A summary of recent activities

Celebrating my birthday!!

For my "big" present Tristan treated my friends to dinner then for Cupcake Decorating at Lilly Magilly's (a new cupcake place).

We each decorated one cupcake to eat there and one to bring home for later (if it made it home outside of our stomach). When I learned about the party at Lilly Magilly's I was excited to learn they provide Shirley Temples as the house drink!

And of course it was so wonderful to celebrate with so many great friends and family (the blue person right in front of me on the far right side is my sister who traveled from VA to celebrate with me)

I know I am incredible fortunate to have so many great friends both locally as well as all over the country (and even the world).

The Disney half marathon is always so much fun and I love all the characters along the course.

The only issue I have is that I get super distracted by the characters along the course even though I worked at Disney World for 3 years when I was getting my M.S. in Statistics at the University of Central Florida. This does not help my finishing time.

But alas it is cool to hang with characters all along the 13.1 mile and 26.2 mile courses of the Disney Goofy Marathon!

After every Disney Marathon I like to hang out and savor my finish.

There is a DJ in the finish line festival and there always seem to be hula hoops. Each year I spend a long time hula hooping. This year in fact I started my Disney Marathon experience hula hooping at the EXPO.

Going into my post race festivities my stomach already was feeling the burn from my ~1 hour of hula hooping prior to the race (in fact during the race my stomach was a bit tender). But on a positive note I had burned through my birthday cupcake calories:-)
Prior to the Rock and Roll Arizona Marathon I was incredibly lucky to be able to share a lovely meal with the entire Coury family.

From left to right: Tristan, Me, Nick, Nathan, Peter, Jamil, Melia and Pati. We apparently all did get the memo that the uniform was to be a blue or black shirt! In fact nearly everyone was wearing an Across the Years or Javalina Jundred Shirt (which is one of the numerous races Jamil/Nick Coury and their family are RD's/volunteers)

A Summary of the past few weeks--until the Phoenix Rock and Roll Marathon

The past few weeks have been pretty hectic for me. I completed Across the Years in Arizona, flew back to MD had a few days there (including a VERY important birthday) then headed to Florida for the Disney Goofy Marathon, came back to MD for a few days and flew to Phoenix for the Rock and Roll Marathon. In this time period I took off only a few work days and still had to keep up with a bunch of deadlines. With this hectic schedule both professionally and personally I had little expectation for any of my runs being too successful.

But my year did start off well with a PR at the Disney Half marathon with a new half PR of 1:52:51! This cut off nearly 6 minutes from my previous half marathon PR (this Septembers Parks Half Marathon) and even involved a few pictures with characters and feeling great the entire race. The marathon was a different story but I did have a great time during my nearly 7 hours on the course. Of course this involved several rides, lots of pit stops to eat and drink and lots of socializing!

Then this past weekend Tristan and I headed to the Rock and Roll Arizona Marathon for my third running of this race. I really enjoy the race and now have a bunch of friends in Arizona and knew several friends who were going to be running the race (after I finished I learned I had even more friends on the course then even I knew about).

I went to the EXPO on Friday and enjoyed seeing and experiencing the EXPO including attending a presentation by John Bingham as well as seeing my friend Dane Rauschenberg (an author of the book See Dane Run). I also was fortunate enough to see my pacer from JJ100 in 2010, Elizabeth "e" as well as a runner she was going to pace through the race.

Friday evening Tristan and I met up with the Coury's (the Race Director & Family of such races as Javalina Jundred, Across the Years, Pemberton Trail Races and other Aravaipa races). We had a great meal and shared running, hiking, and life stories.

It was such a pleasure to hang out with Pati, Peter (the parents), Melia, Nick, Nathan and Jamil (the children). They are a wonderful family and so much fun to be around. And since Nick and Jamil have run a few of my upcoming ultra's I was able to get some good advice for training and preparing for various ultramarathon courses like Western States and Leadville. I get to see Nick and Jamil in just about 2 months at the Umstead 100 miler where I know they will do great...perhaps great enough to finish then pace me for a lap:-).

Both Pati and Peter were going to run the half marathon together on Sunday which I thought was so sweet! Pati and Peter ended up finishing with a time of 2:32. This was just Pati's second half marathon and it was a massive PR by nearly half an hour, way to go!!!

After our delightful meal Tristan and I headed back to our hotel to prepare for what ended up being a very long day of hiking. With the Coury's advice and directions we decided to go to Camelback Mtn just north of Pheonix. It is a beautiful mountain but in retrospect not necessarily the best pre-race hike. There is a section in which you must hold a hand rail to climb up 50 or so verticle feet. Then another half mile or so you are climbing and scrambling up rocks that make the Weverton Cliffs section of the AT/JFK50 miler look like childs play!

The hike was beautiful and the views from the top impressive but by the end my knee's and quads were a little angry about the whole hike. In fact towards the end although Tristan was struggling a bit because of his mountaineering accident, I was struggling because I am pretty incompetent at hiking and basically I am a big sissy!

After finishing this hike the least we deserved was a big meal, so we headed to Sweet Tomatoes for dinner. I am pretty sure if that restuarant goes bankrupt it is our fault as we went back numerous times for salads, breads, soups and of course desserts! Chocolate Lava cake=yum!! This was a good way to carbo-load for the Phoenix Rock and Roll Marathon.