Race Bandits.....

W'sup???? Do you have all your V-day purchases ready??

So.......Brent and I were race bandits for the very first time last Saturday. Friday night we went out with friends A & A to local hot spot Virago. This place has won tons of local awards so we thought it was worth a try. The food was good.......but where was it??? Brent got a tiny steak he had to cook himself on a rock. And my beef stir-fry with rice was less food than I normally serve Pippin. And the rice - about a tablespoon's worth. Not the carbs I was looking for. We also spilt an order of sushi that was great.....but still not much! We left there STARVED. So, we went to Panera Bread and stuffed ourselves for $16 vs the $50 we had already spent. Crazy.

Saturday morning it was cold. As always. I think the windchill was 13 when we started out. I'm pretty much over that and I really did NOT want to run. I am so ready to be done with marathon training and do whatever I want, whenever. Stay out late on Fridays, sleep in on Saturdays. The past couple of weeks would've been perfect morning for warm PJs, pancakes, and a lit fireplace. And when I'm REALLY not in the mood to run then it's just not going to end well. Running is so mental for me. The physical part is easy. We started out downtown, nice and slow. (On a side note my buns were freezing. I wore my thin running pants since I still don't have tights.) We ran through downtown and just so happened to end up by the GEC about 10 minutes before the race started. Hmmmmm......When you don't want to run it really is nice to have some company. Like 2,500 people about to run the Nashville Predators Fangtastic 5K. So we decided to jump in the race corral. Why not?? We had our own water, so we weren't taking anything from the race management. I think Brent was really nervous about it, he kept saying people were staring at us. They prob were, but more so because we had massive quantities of water with us. And you know it's a strange group of racers when a guy wearing pajama pants with a massive beer gut has lined up on the front row. People were wearing about 5 layers of clothes and huge jackets. This was really a race for the public and not so much the regular runner. I ran it last year, and it was fun. The free hockey tickets are also a major draw, esp this year when the Preds ROCK. The gun went off and the mass chaos of this race followed. We ran slowly with the crowd, and enjoyed the antics of the group. One guy asked how he was supposed to know where to go??? I'd say follow the hundreds in front of you.....Brent kept telling me to slow down, and I tried to take it easy. It was certainly my worst 5K time in a long, long time. When we came to the final .1 push we made our way to the outside left and headed straight when the racers turned left to run through the finish line. A volunteer looked at us and said "Keep on going, you need to finish!" I told her we weren't in the race, and we had about 15 more miles to go before we were done! She was a little.....shocked. We kept on trucking up to Music Row and stopped at the piano statue for some Clif Bloks. I tried the margarita flavor and spit it out. WAY too salty for me. With all of our company gone I was bored again, and cold and grouchy. We ran through some of the Music Row neighborhoods for a few miles and then decided to cut the run short and stop in at the brand new urban HG Hills store at the bottom of a new condo/loft building downtown. Very cool! They have lots of fresh veggies, a great selection of fresh meat and cheeses, some AWESOME looking desserts and just an overall nice selection for a small store. There's also guest parking in the parking garage for anyone who wants to visit the store and not find a meter or spot downtown. I REALLY wanted to buy a Butterfinger cake dessert but I only had $3 and it was $2.99. I would have happily carried it the 2.5 miles we still had to run home!! But, since our sales tax is 9.25%, there's no way I could get it. Oh well. We finished the run up, and ended up with somewhere around 13 miles. The best part was jumping in the race, for sure!! I more than made up for my missing miles with my run on Sunday.

And of course more cold temps & snow are predicted for this weekend. How did we go from global warming in December and early January to having "18 of the last 23 days below average temps" (according to the weather ppl)? I just don't do well in cold, and I really wish Atlanta was this weekend because I'm really ready to just run the race and then focus on shorter distances like the half and just run for fun.