12-12-12 12K!

Toledo Roadrunners club puts on some fun runs here in town.  This one was the 12-12-12 12K, starting at 12:12am!  I had not intended running this originally, until I got a msg from my dear friend Carol a day before the event.  I invited Jennifer to run, and she thought it sounded fun too.  So I zipped over to the mall, got us signed up and secured our commemorative glow in the dark event t-shirts.

 

Here is a shot of the Second Sole running shop where the run started and ended.

 Here are us dedicated runners, Jennifer, me, and Carol, just after midnight.  Yawn!

 Happy as clams right before the race started.  Brrrrr, it was really cold out.  I really miss not having the sun out!

 Right on time!

 This is the only "action" shot I got of us running.  Then my camera died because the battery drained quick in the cold.

We finished in 1:16, a new PR for all of us :)  We even ran into my old boss Kevin, who enjoyed the run with some of his friends.  Around 2am I got home, and crawled into bed.  That 6:50am alarm came too quick for me the next morning!

 

Elf on the shelf

Our elf was caught being a naughty boy last night!!

 

We also found him reading one of the December Daily books the other day.  He was looking at pictures of himself in the book from last year!

 

And another morning, we found him having lots of fun with the "reindeer" team. 

 

Wonder where he will show up next??

 

 

 

A final note on a trail run...

Look at my dirty feet from after the 50K race! Yes, I did have shoes on during the race and they were even "trail shoes", supposed to be a little more rugged and less "thin" than my normal running shoes. Wow!

Run Like a Turkey 50K

Yep, that's right - a 50K.  I had made the suggestion that we sign up for this race.  It is the first ultramarathon for Toledo, and it's just right down the road from our house.  Granted it was only 3 weeks after the Columbus marathon, but I figured we would be all healed up by the time it arrived.  I was mostly correct - except both Alan and I had done very little running since Columbus to avoid injury and to heal up a little more.  I am still having a pain in my glute and he is battling plantar fasciitis.  

Which brings us to the day.. the BIG day... the 50K.  The thought of running 31 miles would have been unheard of for me a few years ago, or maybe even last year, but I was feeling adventurous this year and wanted to end the running season on a high note.   

Our race was limited to only 62 people.  Here are the lucky few at the start of the race.  As you can see, the weather was ideal - 48 degrees at the start.  We set our watches for a pace of 10:30, which would get is in around 5 1/2 hours.  Sounded very do-able.

 Here we are leading the pack!  haha, ok, here we are, but certainly not in the front of any large number of people.  I seemed to be the 10:30 pace group for quite a while, but eventually we thinned out to the point that we could not see any runner in front of us, or even behind us.

 Most of the course looked like this - just a few flags pointing out the correct course, but most of it covered completely in leaves.  Although it made it quite serene, it also made it impossible for you to take your eyes off the ground for any amount of time for fear of running into something like a tree root.

 Speaking of tree roots, both Alan and I took 3 falls each, which ended up being total face plants due to those hidden dangers.  The second fall made me start crying - not so much because it hurt, but because I was so darn frustrated and tired.  Not good since that was only around mile 12.  I had those three falls between the miles of 8 and 13 miles.
Here is one of the aid stations.  Those were really nicely stocked - with oranges, water, gatorade, GU gels, and most importantly, clean Porta-potties!!  Trail running was quite different from road races because people actually stopped at the aid stations and hung around for a few minutes without worries.

Here are some shots of Alan and I going into the half way loop of the trail.  We finished half (15 1/2 miles) in 2:44.  Not too shabby!

I think it was a bit after the half way mark when things started going downhill.  My glute started feeling like it was on fire.  Ouch!  Some walking was needed.  After many more miles, the ache in my glute was actually starting to go numb, and my knees started causing a lot of pain.  Lots more walking was needed.  I even started walking downhill backwards to avoid pain in my knees.

Here is a shot of the trail.  Less leaves, but more ruts in the ground. 

Cool looking wasteland portion of the race course. 

 After 3 1/2 hours it was obvious we were not going to hit that 5:30 finish time.  In fact, the 6 hour finish time slipped away too!  Oh well, we were doing the best we could do (actually Alan could have been running faster, but I was giving it my best!).
FINALLY, we approached the finish line.  Didn't seem like that was ever going to happen!  Our finish time was 6:25.  We weren't the first ones in, but we certainly weren't the last ones either.

This is a funny turkey sign they had at the finish line.  Outside of a chipmunk, butterfly, and bug in my eye, we didn't see any wildlife!  Well, really there could have been dancing elephants in the woods, but I didn't dare stop staring at the ground for fear of falling again!!

We got these cool finisher medals.  The yellow arrow looks just like the trail markers. 

The winners of the race got these shiny platters.  It was nice because even though we were so far behind the winners (3:45), there were still people hanging out at the end, cooking burgers and chatting.  We made some new friends, enjoying some beers and scarfed down some delicious cookies.

Ahhhh, a cold celebratory beer!  So happy to be done. And still able to walk!  :)  So glad Alan was there with me for this race.  Without him I probably would have called it quits at the 20 mile aid station!!

Last camping trip of the year - Hocking Hills

Even though it was a chilly weekend, we decided to take one last camping trip to Hocking Hills Ohio.  It seemed like we haven't been on many camping trips this year.  I'm guessing because it was so hot this past summer.  The kids had school off, so we made it an extra long weekend taking both Friday and Monday off.  We drove down on Friday and made it down there early enough to go exploring in Old Mans Cave.

 After hiking for a while we checked out the wildlife in the nature center.  This possum was not impressed with Alan's attack!

 Sydney didn't quite scare the little dude either :)

Here is our campsite (#61).  I was surprised that they did not have any sort of burning restrictions in effect since there were so many leaves on the ground.  We really liked this site because past the fire ring was the woods and the kids loved running around down there.

 On Saturday we went to Cantwell Cliffs.

Next stop was Rock House.  That cave is so cool.  Just a beautiful display of nature! 

 Our hiking excursions involved lots of walking up and down stairs.

Ash Cave was simply stunning.  Very secluded and serene.

Well, it was serene until the people in period costumes gave us a demonstration of their cannon!  The kids wanted nothing to do with that and ran up the hill to hide until it went off.

 It took 2 tries, but finally it exploded. Wow, it was loud!!

The kids found many uses for their walking sticks.

The camper was chilly at night, but certainly not bad.  We have 3 heaters in it, so it was quite toasty with those things cranked all night.

On Sunday we went back to Old Mans Cave to explore some more.  We wore our boots, hats, and gloves for our morning excursion.

The kids really enjoyed this trip.  So did we!

Happy Fall Pictures!

I have gotten so far behind on mostly everything around my house.  My updating of our finances (oops, haven't updated Quicken completely since around July!).  My housekeeping (gotta schedule that carpet cleaning!).  And mostly my photos.  I am setting a goal of cleaning off the memory cards in my camera tonight.  

As I was checking my DSLR I saw this cute pic.  Of course my family just mentioned that Sydney's head was cut off, but no one noticed the artistic quality of it.. look there is a very happy smile!  I think it's just perfect.

Happy Halloween!!

It's that time again!... Halloween is here.  Although it means a huge bag of candy, it also means the holiday season is just a month away!  In fact, I just made our reservations for the Nutcracker tonight.  For tonight though, I am enjoying make believe and lots of orange and spooks.

We had some pretty artistic pumpkins this year.  First up is Alan's pumpkin, and mine (with the angry eyebrows!).

Zack and Sydney's silly design came out relly good also.

 I left work early today, but still I was rushing around like crazy getting everything ready for trick or treating tonight.  I was putting Zack's zombie makeup on 5 minutes before it was time to go!

 Here is our zombie and devil girl.

Grandpa looks like he is ready to scare some kids!!  haha

 The weather tonight was less than desirable - around 45 degrees and drizzly.  boo!  But that didn't stop the kids from running from house to house.

I have to give myself a pat on the back - this zombie looked pretty awesome!!

After trick or treating, the kids dumped out their bags and sorted everything out.

 Next it was time to make candy-me's!

After all that, Zack still had to take a shower to de-zombie-fy himself.  They got to bed late.  I have a feeling Zack might still be having those dark circles under his eyes tomorrow!!

Note to myself for future reference: we used up one huge bag of candy from Sam's club, and then a second huge bag was opened.  We have about 90% of the second bag left, so probably better to get a couple smaller bags next time, in case we want to return the left overs!