Official Race Results

This morning I ran outside to get the newspaper to check out the official race results from yesterday's Capitol City Half Marathon and 5K. I finished 67th out of 322 runners in the 5K. Not bad!

The newspaper listed my official time as 26:08. So that was even faster than I thought I had finished.

After lunch Tim, Nicole and I went out to Swayback Bridge Trail for some mountain biking. We did the 1 mile course just to try it out since Nicole hasn't ever been out there before, and then we did the 4 mile course. We had a really good time. This was actually the first time that I've been out there when the ground was dry. I didn't get all muddy for once! Yes!

When we finished the trails, Tim wanted to ride down the road a little to the bridge. I've never ridden on the road before and it made me really nervous, but luckily we never saw one car. Coming down the hill towards the bridge I got my bike up to almost 23 mph. I actually started to get scared because I was going so fast!

We stopped by the grocery store on the way home to buy dog food and salsa and ended up spending almost $180 on random stuff. Don't you just hate that?! But one cool thing we got that I've never been able to find before was Spaghetti Squash. I've been itching to try it. So tomorrow night I think I'm going to make spaghetti squash with meat sauce for dinner.

Do you cook with spaghetti squash? What kinds of things have you made with it besides ... spaghetti?

Callaway Gardens Trip

We got up early yesterday morning to drive to Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, Georgia to spend the day. It was about a 2 hour drive, but it went by really fast. I haven't been to Callaway since I was a small kid so I really didn't remember anything about it, but I saw on the website that they had a 10 mile bike trail that I wanted to try.

It was almost lunch time by the time we got to Callaway, so we decided to eat at one of their restaurants in the gardens. I was really hoping it would be a nice little deli type place, but they only had just a very few items on the menu. Hamburgers, hotdogs, paninis, french fries ... things like that. They did have veggie burgers and veggie hotdogs, but I didn't know what kind they would be. So I ordered what I thought was probably the healthiest thing there.

After lunch we got our bikes all set up and cruised around the park for a while. We never could find the beginning of the bike trail, but we managed to get on it somewhere in the middle and just rode around to the different attractions.

We ended up riding just under 13 miles for the day. It was great! Lincoln was really good riding in his trailer behind my bike and he slept alot of the time. We stopped at the Butterfly Gardens and the Vegetable Gardens. I wanted to go see the chapel, but every time we rode by Lincoln was asleep. My favorite thing was the sundial, I was suprised at how accurate it was.

We left Callaway when they closed and headed back home. I was starving after riding so much on the bike, so we stopped for dinner at Mimi's Cafe. I went in planning to eat something light and healthy, but somewhere along the line one thing turned into another and I ended up with: a steak, potato, salad, bread, 2 beers, and dessert. For dessert I had the sampler thingy with bread pudding, a brownie and apple crisp.

I literally felt sick. I haven't felt that bad after I've eaten in a really long time. I can't believe I used to do that to myself pretty much every single day. And why I chose to do it the night before weigh-in is beyond me. Thankfully I was still down this morning when I weighed in, but not as much as I was the other day when I cheated. I weighed in at 159.8, putting me at 100.2 lbs lost!

Race Day Review

My morning started really early this morning. I set my alarm to go off at 5:00 am so that I would have plenty of time to wake up and get everything together before the race this morning. I actually ended up starting to wake up around 3:45, then 4:15, then 4:35 .. you get the idea.

Tim and I got to the race site about 7:20 this morning and met up with several of my friends from work who ran with us.

Me, Sam, Bailey and Bonnie

Before the race some military-type guy lead us in some stretching and calisthenics. Then we got going about 8:00. I made my way to the back of the crowd at the starting line because I was terrified of getting trampled after reading about that happening to people. As the race got going I weaved my way through the back of the pack and ended up fairly close to the front.

I breezed through the first 2 miles with no problem. Actually I was completely suprised at what my Garmin was saying my pace was. I didn't feel like I was running any faster than normal, but my heart rate was running in the 170s and my pace was in the 8:45 range. When I hit the beginning of the 3rd mile I got a side-stitch so bad that I almost couldn't run through the pain. It was sheer willpower that kept me going at that point. I kept telling myself that I knew I could finish and I didn't want to walk during my first race. At one point I was hurting so bad I seriously thought I was gonna puke on the side of the road. But somehow I pushed through and the pain eased off.

I forgot to look at the clock when I crossed the finish line, and oddly enough I also forgot to stop my Garmin for several seconds after I finished. I think my official time is going to be right about 28:45. But for now I'll give you the stats from my Garmin:

Total Time: 28:56
Mile 1: 8:59
Mile 2: 8:54
Mile 3: 9:24

Here are a few pictures from after the race:

Tim and I

As if running wasn't enough, Tim and I decided to go moutain biking afterwards because the weather was actually decent. Its been raining for about 2 weeks straight and this is the first clear day we've had in a while. We biked a 4 mile trail at Swayback Bridge Trail. After we got home from that I was exhausted and starving!

I heated up a Morningstar Spicy Black Bean Burger and chopped it up on top of some Tostitos Scoops and made a huge taco salad out of it.

Overall it was a really great day and I'm glad to have my first 5K behind me. Next up is the Capitol City 5K on October 3rd. That one's going to be a toughy, a good portion of it is up some pretty serious hills. I've also signed up to run a 5K called the Turkey Burner on my birthday, November 21st. I thought that would be a fun thing to do for my birthday.

Owning a Moutain Bike, Does NOT Make You a Mountain Biker!

Tim convinced me to go Moutain Biking with him this morning at Swayback Trail Bridge. There are 5 different courses: blue, green, yellow, red, and black. We did blue, green and yellow. Blue is the beginner 1 mile course, green is 2.5 miles and yellow is 4 miles.

I have to say I was very scared at first. After all, I am the girl who when she got her new mountain bike was too scared to even ride it out of her driveway (only 2 months ago). I was also very self conscious around the other bikers who were obviously very hardcore and knew what they were doing. There were many times I had to stop and walk up or down a steep hill. I felt better though when I saw other people doing the same thing. Tim even fell off of his bike a couple of times, which of course I used as a photo opportunity.

We left covered in mud, exhausted, with ridiculously sore butts, and all kinds of bumps, bruises and blisters but we had a great day together. I never realized how close this trail was to where we live. We will definitely be going again soon.

Tonight we were ravenously hungry after burning so many calories on the trail today (800 for me, and 2200 for him, tell me how thats fair!?!) and we treated ourselves to Filet Mignon, Twice Baked Potatoes, and sauteed green beans. It was delish!

Have a goodnight! Tomorrow I'll tell you about my freezer meals I made today.

Biking in the Park and Another Race

Tim and I went back to the Shakespeare Park this morning and rode our bikes around for a while. I think I ended up riding just over 7 miles in about 52 minutes. I was pulling our son in the trailer behind me so it was much more difficult hauling an extra 30 pounds or so. We had a great time though.

After our ride we had a little picnic and fed the ducks. I packed up Club Sandwhiches, fresh fruit, baby carrots with fat free ranch dip, and Quakes last night for us to eat. This is such a change from when we used to go eat picnics. Normally we would stop by Fresh Market on the way to the park and buy about $75 worth of sushi, pasta salads, paninis, chips or crackers, hummus, etc. Not that all that stuff was bad by any means, but it was definitely unnecessary. For some reason we thought we needed that much food though. Then on top of eating all that if we did anything else at the park besides eat and feed the ducks, it would just be to pull out a couple lawn chairs and read books or magazines.

I signed up for what will be our 2nd official 5K today. The first one is going to be September 19th, and then the second one that I just registered for will be October 3rd. There is a Labor Day 5K tomorrow, but I didn't sign us up ahead of time and it would be $50 for Tim and I to register at the event tomorrow. Not to mention we'd have to be there atleast an hour early to register and it already starts at 7:30 am. I think I'd like to sleep in atleast one day during this holiday weekend.

We went to Books-A-Million yesterday while we were waiting to get my bike tuned up, and I bought a couple books that I'm really excited about. One of them is called Frozen Assets Lite and Easy: Cook for a Day Eat for a Month and the other one is called Don't Panic Dinner's in the Freezer. As the names may suggest they are recipe books of freezable recipes to have on hand. I love those kinds of things especially since I work night shift and I'm not home alot of nights to cook for my family. The recipes in the 1st book look really good! Some of the recipes in the 2nd one look really good too, but because its not a light cookbook I'll probably have to tweak them some to meet my WW requirements. I'll let you know how they turn out!