Weekend Tidbits – The Race, The Ride, and The Ridiculous Feast

Half marathon training to be posted tomorrow since I’m still working out the schedule.  Two races in two weeks makes for challenges not anticipated!

Anywhoo, this was an extremely active weekend – which is good, to make up for the gluttony that ensued.  It’s time for weekend recap show and tell.

The Race!

This picture is for race number 2!

So I’ve learned that I can predict the weather.  If I sign up for a race, it’s going to be  a shitty day.  If you’ll remember, my last race was super cold and rainy that morning (sandwiched in between a bunch of beautiful days).  This day was the perfect temperature – cool but not cold.  The only problem was it was raining (pouring) on and off all day.  The weather peoples had said that it was just a morning thing, but when I heard it outside my office window around 2pm, I was starting to get nervous.

I left work a little early and got to the race site about 30 minutes before the start.  Instead of an official-type race, it was more of a community event.  It was not chip timed, half of the racers were kids or people pushing strollers, I think I was probably the only non-community resident there, etc.  I was a little disappointed, but I wasn’t gonna let that stop me from trying to beat my last time (and I was going for somewhere in the 25s).  Before the race it was pretty wet out, but it was only alternating from spitting to not spitting, hadn’t really started raining yet.

When we took off the kids were all in front so there was definitely a “wade through” period of running out of the gate.  Then, about a tenth of a mile in – there was a HUGE FREAKING HILL.  Yes, I am a wuss when it comes to hills and I’m aware I need to work on that, but that just isn’t nice.  My plan was to run the first and third miles fast and slow down in the middle (since that’s how I tend to run anyway if left to my own devices), but the first hill killed my pace and I spent the majority of the race with a killer cramp in my side.  Then, on top of everything else, around mile 1.5 it started raining, and it just got worse through the rest of the race.  I usually make up for the fact that I suck on uphills by rocking the downhills, but since it was raining, I didn’t want to slip and fall on my ass in front of all of Rollingwood.

Here I am booking to the finish.  When I crossed the timer read 27:29 (which meant I was in 6th place for my age group), but considering they started it when the first kid crossed the line, I think it was closer to 27 flat.  At least, that’s what I’m telling myself…

I don’t mean to be all negative Nancy here.  It was a BEAUTIFUL area to run through.  I suppose an unseasonal 95 and humid day might have been worse than pouring rain.  It was really adorable that half the community was sitting outside with their umbrellas cheering on the runners.  The boy scouts giving out the water at each mile were so happy if you took the water (don’t thank ME for taking water – I should be thanking YOU for giving it to my dehydrated behind…).

But…this is how drenched I was after my race.  And I not only didn’t get a 25-something time, I didn’t even get a 26-something time.  Oh well, considering the conditions, I will take a personal best and only grumble a little bit about it.  This Saturday is a more official type 10k, so I can redeem myself.  My goal is under 1 hour.

The Ridiculous Feast!

My father turned 76 on Saturday.  My father loves italian food.  If there is something my father loves more than italian food, it’s buffets.  So when I heard about this place called Cannoli Joe’s a few months ago (has music on the site – a warning for those of you at work), I knew that it was the perfect birthday spot for him.  Now, I could have easily gone here with some restraint and had a fairly healthy dinner.  They had a HUGE variety of veggies, salads, tomato based pasta dishes, and healthy stuff like salmon and steak.  But, being that I haven’t had italian food in, oh, over a year (except one outing to Olive Garden when I ordered something on their light menu which was pretty terrible), I decided that that wasn’t going to be the case.

I also ate very light for the rest of the day so this was the majority of my food.  I did start out with a full plate of salad and veggies, all of which were delish.  Then, the floodgates opened – I pretty much had a bite of at least half of everything they had – pizza, pasta, meatloaf, steak…and desert.  Oh, the deserts.  They had 10 different flavors of ice cream, and various other things like cannolis, caramel cheesecake, melon in sweet cream sauce, cream puffs, brownies, and more.  I am getting hungry right now just thinking about it (to be fair, I did write this part just before lunch).  My dad enjoyed the meal and we decided that this is a once-every-six-months-at-the-most indulgence (which is OK, because it’s a far drive), and the only exception is perhaps after my half marathon when I get to pick something to chow down on guilt free.

The Ride!

After a night of italian feasting, we knew we had to get our butts moving yesterday.  A nice light lunch and some sunscreen and we were out the door by 2pm, heading down to Zilker Park on the bikes.  We took a new road to get there which involved some scary/exciting little trails.  At first it felt a little rough but about 5 minutes in things started to get much better and the rest of the ride seemed actually easier than normal.  Zee quadriceps, they are getting stronger!

The ride took about an hour and a half and then we hit Zilker.  After wandering around the free exhibit about the Barton Springs area we were about to plop our butts into, we walked downstream a bit and got ourselves a canoe.  Neither of us had been canoeing before, and we had decided there was no time like the present to change that.  After about five minutes I wasn’t sure how I was going to keep rowing for an hour, but I just kept at it and hit my stride after just a bit.  It was a really pretty area we paddled through, and marveled at the fish and turtles.  It was hard not to bop them on their heads though while paddling – there were so many!  We overestimated the time it took to get back and were only out about 45-50 minutes instead of the full hour, but let me tell you – fantastic upper body workout.  And the scenery beats the hell outta the gym, let me tell you.

It was then officially DINNER TIME.  We were huuuuungry.  We headed to a place we’ve been meaning to try – P. Terry’s, and ordered us up some grub.  We got two hamburgers and split a fry.  The fries were amazing, and the burger was very peppery which was an interesting and welcome twist – but I was unhappy with the secret sauce (which tasted pretty much like mayo) which I tried only because they didn’t offer mustard.  The burgers were small, which was perfect for us so we didn’t stuff ourselves for the ride back, but might have disappointed if it’s all we had planned to eat for the rest of the day.

We then re-filled our camel back knock offs (9 bucks in comparison to 30!!!) with ice and water and headed back.  Was a bit tired by the end but we made it!  Took us 5 hours round trip – about 3 for the biking portions, about 30 mins standing in line and walking, 1 hour or so canoeing, and 30 minutes grubbin’ on yummy burgers.  For the exercise parts of it, spark said I burned 1631 calories.  That’s more than I ate (though I was still running on Cannoli Joe’s power).  It was an awesome day!  It even got better because we made blue margaritas and shrimp with onions and peppers and enjoyed every little last bit of Sunday until it was bedtime.  I love weekends.  I wish they weren’t so short!

Verdict is: today I was too tired to get up and do my long run this morning so I’m going to have to tweak around my training for the week, but it was so worth it.  I did get on the scale and was at 151.0 – not a new low weight, but the old low weight I haven’t seen in a while, so I’m pretty pleased.

What did you do this weekend, blogiverse?  Anyone want to start working on a plan to grow money trees so we can have more time off to do the fun stuff instead of sitting in front of the ‘puters working?