What a weekend!!

a little nap pre-races

Saturday started around 4am for us.. I think G might have gotten a little more sleep than me.. but not much. First the crazy thunderstorm woke us up and lit up our respective bedrooms with all the flashes of lightning.. then the incessant rain just pounded and pounded, giving us no respite at all. Then on my end, the dog got scared, the cat began yowling, and well, call the night pretty much over.

We hooked up at 5:30am and began our drive north. Butterflies in our stomachs... the first race of the season. Woohoo. Got to the border, and saw something we'd never seen before. No cars and and an orange traffic cone in the one open crossing lane. What, the customs guy chose NOW to have his breakfast break? We sat there for about 5 minutes .. then finally saw signs of life in the little booth. An officer lumbered out, grabbed the cone, and lumbered back in, motioning us forward with an impatient flick of the wrist. We moved up, gave him our cards.. he looked at them, barked a quick question at us, and sent us packing...into torrential rain.. oh great. This was gonna be a GREAT racing day.

We got to the races early, and decided to just sit in the parking lot and nap for a little while.(Not to mention stay warm and dry for as long as we could!) Eventually it was time to get on out and hook up with our team.

First up: 1000m. No easing into the day here. We warmed up, lined up, and smashed it. Our competition in the first heat were 3 elite women's teams in a younger age bracket. We stayed neck and neck with two of them for the first 500m... oh it was beautiful... and then got tired and slumped back taking third place. 4:38 - 6 seconds behind the winning team and 10 seconds ahead of the 4th place finisher. We knew what we needed to fix, but overall it was a pretty beautiful race. Next up would be the 500m... followed by a 200m.

Blah blah blah (i'm tired.. keep reading you'll understand why).. the rain cleared for each of our races and we went home with the bronze.. awesome! (I decided that I'm not leaving any more competitions without medals. Nuh uh. We're 2 for 2 now.. let's keep it rolling!!)

And today, the day after ... we could have rested but... we ran in the Vermont City Marathon instead. 13.1 miles (21.1 km) each.. oh it was AWESOME. Despite starting in soggy nasty rain (which eventually cleared, thank goodness) I felt like it was my strongest attempt yet.. i ran the whole course (where the first time i had walked part of it) and even found enough in me to speed up the last 3 miles and then sprint the last 10th of a mile to the exchange with G. She took off like nobody's business and, despite crazy heat and sun, bested her last time on this course too. Official results aren't in yet.. we have our own unofficial ones but we'll wait and see what the marathon clock logged.


Time to ice my knees and take my sore feet out of their delicious soak and put them up now. And then.... oh my heavenly BED!