Boyfriend and I came out here to visit his parents (they have a house here and will be moving full time when they retire in the next year), and it was so strange to me to be traveling without doing a marathon! We had dinner at JFK before our flight, and I found myself ordering pasta and eating tons of bread… it’s just what I do at airports on Friday night! Unfortunately, I don’t think the carbs were quite necessary for my grueling Saturday workout of lying by the pool and tanning. They were especially not necessary when you consider how many chips with guacamole I ate this weekend… that was plenty of carbs!
So we’re on the red eye flight back tonight… hopefully. The flight is pretty full, which is a risk of flying standby that we were willing to take, but there are other people who should be at our same priority level on the standby list but have pulled illegal shenanigans to get themselves to the top of the list. If I miss this flight because of them, you can bet I will be pretty pissed. I would like to be back at 7 AM tomorrow, not 7 PM, thankyouverymuch.
This is going to be an odd week for me. Boyfriend leaves on Wednesday for a crazy 10 day mountain climbing trip which is going to leave me home alone and really scared for his safety. Take day 4, for example:
Day 4: Crevasse Rescue day. Climbers will participate and perform all aspects of crevasse rescue. You learn to rescue yourself and others from crevasses. Instruction includes setting rescue systems and prussiking out of a crevasse with pack and sled.
Um, yeah. People think my hobby of running marathons can be dangerous?! Why on earth would someone want to jump into a bottomless pit to make sure that his friends know the proper way of saving him? To make things worse, the guys won’t have cell phones on the mountain, so I won’t know anything until the following Friday when they get back to Seattle. You all saw how I got after one night of worrying about Boyfriend’s safety, and now I have to go ten days KNOWING he’s in a dangerous situation and not being able to do anything about it.
My solution is to go crazy with getting in shape. The plan starts with me signing up for two marathons (Sunburst in Indiana on 6/6 and Hatfield McCoy in Kentucky/West Virginia on 6/13), but it will be further expanded by finally getting back to daily (or maybe even twice-daily) workouts, and eating ridiculously healthy food (hey, with Boyfriend gone, there’s going to be no one to tempt me into Indian takeout). When he gets back, I am going to be the hottest, thinnest, most in-shape girlfriend ever!
Stay tuned to hear how this goes. Hopefully it will not be like my aborted half-Ironman endeavor 🙂
Hope you had a great time in Phoenix! You’ll have to take advantage of that house and come visit in the winter, when it’s fantastic weather.
If you’re in search of an Arizona marathon, there are plenty of great ones Dec-Feb.
WOOOO! Good luck with the marathons (and the worrying for Boyfriend–ugh, I can’t even imagine!)!
As for Sunburst, the course is a little odd and at times annoying. There are all these strange loops and out and back portions where you end up running around a traffic cone. And while I haven’t run the marathon (just up to the half), I have a handful of friends who have, and say that there is very little crowd support once you move away from downtown and the University during the long out-and-back stretch (from about miles 12-23), and since the marathon is rather small, it can get pretty lonely.
Also, at the end of the race, it is probably going to seem like the stadium goes on FOREVER. You run from the far south end of the stadium around to the far north end of the stadium, and it seriously feels like it will never end–but once you get into the tunnel and run onto the field, it is SO worth it–you finish at the 50 yard-line!
The event is pretty well run and it doesn’t seem like there are ever complaints about aid stations, lack of volunteers, etc., and it seems like the people of South Bend get pretty into the races–there will be folks on their lawns with hoses when it’s hot, or handing out oranges, etc. Oh, and the volunteers all seemed REALLY nice and encouraging last year when I ran the half.
The only other thing is that the weather can be seriously HOT . . . but it looks like it should be in the low to mid-60s tomorrow during the race, so that is REALLY good news!
Aw, writing this makes me so sad I’m not going to be there this year . . . oh well, best of luck, chica! I hope you have a blast!! 🙂
Oh Laura, sounds like another crazy plan for you, but I know you’re up for it!
Crevasse rescue day sounds dirty. Hee hee.