Great weigh-in *and* race weekend :)

Putting my wanted weight on my mirror for the week and on my arm the day of the weigh-in worked!  I wanted to weigh 232 (at least) and I weighed in at 231.5!!!!  WOOHOOO!!

Of course it didn't hurt at all that I tracked all my points and got in a good chunk of exercise :)

Friday I had the 2nd part of my root canal, so I decided to take the whole day and pick up my race kit at the fitness expo.  Spent some time at the Fitness Expo but really didn't have the cash to buy anything (awesome clothing deals) nor the skinny body to fit into anything (apparently they think all runners are skinny pffttt!).  I was excited to see Mark Sutcliffe , but didn't have the cash on me at the time to pick up his book and get it signed.  I read his magazine regularly and it would have been cool to speak with him.  One of the girls helping asked if I could come back the next day.... maybe :)  Oh well!

After my great weigh-in mid day Saturday, I tried to go back to the expo, but they seemed to have blocked it off by the time I got there around 3:30pm.  With nowhere to go, but get ready for 5km at 5pm I walked down and checked my bag in at the sweat check station and waited around for the race to start.  I bumped into a few girls from my running clinic and also a friend from work that was there with her husband and her husband's friend.  The friend actually ended up in the purple corral with me (40 to 45 min finishers) so we chatted while waiting for the race to start.  Wish I had caught his last name to check out his finish time :)

I was a bit worried that I would be totally sucktastic since I'd only logged 2 x 3km runs in the last 3 weeks... EEEEEK!  So I decided to just enjoy the pomp and circumstance that surrounds the race.  The route was a bit different this year, but exactly like the army run, so it didn't make me nervous.  I'm not fond of going up a hill right out of the gate, but I just power walked my way up.  I should've run the flat part on Queen street, but I was wiped out from the power walk... already!  I thought to myself "oh boy, this can't be good, the race is going to suuuuck"  Then I told myself to "shut up" and "Stop thinking that way".  Negative thinking was not going to help me or anyone else.  I think I kept saying to myself "suck it up buttercup, just keep going and you'll get a decent time"  I walked up the portion on O'Connor and down Wellington until the crosswalk just before the Chateau Laurier.  Then I started my 10 and 1 interval timer watch and ran mostly 10 and 1 the rest of the way.  There were a few times I was tempted to just walk the whole damn thing, but I told myself I'd trained to be a runner, not a walker.... So I ran and ran and ran.  I finished with a 46:38 chip time and last year I got 47:26.  Sweet!  Better than last year!  According to my Garmin and the race finish time, I had a 9:19 pace... which really rocks considering I normally run around 10:00 :)

Overall it's not my best race ever, but my best race ever was run with 200 people.... yesterday there were 9000 people! They just got my way is all LOL

Today I volunteered at the water and Gatorade station sponsored by the Running Room for the Marathon and 1/2 Marathon runners.  5 hours on my feet!  That hurt more than running, but so totally worth it!  Awesome to see all the runners and walkers.  Even got to see my friend Jason!  So cool!  He swept in during a really busy stretch, but I managed to give him some fruit punch Gatorade :)  It was organized really well, but it could've been better, lot's of runners kept asking us for water, water WATER! and we had to keep saying "just past the lights!"  So I think it would have been beneficial to have vests:  an orange vest that says "Gatorade" and a blue one that says "Water" on the front... quick visual for when peeps are zooming by.  One french runner (from France because of his accent) grabbed a cup of Gatorade from a volunteer just ahead of me, took a sip and freaked out ... threw the cup down and started yelling in french "What is this??!!!  Where is water???!!!"  I got covered in Gatorade, lucky me.  It was kinda sad because it probably threw him off his game.  Not all volunteers speak french either, so I yelled out in french that the water was up past the lights... hope he heard me!

Other than that incident, the two races flowing through our water station was totally awesome and exciting to watch, cheer them on and hopefully help them along with some liquid.  I gotta say, I was so happy to see lot's and lot's of women my size or larger running in those two really long races.  Gives me lot's of hope that I can make it there someday too and if I never get good enough to run a 1/2 or a full, I know for sure that I could definitely train to walk them :)

My goal race is still the Princess Half Marathon in Disney, along with a few days vacation to visit the park while I'm there and seeing all those ladies run today just reminds me that I shouldn't strive for perfection, I should just go ahead and walk it if my knees don't want me to run it... why miss out on an opportunity to participate and enjoy such a cool event???  It's not like I have a chance in hell to finish ahead of the Kenyans anyway LOL

Now I want to go register for a billion more races LOL  Better put some cash on my credit card!