Race Recap

As I posted on Friday, last weekend I ran Disney's Half Marathon. The entire week before I was worked up into a tightly-wound tizzy, not over the race, but over the weather.

What kind of weather you ask? Well, the start of the race was 27 degrees and what the weatherman called a "Wintry Mix" which I now know consists of a lovely trinity of rain, sleet AND snow. It was awesome.

I had assembled an enviable race outfit--a long sleeved Nike dry fit shirt, running tights, pants to go over top of them, a running jacket, a big Target fleece jacket that I planned to ditch along the race, two pairs of gloves (laugh if you will) a scarf, and a headband to cover my ears. I sounds ridiculous, but it kept me from freezing to death.

I woke up at 3am, necessary if I was to make it to the last shuttle from the hotel which was at 4am. I got to Epcot where the race started, checked my bag, and found a nice spot near a tent to block the wind while I tried to stay warm. That's right about when it started to sleet. As a horrified Floridian, I watched the little balls of ice land on my glove and roll around. Now I understand why the northerners look at palm trees like they're something special, cause ice from the heavens might as well have been a three-headed dog the way I was staring at it.

I made a friend by that tent, Vanessa, who happened to stop there to eat her bagel with the same hopes I had of keeping warm. It was all for not, but it did keep the wind at bay. But we started chatting, waited in the pre-race port-a-potty line together, went to the start together, and before I knew it we were at the finish line together.

Here we are at Mile 4.2 where we stumbled upon Rey.

Let's back up. I started in the last corral. Even worse, I started in the BACK of the last corral. This meant, I spent miles upon miles upon miles dodging walkers. You have NO IDEA how many people did this race intending to walk the whole thing. Walkers from the start! DROVES of them! And the ruder of the bunch would walk seven or eight across so it was impossible to pass. I had really taken for granted that in my typical running I am able to go in a straight line, one foot in front of the other. This was not the case here. I wish there was a way to calculate how much energy I expended and how much extra length I added to the race with all of this bobbing and weaving. Next time I think I'll turn on my GPS to see... I think Disney should reserve the whole last wave for walkers, cause they were a total pain in my ass.

I started running on the grass because then I didn't have to dodge the walkers, but there was a whole new obstacle there--thousands of articles of discarded clothing. Jackets, shirts, hats, gloves, ponchos and even trash bags.... it was however the lesser of the two evils and as long as the ground was flat enough I was pretty much on the grass. But all the bobbing and weaving and jumping over people's crap, my hips were screaming.

I decided to chronicle my journey with some high quality iPhone pictures. It was fun to run through the gates of the Magic Kingdom, and I couldn't help but think about how many times I'd been in that same spot, except in a vehicle.

Rey, bless his heart, was running from point to point on the race with my camera like he was the paparazzi. I admit it was really fun to see him in random spots on the race, kinda like a Rey version of Where's Waldo. And I handed him a bunch of layers of clothes at one point too so I got to keep the cheapo jacket I bought intended to discard on the race. I became rather fond of it.

Unfortunately, Rey is completely clueless on how to function my camera. He took tons and tons of picture--all on "Close Up" mode. So the majority are blurry messes. I will have to give Rey some rudimentary lessons before we try this again.

Somehow he got a good picture of this guy, running along in a surgical mask and rubber gloves, like he's about to perform surgery in the middle of the race a la M*A*S*H (which I now know stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, thanks to last night's Quiz Night).

It was so cold that my Gu packets were in a semi-frozen state. That was really freaky. I'm used to being able to shoot them, swig some water and go, but I daresay I had to chew the buggers. And my Carmex was definitely frozen. And everyone knows how I can't live without my Carmex. The fact that I'm in Flordia, running, and small packets of things are freezing... well it's just not natural.

After 6 miles, we got to the Magic Kingdom, which was really a lovely sight. I had to pee since almost the beginning of the race. It was either stop at one of the water stations and wait in a ten person deep port-a-potty line, or stop somewhere in Magic Kingdom. Which would you choose? Tomorrowland it was. But I still had to wait in a line, and it was painful, painful to watch the walkers going by that I would have to start dodging again.



Then I saw Buzz Lightyear. And I thought I should take a picture of him, the boys would get a kick about it when I recapped my race to them.

Except then Buzz sorta charged at me. In a freaky, scary, serial killer kinda way.

So I took a picture of that, too.

And just like that, you were out of the Magic Kingdom. The race was roads, roads, more roads, five seconds in Magic Kingdom, then some more roads, roads, more roads, then five seconds in Epcot, then it was over.

To say I was cold afterwards would be a complete and utter understatement. It was below 30 degrees, I was sweaty, I was down several layers of clothes, and it occurred to me only then that I was soaking wet. When I took off my gloves my fingers were bone white and shriveled up like prunes. My feet were even worse. It took me over an hour to warm up, most of which I was shivering so bad I could have dang near bitten my tongue off.

Cold is one thing, cold and wet is a kind of pure torture.

Despite all that unpleasantness, I had a fun time. I met so many people it was amazing! It was like we were all banded together in this insanity of running a race in what can only be described as horrific conditions. I love meeting people, so it just added to my fun factor.

I am glad it's over, but I would totally do it again. I could only hope it would be minus the "Wintry Mix."

Goin' to the Mouse's House

The time has come.

Tomorrow is the Disney Half Marathon race that I stupidly signed up for.

I am a nervous wreck. 50% of that is because of the race and 50% of that is because of the weather.

The forecast? 27 degrees and rain. Some bold weather folks are even reporting snow.

Snow in Florida? It must be the apocalypse.

My question is this--when did the weather become a bigger obstacle than running 13.1 miles in this scenario?

But I am going, and I am running. And I will finish, because after all, I finish everything I start. This will be no exception.

In the meantime I will invoke the phrase used by a little train friend of mine:

I think I can, I think I can!

And when I DO, I hope I haven't lost any toes to frostbite in the process.

Fun Facts

16 - Number of days the boys have off from school for Christmas vacation, including weekends

8: 14 - Time I stayed in bed 'til this morning since I didn't have to be anywhere as a result of this vacation

93 - Minutes it took for the kids to drive me insane and cause me to lose my gratefulness at being able to slow down and stay home since school was out

79 - Degrees of temperature for Christmas day

18 - Days I have until the half marathon

13.1 - Miles IN a half marathon

3 - People in my household who are sick with a cold, to one degree or another

1 - Christmas presents I still need to purchase (it snuck in there)

4,365 - Christmas presents I need to wrap (perhaps that one's a bit exaggerated, but I detest the wrapping aspect of Christmas)

An Open Letter

To my dear Blog,


I know that I have neglected you lately. For some of this neglect I have good excuses. For some of this neglect, I do not.


Let's stick with the parts where I have excuses.


First, I will reiterate that someone crashed into the back of my mvan. At the time of last blogging, I was in that grateful I'm-so-happy-my-kids-and-husband-came-out-in-one-piece stage. A lot of me holds on to that, but as the royal pain in the tooshie of getting a rental car big enough to fit your family began, wrestling with insurance companies reared its ugly head, and dealing with the body shop nonsense became my harsh reality, I started to have hatred towards the accident. And I still can't get over the fact that kids born in 1993 can drive automobiles. Maybe they shouldn't, in which case this thing would have never happened in the first place.


Next....


My eldest turned the ripe old age of five. *I* have a five year old! Yes, that freaks me out.


Kids these days don't just have birthdays, they have birth weeks. Does that make me sound old?

The beginning of the festivities was on Sunday. Only in Florida can you throw a pool/beach party in the middle of October. And it was hot as all get out, too.

Mason and Cole (and maybe even Lila? I can't remember at this point) had been rather sick in the days leading up to the party. What started off as a good effort towards pre-party prep ended in a mad rush to get the thing over with. Perhaps it makes me a bad mama, but I was not feeling like a party animal.

Cousin Alex was our Master of Ceremonies.

The kids had fun sometimes...

And sometimes they did not have so much fun...

Lila, she was definitely livin' large.

But by and large the biggest hit was this game--Drip Drop Slash. A Florida version of Duck Duck Goose. The kids had a wild time.

Not such a tight grasp on the part of the game where you run around the circle though. Instead they ran away from it.

A close second for entertainment value was the hermit crab races.

Disgusting little buggers, if I do say.

I sewed this spiffy banner.

And I made some nifty cupcake toppers. Too bad I neglected to bring them to the party...

Sometime back we started an event of taking the birthday child to a special, one-on-one breakfast with a parent. Cole picks daddy, and I put on a brave face even though I want to die inside when I don't get picked.

But Mason! Oh my Mason! I can trust him to pick me.

And when it was all done, he even asked me if next year I would bring him to breakfast on his birthday again. So despite my doubts and convictions, I guess I'm doing something right here.

I bought him $40 worth of Spiderman cupcakes to take to school. The boys' school does not allow homemade goods to be brought in. How do you people feel about that? I think it's crap. I'm sure someone out there agrees and doesn't want their kid eating someone else's homemade stuff, which makes me think that the world has gone to pot.

Mason's birthday happened to be fire truck day at school, and my original plan had been to go and take pictures of the event and his cupcake eating. But alas, I had to go to the body shop for the mvan, thus eliciting less accident gratefulness and more accident hatred that I was discussing before.

That night, Mason's request was a grilled cheese dinner at Calistoga. A boy after my own heart.

And like that, a three day celebration, two cakes with singing, one happy boy later and we were finally done celebrating.

Okay, Blog, I get it. That's probably not a good explanation as to why I haven't posted in 33 days. So I'll continue.

We took a trip to Tampa. Rey's best friend Nick is getting married, which to say the least is freakin' amazing. He is lucky to have found his beautiful fiancee Angie, even if we can't understand what she sees in him. (Kidding! Love ya Nick!)

They lived in Michigan but were visiting Florida for a friend's wedding, so they had an engagement party for the ol' college crew.

It was a bit of a frat boy reunion. But I am happy to say that not one but TWO of Rey's frat brothers told me I haven't aged a day in the eight years since college. LOVE those boys!

Which brings us to Halloween.

There are no words.

Oh, wait! Yes, I can think of a few.

Candy. Candy. Candy. CANDY. Candy. Candy. Candy. Costumes. CANDY. Candy. Costumes. Candy. CANDY!

Kids with stomach aches eating more candy!

And lastly, mixed into all the everyday mayhem, the sick kids mayhem, the birthday mayhem and the Halloween pandemonium, there is running.

Remember? I decided that running a half marathon was a good idea!

And now, running is no longer something I do for fun, something I do on days where other forms of exercise elude me, it's something that I have scheduled.

For real, I have a calender with mileage and rest days and strength days and cross training days.

I'm still pretty sure I have no clue what I'm doing.

But as much as I bitch about it, and I really do hate to run, I will kick ass and take names.

Cause that's how I roll.

So you see, Dearest Blog? I have neglected you, I know.

But I had my reasons.

XOXO,

Ashley

P.S. Lots of complaints were lodged through the various channels about the lack of your updating, Blog. It's amazing that none of these people who miss my posting ever, AHEM, leave comments. : ) Cause then I would be more aware of my wide and vast and expansive audience and how it misses me so.

Through the Looking Glass

I know I don't look bad. In fact without sounded like a total ass I'm looking damn good right now (well earned!). But it's hard to stare at yourself in a mirror and not find the flaws. It's ingrained in us as Americans. The "Mad Men" of the real world have made sure of it. Make us insecure, we will buy your junk.

So instead of actually laying my real eyes on my mirror image, I am choosing to look through my "third eye", if you will.

Alright, so don't think I'm crazy. It's the yogini in me, what can I say? She's out today.

My kids are sick, so instead of my intended treadmill run at the gym yesterday morning I was forced to take it to the streets at an ungodly hour so Rey could watch the kids before he left for work. Half marathon training waits for no one, and yesterday was my "short run" day.

As I completed my three mile jaunt with ease, I thought back to the first day I tried running post Lila (this was last October 31st, to be exact). I planned to run 60 seconds/walk 2 minutes until 30 minutes was up.

I made it about 12 minutes before ending up at home, collapsed on my living room floor.

I was pretty sure I was dying.

I had never in my life been out of shape before. Reality set in that this is what happens after you've ejected three human beings from your body. The third one definitely took it's toll, fo' so'.

It took me a month to recover from this incident. Then I joined the gym.

Now I am, to my own shock and disbelief, training to run a half marathon. That's 13.1 miles, people. Cause I think running 26.2 is a little nuts. (Maybe next year!)

And as I looped my neighborhood this morning, it was hard not to think back to that morning, 11 months ago. Where then I felt desperation, now I feel defiance. Then I felt the failure, now I feel fierce. That me was weak. This me is tenacious.

So even though it's hard for me to ignore the imperfections, it's easy to see my strength.

You've got to ac-cent-uate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Eliminate Mr. InBetween

Bing Crosby, gotta love him.

It's hard to be the body you were before birth, but it's amazing how strong you can become despite it. Or in spite of it.

Take your pick.

Yeti or Not...

We're home from vaca and normalcy is settling over us. Laundry is laundering, the boys are at school getting a proper education, so I decided to begin the storytelling of this wild trip we went on.

I will begin at the end. Because beginning at the beginning would make too much sense.

The culmination of our Disney trip was a crazy on my part... My friend Kara called me a few months ago, knowing of my plans to take this trip to Disney. She asked if I'd be her partner in the Expedition Everest Challenge--an event in the Disney Endurance series that involves running a 5K, then completing an obstacle course and a scavenger hunt through Animal Kingdom. It just so happened to fall on the last day of our trip. Without hesitation I said yes! It sounded super fun!

Kara used to work at Animal Kingdom, so we decided that navigating our way through the scavenger hunt part would be cake. All we had to do was survive the run and do a little Survivor-esque challenge and we'd be golden.

Us before the race

Kaleigh and Cole playing before the race. They are good buddies.

The thought didn't really enter my mind that after eight days at Walt Disney World, I might be a little....tired. And boy, all day Saturday as I sweated it out at Epcot, my feet ached, my legs were tired, and I guzzled water as a preemptive strike on dehydration, I was nervous. But as soon as I got there, I fed off the excitement, and Kara and I in our true style, started laughing and having fun.

We were in Wave Five. Kara's husband Nick and his brother Greg were in Wave Two. Waves took off every five minutes. We were lucky to be so far up--there were THIRTEEN waves. We were halfway through the scavenger hunt (the third leg of the race) when people were just starting the 5K portion. That must have sucked for them...

We took off with Wave Five, following our newly minted routine of "turtling", meaning we run kinda slow. We discovered in our training, thanks to Kara's super sweet friend who ran with us once, that there really is something to the "slow and steady wins the race" motto. So we "turtled" along, and when we needed to pass people, one of us would say "hare" and we'd do evasive maneuvers to get around the walkers and/or people who were turtling even slower than us. It was a thing of beauty.

We felt great, really great, during the run. It was hot, we were sweating buckets, but at every water stop we tossed a little on ourselves and it felt good. We were rocking it!

Lila was dancing to the music in her beebop style

Kara's older daughter Kaleigh

Kara's younger daughter Olivia, also a beeboper. (She is a month older than Lila.)

After the 5K portion we took a quick breather of a walk towards the obstacle course, then we took off running again. We got to the first one, and up and over sorta dealy, and I fell right off the thing. Somehow I banged my leg (I have a bruise the size of the Yeti himself) and we laughed our asses off. But up I got, and up and over we went.

Next was a rope ladder thing (don't you love how I know the proper terms for all this stuff?) and I must admit it was a secret dream of mine to run up and over one of those things. There were these two girls on either side of us struggling on it, but apparently that's my talent cause I tore that sucker up. My favorite part of the course!

Next was the balance beam. Here's where I totally felt like part of Survivor. It's hard to balance on a 2x4 after you've just run 3.1 miles, I do say. Kara blasted right over the thing. I was much slower. Balancing in yoga is one of my strengths, I can hold a position for a very long time. But walking across a beam was a totally different deal. I was using my yoga mantras, but they weren't very effective because I was getting pissed off as people who were on either side of me kept hitting my extended arms with their extended arms. And getting pissed off is not very zen. But I made it.

Ahead was the last obstacle--a thing you had to army crawl under. As we ran towards it I said something to Kara like, "Let's just hit the dirt and go!" And boy did we ever! It was hilarious!! Mud and dirt and grass and things that were just so NOT Kara and Ashley. Again, we laughed and laughed and laughed!

We ran across the finish and heard the "Beep Beep" of the timing device marking our finish.

Passing by the fam on our way to the scavenger hunt

Apparently Cole was not happy to see my run by him and not stop

Off the the scavenger hunt. This was the part I was looking forward to most, but not looking forward to having to run, again!

We picked up our book and got these super spiffy light up pens.

We caught our breath and took off running towards the park. It felt good to be passing tons and tons of people who were walking. We were still feeling pretty strong.

And then we felt the raindrops.

First it was just a sprinkle. It became hard to see because if you looked straight ahead you got rain in your eyes. Then the rain mixed with sweat and pretty soon you were blinded. My shirt was covered in dirt from the army crawl thing and there wasn't a clean inch to wipe the sweat out of my eyes. Just as I was about to duck into a bathroom for a towel, the rain was pouring down and I think washed all the sweat off of me. So I guess that was a good thing.

We were off. We ran, and ran, and ran. Many points we were running through water up to our knees. From Camp Minnie Mickey, to Africa, to Asia. I told Kara somewhere along the way that I won't be taking her phone calls anymore lest she get me into a mess like this again! But it was a blast, and true to form, we laughed our way through it until we'd finished our four clues.

We collected our nifty medals. Inside is a fake compass. Made in China.





Nick was at the end waiting for us and he kindly purchased us beers. I was soaked through to the bone, and we were driving home that night!

Kara and me, post race, well earned beer in hand!

Courtesy of Nick's iPhone. : )

We only got this one post race picture, due to the rain and all. Kind of a bummer, but at least we have the shot of victory!

When I got back to the car, Rey had gotten the kids into dry clothes (pajamas!) and he'd found some dry clothes for me. I was impressed that he wasn't an anxious mess after getting caught with all three kids in that downpour. We made it home at 1:15am. I was in and out of consciousness and was deathly afraid that Rey was going to fall asleep at the wheel.

All in all, the Expedition Everest Challenge was a great time, and I am so thankful that Kara called me up that day to get me to do it! We've decided to make it a tradition!

The results haven't been posted yet. Our time doesn't matter to us, we were in it for the experience and just wanted to finish. To be honest, I have no clue what range our time might even be in.

But we did our best and in the end we conquered the Yeti.