Who says Friday the 13th is bad???

Hey! I can't believe the weekend is almost over, but I think I say that every week. I'm not even sure that we've sat down other than to eat. Just once I think it would be nice to be one of those people on Monday morning who says they "didn't do nuthin' " the weekend before. But they're typically pretty lazy couch bums, so I guess that's just really not us.

The big news from the weekend is that Brent was picked to be one of the artists in the East Nashville Tomato Festival in August! This is big time! Literally thousands of people will come to this festival and see his work! So, a big part of today has been spent coming up with exactly what he wants to submit, since the Tomato is not usually his subject matter of choice! If anyone needs to borrow a tomato.....come over. We've got a few.

We also went to a friend's 31st b-day party Friday night. It was fun, a few new classic lines were created, a lot of laughs were shared and someone even ate an envelope. There's a story there and I won't share it, but it was pretty hilarious. And I had two pieces of cake so that always makes for a good night. And a late night - as in 1 am - which is pretty late for these old birds. So when my alarm went off for me to run my 6 miles before it was hotter than hell I pretty much went back to sleep. I felt guilty when I did roll out of bed at 8:30, but our thermometer was nearing 90 and I knew I'd have a horrible, dehydrated run. So, we biked! I gotta say, I love biking. I'm still a massive scaredy cat on the downhills, but we are having fun. We rolled out a bit past 9 and it was insanely hot but at least you get a breeze on the bike! We went to the greenway, rode up to the fences we climbed a week ago and then back. They were working and we had planned to check out some bike lanes anyway. We rode past the Titans Stadium and were glad to see there was pretty much no line left for tickets. We've only been to one game in our 8.5 years here and we didn't even get to go together (some friends had two different sets of tickets so I sat in nosebleed with her and Brent was down on the ground floor with the guys.) Since we always have a credit card on us we thought WTH and stopped to see what seats were left. The only game with two nosebleed seats together was the Dec 23rd game versus the Jets. I have no clue if they're good or not but we got seats! It's insane that after all these years the games still sell out so fast - we were there less than an hour after ticket sales started, and by this point there were no games with more than 2 seats together, and that was the only game with 2 seats together remaining. I think it will be fun to go to a game and since we're so close we can walk down and avoid parking which is usually around $20 a pop for football games. Ridiculous. We hopped back on our bikes, rode home and showered up for some shopping. My max speed on the ride was 16.7mph, which I was really pleased with. The sad thing? That was on the flats - on the big downhill I went a truly sad 13.5 mph. And I rode my brake a lot less that time. I just don't like the out of control feeling on the downs. Watching the Tour has made me more comfortable though, watching them crash and get back up is really helping me mentally. I also took the King of the Mtn jersey against Brent on the climbs.

We went to the art gallery to drop off show fees, the bike shop to get a few things, the art shop, the running shop, and the cookware shop. And I guarantee tomorrow morning I still won't have a thing to wear because it seems we only make it to sports stores and art events. From there we took Pippin for a walk and he got so worn down by the heat I ended up having to carry him a half mile home which Brent calls "additional cross training". I have never seen anyone else ever have to carry their dog so I am obviously a sucker. From there we had a fun dinner and evening hanging out at a friend's house and I did manage to get in 6.8 miles running today. Brent rode behind me and took a ton of pics - he's practicing riding and shooting photos so I'll talk about my run when I have the pics dumped on here. I only meant to do 6 but I misjudged some turnaround distance so next week's 7 should feel pretty familiar!

Anyway, about women and the Tour De France. I talked to our bike shop guy about it Saturday and asked him where the women were. We haven't spent a lot of time together but I've got to say he's sort of gotten me figured out already. In picking out bikes I had a bit of a tough time getting a right fit because of my shortness. They have this awesome road bike that is perfect for me size-wise and he mentioned that it hasn't fit anyone else before and I was like "That's weird, I wonder why!" and he had the perfect comeback of "No one has been the perfect height that you are." AKA - no other shorties have been in here. So anyway, when I asked him where the ladies were he paused for a second and then said they would not be able to meet the time deadlines. Huh???? He went on to say he thinks women could hang for the first week and then once they hit the mountains they wouldn't be able to keep up. Seriously, can that be right??? Look at ultrarunning - some of the best endurance runners are women. How can that not be true in cycling? Women weren't allowed at Boston until you-know-who just DID IT. So what's the deal with women and bikes? I'm thinking I may have to Google this one.

So, that's all for now. A certain smelly dog needs a bath. He is not going to be happy about that!

Take care!

RAE

WIDTW-
Sun - 5.5 mile ride
Mon - 4.2 run, 20 mins tone
Tues - 15 min ellip, 20 min stat bike, 20 mins tone
Wed - 4.2 run, 20 mins tone
Thur - 4.2 run, 20 mins tone
Fri - 20 mins ellip, 15 mins stairmill
Sat - 12.4 mile ride, 1 mile walk
Sun - 6.8 mile run