Happy Easter and Half Marathon

Happy Easter everyone. I hope you have all enjoyed your Easter. We are just getting ready to eat dinner over here. Just the usual happenings over here last week. The big event was me running the Robie Creek Half Marathon yesterday with my brother Gabe. He runs it every year. He has tried to get me to run it several times and I never have but this year I did. He texted me about it a few months ago and I went to look into it and realized that this race fills up within 10 minutes. It's a very popular race and it is BRUTAL. I'd heard it was hard but IT. WAS. HARD! I only half hardheadedly trained. I started running about three miles at a time a few times a week about a month ago. I wasn't part of the race but I heard you could buy someone else's spot right before the race when people have to drop out for whatever reason. I sort of did a little training just in case I got in but not really wanting to get in. Ha. Last Saturday I ran 6 miles just in case I ended up running it. I was hoping that Gabe would just buy a spot for me when he went to pick up his race packet but that didn't work out. If I was going to do the race I had to drive down there and buy the spot myself. I went back and forth all day trying to decide if I would go down there and buy a spot or not. Ha. I finally sucked it up and went down there and bought a spot from someone. Now I was in it! I was dreading it because I knew it was hard and I knew I hadn't trained well enough but I figured oh well! Saturday morning I drove to Gabe's house and we showed up at 10:00, (2 hours early). Ha. He really wanted to get a parking spot I guess. We just hung out until the race started and then we ran the first mile or two together before he moved ahead of me.

Normally when I run these races I try not to stop running no matter what. Not this time! If I was hurting too bad I just walked, It was great! About 8 miles of it is a straight up hill climb through the mountains and I speed walked the entire time. I walked really fast and I used less energy and went faster than people that were doing that really slow painful jog. I ran most of the way down the mountain and ended up with a time of 2 hours and 45 minutes. Not bad! My half marathon pace in the past has been between 2 hours and 2 hours and 10 minutes but those times were when I actually trained for months ahead of time AND they weren't mostly uphill the entire time. I was pretty happy with my time considering I speed walked a lot of it. I am sore today but not as bad as I thought I would be. I didn't get the sunscreen on my neck and shoulders very well so I'm a little burned but not too bad.

Getting back to our car was a bit of a marathon. You have to take two separate buses to get back to Boise and then they don't even drop you off at the starting line so you have to get a ride to your parked car. Annoying. I didn't get back to my house until 6pm. So between Gabe being crazy about being 2 hours early and it taking 2 hours to get back to the car it was quite the long day. It was fun though and it was cool to hang out with my brother. Plus it's a break from being at home all the time. The weather was PERFECT! Not too cold, not too hot. Running in the heat makes me want to DIE.

Ryan asked Scott for some mandarin oranges and specifically told him NOT to eat any. Scott told him he'd only eat a few and Ryan called out, "Dad, how dare you eat my mandarin oranges!" Haha.

Gabby painting

Popcorn, movie night.

Pre-race pic.

Easter baskets.

Dying Easter eggs

Egg hunt

Deviled eggs from the decorated Easter eggs

Scott thought it might be fun to eat our Easter dinner outside. Piper said, "I din't not know we were eating outside, that was unexpected." Ha. Our ghetto dinner out there, but hey maybe memorable? My foot that close to the table does not help the situation.