Birthdays, Marathons, and More.

So much to say, such little time.

I'm slowly getting better about remembering to post. I have quite a slew of new photos to show you since last time. They happen to be completely out of order for your convenience.

I'm not going to go through picture by picture like I usually do, so you're just going to have to guess which one is which. :)

So the most important news is that I finished this crazy marathon that I've been training for since January. Who knew that it took so long to train for such a thing? I had no idea what to expect because my runs have been very...unpredictable. Going from a horrible horrible, worst run ever of a 15 miler (that was supposed to be 21 miles) to a great 22 miler. And then a horrible 12 miler. Followed by an a marathon run that went pretty smoothly for me.

The marathon was July 25th. The night before a few of my friends decided that we'd all stay up in this fancy hotel in the city. It was the Intercontinental which was surprisingly in an awesome location. Right across from Buca di Beppo, the restaurant where we decided to "carb load".

That day went pretty well. The guys were making fun of me for having a ravenous sweet tooth. I probably bought 3 different kinds of candy that day. We went shopping for the majority of the day, and then tried to not pass out before dinner. I was so tired and exhausted, I had no idea how I was going to run for 4 hours. Some other friends joined us for dinner later, and we ate TONS of pasta. Brian and I had birthdays coming up (his was the 28th, mine the 29th) so we shared a brownie with ice cream. It was incredible. I ate half of it myself.

I could barely sleep. I probably slept 4 hours. My friend broke out into a terrible rash out of nerves. It was that bad.

The next morning at 4am we woke up, and then at 5 we headed down to the race. It was the perfect weather, I couldn't have asked for anything better. A chilly 50-60 degrees with nothing but clouds and fog. The best running weather ever. I got into the 6th corral, and was hoping to get bumped up so that I could find people running the pace that I was aiming for. Instead I had to run around everybody which was a serious pain across the bridge.

Wow, I am telling things in way too much detail.

Basically the run was great. 13 miles down, and I was good. 16 miles down, and then it was just a countdown to the finish. 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2..........1............. .2 left to go. It was rough. The last two miles were hard to keep my legs going.

I finished with a time of 3:54:03. It was better than I expected, and I was pretty satisfied. Afterwards it was SO hard to walk. I kept waking up in the middle of the night because it hurt so much to move my legs. 3 days later and an ice bath, and I'm ready to run again!

Ok that's story is done. I have another marathon in October too...

It was also my birthday this week. Thursday to be exact. It was lovely. I had no high expectations. All I wanted was to not hit a 6 year old german kid on a bike. (that happened a few years ago, worst birthday ever). It was a pretty awesome birthday I must admit. I started it with my weightlifting class, in which my friends stayed up to make me some delicious home made cookies. And get this, SNICKERS bar INSIDE the cookies.

Then I drove to work, got an AWESOME parking spot, and was surprised with flowers, hugs, and a list of reasons why people like me written on the white board behind me. Haha, I'll try to find that pic. Anyway, I also received a lovely unicorn drawing. To be precise, it was me, riding a unicorn, flying over a rainbow. And a tree. And I actually had no hands and legs, and the unicorn was three legged. But really, can you ask for anything better?

I went to lunch with some friends and we sat in Union Square. There happened to be free snow cones too, which I don't think was a coincidence. It was beautiful outside, and it was just so perfect. ;)

Then I worked. Or tried to at least.

I also organized a dinner, and a lovely group of people came with. Including my Mom who arrived just in time for food! She's here for the week, so we've been running around shopping. :)

Dinner was awesome. Shabu shabu! I think everyone had a pretty good time.

Oh, I also put in some drawings from a Dr. Sketchy's that I went to. It's basically where you go figure drawing but get to draw awesome things instead of plain models. Don't get me wrong, the plain models are cool but this was pretty fun.

And I got a haircut. Gottie likes to pose in pictures with me. Not really. He hates cameras. I just like torturing him.

So what's coming up for the next post? How about some pics from our trip to French Laundry??? Yeah, I didn't know what that was either. It's a super fancy restaurant that I would never go to if someone else wasn't paying (think over $200 per person, not including drinks). I borrowed a fancy dress from a friend, so I'm looking forward to going and seeing everyone else all snazzy.

Anyway that's it. More later!