The Relay

The first weekend of May, we set out with 2 vans, 11 co-workers, 36 race legs, 48 pb&j sandwiches, 60 gatorades, and 200 miles of road for The Relay. Team Slalom finished the Calistoga to Santa Cruz adventure in 29 hours and 42 minutes. More importantly, we're all still co-workers and employees!

Team Slalom

Van One!

Meeting Dean Karnazes! (Close to as exciting as meeting Phil and Harry was back in '01.)

Can't seem to leave work behind for the weekend.

Running along the highway in Calistoga.

Stadium to Sea 2010

I swore I would never run another marathon after I crossed the Chicago finish line back in 2004. Fast forward five years, numerous races, and an overachieving BFF new to the racing world. Somehow in the Fall of 2009 I excitedly found myself signing up to run the 25th anniversary Los Angeles Marathon.

We started off on Saturday in the blistering sun at Dodger Stadium to pick up our race packets. We treated ourselves to t-shirts since the only official race shirts they had left would nicely fit your average sized troll. It was HOT so we didn't stay long, all quietly wondering how we were going to run 26.2 miles the next day when we could barely stand around without melting.

We dragged the boys to Michael's with us to get crafting supplies. When you need to bedazzle, you need to bedazzle. Too bad the bedazzling wore off somewhere around mile one. Our Support Team (of one) joined in on the crafts and made some of the days winners in signage.

Side Note: Matt was awesome and deserves the award of the day for crafting on a Saturday night, going to a senior citizens dinner, getting up at 4:30 for no reason, traversing the streets of LA in a car and on foot, and capturing awesome finish line pics of us. 

Getting ready to start with Alexis!

The race itself was great. Alexis, Meredith and I started off together. Lex pulled ahead around mile 1 to look for a bathroom and unfortunately we didn't meet up again until after the race. Meredith and I ran until 15 then went our own ways. She now refers to the race as my LA Snack-A-Thon. Let's just say I tried every item the crowd had to offer, from bananas to licorice. I had a smile on my face until about mile 23. Then I wanted someone to cut my feet off. But I plodded away, especially once I realized Becky and Arek would be at the finish. I crossed under in 4:51:17. Wasn't exactly a PR, but I am proud of it. The best part of the race was crossing the finish line and not having the "I will never do this again" feeling. Two down, hopefully at least eight more to go.

Crossing the finish line 26.2 miles later. 

Some of my favorite badass rockstars. 

What's left of the bedazzling. 

Not sure what's next. New York 2010? International Something 2011? 

All the pictures are here.

19 Miles

My motivation (a.k.a., my friend Julie) was out of town this weekend when the marathon schedule called for 19 miles. I procrastinated all of Saturday and Sunday and was left with no choice but to run on Monday. About three minutes in I had a great idea. I had my phone with me for music, why not document my run? I decided on a few rules (because I'm Type A and that's just how we do it): I would take one picture every ten minutes (plus or minus thirty seconds) and it could be of anything within a 360 degree view of where I was running at that point.

Not only did I finish my run and actually really enjoy it, as much as one can enjoy 3 hours and 22 minutes of running, I also unexpectedly found myself in the middle of two lessons. The first was patience. There were a few really neat pictures I wanted to capture, but the point was not to take cool pictures, it was to motivate myself ten minutes, or one mile, at a time. Secondly, I learned to let go of some insecurity. I started out looking like a runner - water belt, hand held gatorade bottle, dry fit clothing, etc. But there I was every ten minutes looking like a tourist, jumping up on park benches or crouching down to get the best angle. People looked at me funny, but after the first few miles I learned to smile and be on my way.

Below are 20 pictures (a 10:30 pace allowed for one extra shot!). They are not very good, but a nice way to capture all the training I've been doing for the past three months.

One: Me

Two: Waters of Aquatic Park

Three: Was supposed to be Pier 39/Aquarium of the Bay

Four: Downtown, Transamerica Pyramid

Five: Bay Bridge

Six: AT&T Park

Seven: Ferry Building Clock Tower

Eight: Hmm...something on Fisherman's Wharf?

Nine: Alioto's - Yet another 'SF-Must Do' I have yet to do

Ten: Fort Mason

Eleven: Yacht Club

Twelve: Golden Gate Bridge

Thirteen: The ground (running up a Presidio hill, didn't much care about the quality of the picture)

Fourteen: On the bridge!

Fifteen: Crossing into Marin

Sixteen: Trying, and failing, to be artsy on the bridge.

Seventeen: Crissy Field, from the Presidio

Eighteen: The GGB again, but this time running away from it!

Nineteen: Kind of funny, this was supposed to be my car that I happened to run past. Completely missed it in the shot.

Twenty: HOME!

Kaiser Half 2010

Me, Vanessa, Julie, Megan

The girls and I did the Kaiser Half Marathon for the second year in a row this past Sunday. It is always held on the morning of Super Bowl Sunday. Perfect - we get our 1300 calorie burn out of the way by 11am and are ready for and well-deserving of the afternoon food coma!

We did things a little differently this year and only got to the race 1/2 an hour early. (This is Alyssa, Julie and Vanessa last year when we arrived pre-dawn.) While we definitely missed Alyssa out on the course this year, we did not follow her 6:50 am departure time! Sadly we are getting to be old ladies and despite not arriving at the crack of dawn, we all chose to crash after the race instead of heading out for the Super Bowl. Oh well - I thoroughly enjoyed watching it from my couch and alternating between napping and eating my much-anticipated burrito.

The half is a beautiful course that starts in Golden Gate Park, heads up and around the Panhandle, back through the park, out onto the Great Highway, and then back into the park to finish.

I can't finish this post without bragging about what awesome women I am friends with. Vanessa is my new running hero - she ran the coveted sub-2 hour half-marathon on Saturday. Not only did she break 2 hours for the first time, she killed it with 1:56:12!! And Julie cut 11 minutes off her time from last year - that's pretty

much an extra mile's worth of time! Kathy completed the 5k for the second year and, deciding 3 miles just wasn't enough, walked home from the park to make it an even 10 (this is another sign that she absolutely has it to join us next year for the half!).

I didn't break any records at this race (2:08:44 - definitely happy to keep breaking 10 min miles, but 1:30 slower than last year). However, I was the big winner of the day with the lowest bib number - 133 out of 10,000! Maybe this makes me the big loser?