2010 Houston Half Marathon

To date, I've run 1 marathon, 2 25k's, and somewhere around a dozen half marathons. I'm an addict.

About 6 months ago, I was trying to decide whether to run the full marathon or the half marathon. I was coming off of a stress fracture so decided this would be the year of the half... a fast half.

My original goal was to beat 2 hours, but then as the season went forward and I got faster that original goal was not good enough. It went from 2 hours, to 1:58, to 1:55, then 1:53. I'd demonstrated a couple times a 1:55 with ease, so figured, hey! why not 1:53?

On race day I did what you are NEVER SUPPOSED TO DO! I changed things. Instead of eating a granola bar, I ate a cliff bar. Which is bad news for diabetics when you don't take anymore insulin for 3x's the carbohydrates.

Long story short, I felt GREAT the first half of the race... was on pace for a 1:52. Then about mile 7-ish the high blood sugar kicked in. I felt nausea and almost tossed my cookies on the side of the course at mile 9. At the end of the race, I check my blood sugar and it was 406!! (Should be 70-150). No WONDER I felt so bad!

It was a bummer of a race and I was disappointed, but ended up with a 1:58:31. I beat my original goal, but not consecutive goals. Oh well, there's always next time. Just for fun, here are my paces throughout the race... and picture taken around mile 6.

Mile 1: 8:36

Mile 2: 8:42

Mile 3: 8:41

Mile 4: 8:33

Mile 5: 8:35

Mile 6: 8:47

Mile 7: 9:00

Mile 8: 9:04

Mile 9: 9:20 (Yikes!)

Mile 10: 9:23

Mile 11: 9:13

Mile 12: 9:19

Mile 13: 9:05

Mile 13.1: 8:56

Big 12 Championship

It's all old news by now, but hey, I'm not exactly the most prudent blogger. :)

We were fortunate enough to get tickets to the Big 12 Championship game in Dallas, TX this year. It was the battle of the North v. South (Nebraska v. Texas) which is always a great matchup.

The game was at the new Dallas Cowboy's stadium (Jerry World) which was AMAZING! We had great seats (15 yard line, 14 rows up). Our section of the stadium only allowed people with our "Category" of tickets.... it felt like a hotel lobby.

Most people know about the ending of the game.... bad punt, horse collar penalty, stupid 1 second (I'm not bitter or anything). But... we had a GREAT time despite the loss. We stood the entire game, yelled for the huskers and celebrated the great plays with the awesome Husker fans around us. We'll get them next year! Go Big Red!

Inside of Jerry World.

Our seats were incredible! Check out that field position. Go Suh!!

Extreme Home Makeover!

This summer I've had a few projects that have finally come to completion. So fun!

Kitchen Re-Do
I've wanted to paint the kitchen for a while. The red was fun, but I got tired of it. Welcome "Buttercream"!

Before...



























After!


























New Floors!
We've wanted wood floors for quite a while but never really had an excuse to get rid of the carpet (which wasn't in horrible condition, but not great either). Once we got Lacey, her puppy habits included tearing up carpet! Ugh!!! Well, it bumped up the priority of the floors quite a bit.

I don't have "before" pictures of the carpet. Some of the pictures almost make the color look reddish, but they really aren't (the first picture is the best indication of the color)

6 Years!!

On June 14th, we celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary! I can't believe it's been THAT long! It really doesn't feel that long ago, but when I look at pictures from our wedding, we really looked a lot younger. :)

We "celebrated" by spending about 5 hours at my danc recital. Thats right, I take dance (tap and jazz) with 4 other ladies ranging from my age to mid-50's. We all took dance as kids so we're actually really good!

But anyway, I thought I would share some fun pictures from our wedding day on June 14th, 2003. When we got married it was right about the time that photographers were switching to professional digital photos, so unfortunately all our "good" pictures are only in print. I have a few cute ones that were taken by friends/family. Enjoy!

I loved my dress!

At the reception.... all the money for food and I don't think we actually ate any of it.

A "classy" picture showing off the bling in the limo to the reception. It was so fun!!!

A picture of my mom and I... too bad it turned out kind of blurry.

Houston, we have roses...

If you've been following my blogs, you that I ordered some "boutique" rose plants online. It was the "Cinqo de Mayo" rose that won the 2009 Rose of the Year award.

I planted them in March and behold! we have flowers!! This is a HUGE success... because I don't have the best record when it comes to keeping plants alive. :)

I threw in a picture of Annie, just because she's so darn cute! It was so bright outside, she could hardly open her eyes.

Trip to Nebraska

Here are some fun pictures from our trip to Nebraska last weekend! We spent the first couple of days with Justin, Jill and our nephew Grant (8 mos). He is just the cutest!

Grant in his bouncer... it was hilarious! He would bounce in this thing until he fell asleep!
I thought this was cute... Grant reaching for my camera.

Grant with his uncle Bryce.

All of the trees were in bloom in Lincoln. I had to take a few fun shots with my SLR.

My parent's new dog, Casie in the backyard. She is 3 1/2 years old. We thought she was a perfect blend of Baylee and Annie.

We also ran the Lincoln Half Marathon. It was a beautiful day, about 55 degrees at the start. The course was really fun and we saw a lot of people we knew. I never remembered Lincoln being so hilly growing up, but apparently I've been in flat Houston too long. The hills were insane!! I downloaded the elevation chart from my Garmin and the hills were actually fairly similar to those in the San Francisco half marathon. The steepest hill in SF was still a bit steeper than Lincoln, but overall the sum of the elevation changes was very similar to that of SF.

Despite all the hills, I tied of personal record (PR) of 2:00. I was hoping to break my PR, but I also didn't expect all the hills. Bryce did awesome, he broke his PR and by ~50 seconds and ended up ~1:53. I couldn't believe all the crowd support, there were TONS of people cheering us on the entire 13.1 miles. I'd definitely run it again... but train for hills more. :)

Wahoo!!

I'm not sure what happened here... but I need to figure it out so I can make it happen again!! Two of my "issues" resolved themselves overnight!

Issue #1:

My wonderful husband made who knows how many phone calls, found my shampoo and picked it up at a random salon.

Issue #2:

For whatever reason, the website I bought the gels at didn't update my order status. They arrived today! Yay!!!

I don't think Issue #3 will fix itself, but at least I'll have clean hair and gels for the race Sunday! :)