Golden!!

I am sooooo tired. We all are, Pippin included.

Here's the weekend rundown. Work was agonizingly long Friday. My boss left at noon to fly to Texas to spend some time with his family, and he's taking tomorrow off, too. YEAH! He's been an extra big jackass the last few days - pile that on top of 2 cars acting up, and the stress of buying and selling a house, and there was one moment last week at work where I nearly broke down in tears. My parents decided to add to that stress by planning a visit to see us. Well, not really to see us, but to use us as a free hotel. They are so incredibly cheap. My aunt was flying into Nashville and asked my mom to drive my grandma up so my aunt could take grandma to her new cabin in North Carolina. So basically my parents wanted to crash our house while we're in the middle of all this because they're too cheap to spend $70 on a nearby hotel room. Anyway, my aunt's plane ended up being delayed so she bought my parents an adjoining hotel room so they could stay with grandma until her late flight got in. I love my aunt!!!! Every time my parents visit they manage to break something, and I am not in the mood to do house repairs. We did have dinner with them and they came over afterwards. We endured about 3 or 4 hours of them going on and ON and ON about how we have the perfect place out here in the suburbs and we're basically stupid for wanting to move into the city and basically we're going to be shot, stolen from, and killed in our new house. I have no idea why they consider themselves experts on where we're moving since they have NEVER been there and know nothing about Nashville. It was an incredibly frustrating night. My grandma (who is 90-something) is now infatuated with weight. During the middle of dinner she wanted to know how much I weigh (around 119). She then told me I didn't look like I weigh that much (she weighs about 88 pounds and is probably 4 ft 10 now). I told her I was all muscle. Then at our house she wanted to know how much Pippin weighs. I lied and said 25 pounds, he's really closer to 30.

They left around 9 and we got all our race stuff organized and ready for the morning. (Of course my parents didn't even want or offer to come and watch our race!! My brother and I say they are not the most encouraging or supportive of people......) When my alarm went off Sat morning at 5:45 I had the SAME thought I always have on race morning "UGH! Why do I do this??? This is not fun!!!" but I got up anyway. A bowl of oatmeal later we were headed downtown. The race we did was the 5K for Fatherhood down at Shelby Park near where we're moving. It's a benefit for the Family Foundation Fund, an AWESOME organization that works with inner city boys with no male influence in their lives. The boys are paired with male mentors to provide a positive influence on them. A lot of the kids participate in the race along with their mothers and mentors. It's always SO much fun to watch the kids - some of them are serious athletes in the making, and it's for such a great cause. We don't do a lot of 5Ks, and we REALLY don't race much in the summer, but this one is always worth it. It's extra special because it was the first race we ever did back in 2004, and last year it was the first time I ever placed (I was 2nd in my group then.)

We showed up with plenty of time to spare - but they already had the park roads blocked off. Hmmmm....we tried to figure out how to get over to the pavilion where the race start is, but ended up going through some roads the wrong way and landed on the baseball fields. What makes that worse? Having a million other cars follow you like you know where you're going. Sorry guys! We finally made it, checked in, geared up, and it was time to run!!! Saturday morning was a little cooler (prob 80 degrees), but it was SO humid. The air was so thick we could barely see downtown for the haze. It felt nice standing around, but it was really tough when we started running. Brent took off like the gun was fired in his pants. I started slow and slowly started picking up my speed. I passed Brent around a .25 mile in. A lot of the kids had already stopped running and were walking. This is a fairly small race (maybe 150-200 runners) and it's not chip timed so you really don't want to start in the back. I decided to push as hard as I could the first mile, and then slowly back off in miles 2 and 3 to whatever felt comfortable. I finished mile 1 in 7:30. SWEET! A guy was sticking right behind me forever, and since I was tired and HOT that really annoyed me. I dropped him at the halfway water stop. I really just wanted to quit the whole way, but I knew my Mile 1 time was good so I wanted to keep it rolling and maybe have a new PR. The course is flat (mostly), so that was an advantage. Mile 2 was right at 8:00 even. Not bad. Mile 3 takes you around the lake, and I could see the top guys heading back from their lap towards the finish. No fair. By this point I was worried about puking. I was so incredibly warm and I really felt nauseated. We were approaching the finish and some guys around me started sprinting. I knew I couldn't keep up with them but I saw the clock and pushed as hard as I could.....I finished in 24:36!!! SWEET! A massive new PR. My previous PR was 25:50 set last October. Avg pace: 7:45 (my Garmin also said I went 3.17 miles). I headed back to cheer in Brent (his time was somewhere right around 26 minutes) and we got some post race goodies.

Finally it was awards ceremony time.....The race has grown quite a bit but I was still hopeful I would place. They got to my age group and......I was 1st!!!! YEAH!!! I'm not sure how many people were in my age group but all that matters is that I was the fastest 25-29 year old female! I walked up and got my awesome gold medal. Brent's group was a lot more competitive (their 3rd place was 20 mins!) so he didn't get to place. Afterwards they did some group shots for any placers who were still there. So, the 5K was a great success!

Afterwards we showered and met our agent to look at houses. The first one was a dud. This guy wants $800K for this house, which is $187/sq ft - NOT worth it. Most of them are selling for $140-$150/sq ft. And get this - he has Clif L Vivian spelling out in tile on the bathroom floor!!! HOW terrible!!! It was so gross. They need us to show them how to do ALL their tile work. Then, we looked at a great house. We LOVE this house. It needs some serious updating, but it's totally us. It's got all the bones we're looking for, and it just needs our touch. It even has a little wall urinal, which is something Brent has always wanted. It's a 1910 Victorian, right at 2200 sq feet. It's awesome. So, we put a bid in on it today!!!!! Now it's just a waiting game. Hopefully it will work out, we love this house! (I didn't take any pics because the owner was there.) We'll have to drive by and take some pics if we get it. So cross your fingers!!!

OK, this post is too long anyway! I'll talk about our miserable 10-miler from today some other time. I did finally get our pictures from the Tony Hawk/Shaun White skateboarding show up on my Flickr account. Check them out here! Oh, and handyman "Skeeter" showed up today and got our pesky inspection items finished. YEAH!!!

Have a great week everyone!

Rae