Birthday Blast

Karen and I - Team Pay'n'Take

I am seriously bummed the weekend is already over! 

I was having way too much fun! 

I started celebrating my 32nd birthday on Thursday morning 

with a 3,200 meter swim. 

I know. Big deal. 

I actually got out of the water way earlier than usual. Ha! 

Good thing it's the off-season or I would've had to swim 

32*200 or 3.2 miles or something crazy like that! 

The bad news: 

I didn't really invite any of my lane mates, 

so I was having this party in the pool all by myself. 

The good news: 

I didn't care one bit. Still had a blast! 

Yep. A lovely self-portrait. 

After herding the boys out the door and a quick breakfast, 

it was time to ride 32 miles with my training buddy Karen. 

I coaxed Coach M into putting this ride on her plan 

so Karen wouldn't have any excuse to bail on me. 

M must've forgotten that it's my off-season 

because the plan called for a bunch of 2 mile repeats. 

Oh. Right. 

It's Karen's plan - not mine - we are following these days. 

Coach M: I figured you could hang!

So I tried... 

The view wasn't half bad 

and since I took the camera on the ride with me

I took many useless self-portraits. 

Why not? 

Karen was busy focusing on her intervals, 

so I had plenty of time to play around.

The ride was great! 

Lovely views, great pace, perfect company!

What more could a girl ask for on her birthday?

Thursday night I was stressed out 

because I hadn't packed a thing for our weekend trip. 

I was supposed to go on another 32 mile ride with Jennifer 

early Friday morning, and do a whole bunch of other stuff

until leaving town at noon.

I don't like stress. So I cancelled the ride. 

Instead, I got up at 5 am, headed over to the Y, 

and had another party by myself on the spin bike for 32 miles. 

By the time it got light I was back home 

having a nice birthday morning with the family. 

I figured that there might be a slight chance

that I wasn't going to pull off 32 running miles on Saturday. 

So I decided that 6 miles on Friday + 26 miles on Saturday 

would still count for 32 birthday miles. 

This was my party and I was in charge of the rules. 

I like being in charge... 

So I ran next to my kids on their bikes to school, 

dropped them off, ran some more, 

came back to volunteer at the Mustang Gallop, ran home.

 6 miles. Done. 

Time to pack up and hit the road.

6 painfully slow hours later we made it to our destination.

Colleen welcomed us with a house full of food 

and fun friends! Lucky me!!! 

Yep. That's my coach!

Have I mentioned that Coach HT was there? 

You certainly wouldn't want to miss him! 

Love that guy! 

In case you are wondering: 

He did indeed run the entire marathon in this very outfit!

And because this post is already getting rather long and I have a kids birthday party to plan and execute

in a couple of days, I am going to tell you about the marathon in my next post. 

Best for last, right? 

So stay tuned...