we got prime seats and were able to watch both starts see both finishes and see them run through three more times! This is about the coolest thing I have ever experienced. My husband and I aren't big game or concert goers so this was a pretty neat event.

Then we relaxed Saturday...watched the Broncos lose :( and had a 4:15am wake-up call.

Some of you may disagree and that's fine and I respect that but I ran under someone else's name. So for me not having run a marathon in over 6 years and having minimal training since this opportunity came up about 6 weeks ago I went in with no expectations. I had to get her in under 5 hours. So I wasn't really nervous and I just got up and got to the start. For this big of a race I was really impressed on the organization. I never felt like a sardine. I also never had more than 2 people in line ahead of my for a bathroom bonus!!!

Started out decent all under 9 minute pace up to the half. My half was a 1:57 and was like right on keep this up! Then my legs just couldn't keep up! My breathing was fine just my legs cramped and tightened up big time. I just kept pushing on even though I was slowing down. I ran a 4:06. My 6th marathon and my worst time but ya know I was totally OK with this! It was almost a relief to get it over with knowing I can do it and not even that bad of a time with minimal training. Now back in my 20's I could have run faster on that training but at almost 36 my body just can't big lesson learned Sunday : need to train!

One thing cool about this race unlike others was that a lot of church groups were out cheering. There was a priest spraying holy water on us and at one point there was a group that looked like that just got out of church and were cheering. There was a man in a wheelchair and throughout this race I was hi fiving people so I went up to him and shook his hand and was just grateful to be able to run and not be in a wheel chair. Come to find out I had just shook George H. Bush's hand!! How cool was that!

Trying to get back to Denver on buddy passes was an adventure1 We flew Houston to Aspen and I was seated in first class! The first time in my life! It was pretty awesome! Free wine and snacks galore!

Got in to Aspen and then flew into Denver. Whew what an amazing weekend!

A few thoughts....in 2005 when I ran a 3:55 I was bored and wanted ot get it over with this time I never was bored and am thinking I can totally manage some ultra/trail runs in my future. I also want to run another marathon again :)

The End

Enjoy the pics and video!!!