What a difference a week makes

Hmmmm.......I just don't even know where to start. Maybe with what we've been up to lately. With the reformatting of lappy it's been a while since I've had a chance to really post.

Tues - I voted, most of my idiot coworkers did not. One of them didn't vote because she didn't want to end up waiting in line and miss Dancing with the Stars. I am so not kidding. (TIVO people, TIVO!!) She's 52 years old and is apparently in love with Mario Lopez and it frightens me. I'm glad the finale is this week because I won't have to listen to her talk about it anymore. The main race for Congress was really close so we went to bed not knowing if "our guy" won or not. I ran a few miles on the 'dread while watching election returns.

Wed - Our guy didn't win so apparently for SIX years I'll have to watch a poser on the news. Get ready for some classic, embarrassing TN moments because I'm pretty sure this guy will deliver. I don't remember what workout I did, but I think it was abs.

Thurs - I don't remember much about Thursday......I'm pretty sure I ran on the 'dread for a few miles.

Fri - On a side note I'm STILL trying to get over my sinus infection and I'm pretty much sure it's never going to happen. I'm down to a really, really annoying cough. Friday I woke up at one in the morning coughing a lung up. Friday morning I coughed all over someone I really, really did not want to cough on for an hour and a half. Very embarrassing, but what can you do??? We went out for Indian food Friday night which I LOVE but couldn't really enjoy because the spiciness wasn't working well with my raw, raw throat. When we got home I grabbed a blanket and a spot on the couch to rest and catch up on some TiVo.

Sat - The best thing about training this time of year is NOT having to get up at 6 am on the weekends to avoid running in 90 degree temps!! It was 80-something here on Friday, but of course a cold front and rain came through Friday night and cut the temps literally in half to 40 degrees. We slept in until 8:30-9:00ish and then had some toast before setting out for our 10 miler. I wasn't in the mood for a boring greenway run and I really wasn't in the mood to run at all. I was in the mood for some sweatpants and rest but I knew I'd feel better if I ran a few. We decided to run downtown and just have fun with it. The wind was soooo cold and cutting!! I was wearing a light tech jacket with a thin tech shirt and my tights because I hate cold wind!! Brent had a thicker long sleeve tech shirt on and some shorts, and we both had gloves. I tucked my headwrap thingie into my belt in case the wind bothered my ears. This sinus infection has really zapped a lot of my energy so we started out nice and slow. The main annoyance is all this crap in my chest and how if I get to warm it all wants to come up. Ugh. We decided to run from our house across the James Robertson bridge into downtown. All of our bridges have nice sidewalks so it's really easy to cross over into downtown from East Nashville. We normally run across the Woodland St bridge so it was a nice change. JR was a long uphill while Woodland is a shorter, steeper incline. Great hill training either way. But - UGH - the wind when we were on the bridge was a real bear.

Once we got across the bridge we headed towards the new Court building. It was dedicated in October but we haven't had a chance to run past it yet. Very nice!! It's built to look like an old building and it has tons of fountains we will certainly be enjoying in the summer! From there we ran through downtown, through Printer's Alley and the Arcade, and over to the Country Music Hall of Fame. We have a new star walk (like the one in Hollywood) that I figured would be there but we never could find it. I guess I need to Google it. We thought it might be on Music Row, so we headed that direction and we also wanted to check out the new Demonbreun St bridge so we headed over to it. The new bridge is very cool, very Art Deco. You should definitely take a walk or run across it, you can't really appreciate the details from you car. We ran up to the infamous "naked statue" roundabout and watched a couple of guys filming a truly terrible looking "B" movie.

All morning it had seemed like there was an exceptionally large amount of people milling around downtown. There were a lot of purple Baltimore Ravens jackets walking about in prep for today's football game, but it still seemed strange. Once we were on Music Row we saw where a parade was forming on Broadway. Duh, the Veterans Day Parade! Sweet!! We ran over to where the parade was lining up and asked someone when it started. 30 more minutes.....hmmmm... we were already up to about 6 miles with 10 planned. We decided to run the parade route and then run back to the start. It was very cool heading down Broad with it totally closed off to traffic. People sort of cheered for us as we went by - it's not like they had anything else to do until the parade started! We circled the new Symphony center and then headed back up the parade route. A toothless guy even checked me out. I was SO glad I had worn my tights. HAAAA! We got back to the start right at 2 minutes until parade time. We stood on a bridge since it didn't have much of a crowd, and I found the guy who had soldier's heads on sticks to be quit interesting.

The parade started and I have to say we were the life of the parade. I waved and cheered for everyone. Most everyone yelled something at us and usually it had to do with the fact that we were the only two people out there not bundled up like a snowstorm was coming. The first car was a Major General, and the second car was Jerry Reed. He yelled at Brent: "BOY, what are you doing out here in you underwear?!?!?" He was totally fascinated with Brent in shorts. I had no clue who he was, but as soon as we got home Brent broke out Smokey and the Bandit and I have now been schooled. (He was the truck driver in the movie and has also had a lot of country songs. And he's a veteran.)

We cheered for lots of service people, bands and local politicians. The Mayor, who is our May-ghber since he lives just 3 blocks away, yelled out to us "Didn't you know it was cold today?" and Brent yelled back "It was warmer when we left." Some other service person yelled that Brent needed to "do more research on the temperature before he left the house". I totally entertained a group from the Navy who were walking behind a strange little plane. For some reason they found my cheering quite entertaining. At least we could provide some laughs for people. AND, we were exciting enough that some participants ran over and gave us some flags to wave. But the clowns totally freaked me out. I just didn't get that.









We stood out there until our body temps dropped to the point where we WERE cold. We headed back waving our flags as we ran. We ran past all the parade crowds and back across the Shelby Street Pedestrian bridge home. We hit 10.1 miles exactly when we got home. We had SO much fun, the miles totally flew by.

The rest of the weekend has been a blur, we did some major shoe shopping Sat afternoon and then headed to a party. After the party we went to an art opening so it was a busy and really, really fun day. Today was more painting, we finished painting our living room and started the dining room. This afternoon (about 3 pm) Brent said "this time next week we'll be at PWP". HAAAA! If we're still out there at 3 next week it's going to be BAD news! I can't believe the race is less than a week away, but we're also really excited for it to be here and over with!!