Weekend update and more

I had a wonderful weekend and in fact, it is still the weekend for me because today is a holiday for me. I'm going to steal this from one of my Facebook friends as I couldn't sum it up better myself:

Dr King's day: serve, learn, make the world more human today.

Yesterday I had the honor and privilege of helping my dear friend Marion celebrate her 30th birthday; she is truly an amazing woman and decided to run 30 miles on her 30th birthday. You can find her story here I intended to run one 10-mile loop with her and then join the group for lunch later, here is the first group at the start.




It was a great day for run and the predicted rain was staying away. Just as we were finishing the first loop I decided I would go out for a total of about 15 miles as I felt so good and it was great to be supporting my friend in this tremendous accomplishment. Here's the group at the beginning of the 2nd loop.



We were running at a pace that is a little slower than my normal pace and it was a little difficult to keep the pace on track and stay with the group, but I felt so incredibly good it really didn't matter. We got the point where I was going to turn around and head back for my 15 miles and I realized that I had mis-calculated the distance, actually if I would have thought about it a little more it would have "clicked" in my brain that I had missed the turn around point. If I turned around here, I would have gone back to the starting point with 18.5 miles, 4.25 of if by myself; I decided just to finish the 2nd loop with my friends and I am so glad I did. The 2nd loop was about one minute per mile slower than the first, but Marion still had 10 miles to go so I just settled in and enjoyed the morning. It was lightly raining by this time, but relatively warm so it was very pleasant.

Here we are finishing the 2nd loop, Marion is in the blue vest.



At this point, I headed home to shower and to meet the group for a late lunch. Marion finished the 30 miles in tears; it was so great to be a part of this. So my 10 mile run turned into a 21 mile run, whoops; I have to tell you though, I have NEVER felt so good after a 21 mile run. The slower pace helped, but this is my longest run since Vegas and I am stoked about how my running is shaping up for this winter.

I won my first giveaway, thanks Amanda and I was also called out by Julie as a blog she likes read. Both of these are so cool; I'm a new blogger and I'm having such a great time.

I began Day 1, Week 4 of the 100 push-up and 200 sit-up challenges today; yippee! This is new territory, as previously I got derailed after week 3; yippee!

I'm off to run errands and head to a friends' house for scrapbooking and cardmaking.

Have an awesome day everyone.