Are you comfortable? Warm enough? Do you need a blanket, perhaps a beverage? No? Good, then settle in for a long post.
I miss weekends where we have nothing to do. We haven’t had one of those in a while.
Yesterday, we went to the bank right when they opened to apply for one of the zero interest loans that National Grid is offering if you have the free energy audit and need work done. We, of course, knew we’d need work done because you don’t have to be a genius to know that if you touch your wall in the winter and it’s ice cold, you probably don’t have any insulation. Which we didn’t. None. Awesome. Long story short, we decided with all the discounts they were offering we were going to go ahead with it. You can’t beat 0% interest.
After that, we headed up to Providence to go to the Expo for the race this morning. It was a great Expo! Very organized, well mapped out and lots of big name sponsors there to check out. I was able to try some bars and gels and stuff like that I’d read about. I found a few that were decent. I also got a couple of headbands. I don’t actually currently wear headbands, but I liked the sayings and decided I could try them out in the winter to see if they’d keep my ears warm.
My big purchase at the Expo was my birthday/Christmas/every other holiday between now and then present. I finally got a Garmin and I couldn’t be more thrilled to try it out soon!
Flynn decided he enjoyed the Garmin bag
After we left the Expo, we headed into the Providence Place Mall to pop into the Apple store and see if we could get some info about repairing our MacBook. While we were there, we happened to walk by Hot Topic on the way to get something for lunch and saw a whole Doctor Who display right near the door! You know we had to check it out!! I’m doing a virtual Doctor Who 5K and I decided these socks and shirt would be perfect for that. And then the guy told us the shirts (which were already marked down) were buy 1 get 1 half off so I got a Big Bang Theory shirt too!
I think I might need to get this mask for Halloween!
We ended up leaving the mall and opting to do another “let’s search Yelp and find someplace new to eat”. We ended up right down the street from our house at Fat Belly’s Irish Pub, which we’ve been wanting to try for a while. I couldn’t decide what I wanted so I opted for a pastrami sandwich and upgraded the fries to bacon cheese fries. So glad I did – they were amazing! Not too much cheese on them and they drizzle a bit of ranch and scallions on them which really made them pop.
After lunch it was almost 3pm and I had a lot of yard work to get done so we headed home to take care of business. We were out there for about 3 hours (shout out to the wifey for helping me a bit) but we got almost everything done I had aimed to do.
Today was race day. I was very excited about this one because we all know how much I love music and pairing a race with live bands is awesome. The race start was at 7am (way too early in my book) so we were up very early.
My baby Delilah didn’t approve.
We got in to Providence around 6am and checked everything out. It was all really well organized with large, clear signage and directions. Of course, this didn’t help the long portapotty lines that delayed the race and the fact that the corrals weren’t big enough so everyone was spilling out onto the sidewalks and you couldn’t move. But I digress. I think we ended up starting around 10-15 minutes late, which isn’t terrible in the grand scheme of things, but it was cold and I wanted to get moving!
I started out pretty well. I had the IT Band strap on, but no KT Tape this week. I don’t know if that made a difference or not, but I was in a significant amount more pain today than last week. I thought I started out OK because I ran for more then the first 5 minutes (which was a huge uphill at the very start) and it was alright. It started aching so I walked some. It seemed I couldn’t get a good walk to run ratio going and felt like I walked quite a bit more than I wanted. I tried adjusting the strap on the fly, but couldn’t seem to get it to help so I’m not actually certain if it does or not.
As if it wasn’t bad enough that I can’t run a 5K, this dude was running the half while dribbling two basketballs simultaneously!!
We ran about the first 1.8 miles with the half marathoners and then it was like I wandered into a barren wasteland. Once we split off for the 5K Mini Marathon, there were hardly any runners. It was kind of discouraging because usually during a race it helps me to motivate myself by keeping up with or passing other people. There were probably only about a dozen people within my sight at any given time. At that point, though, we only had a little over a mile to go.
I was able to see three live bands on the route, plus 2 spots where they were playing music out of a van. One band sounded like they were doing a cover song and the other two were OK. I had never heard of any of them. We didn’t stick around for the big concert at the end because A) we avoided all the crowds by not being there when the half marathon finished and B) I didn’t want to have to wait around for 2 hours for the main stage to play because my knee hurt too much. Oh, and C) I don’t like beer so a free beer at 8am doesn’t appeal to me.
Here I am finishing the race. I think I look awful in this picture, but I’m my own worst critic.
After I limped away from the finish line with my medal and chocolate milk, I got my stretch on so I wouldn’t lock up on the drive home. I hope these PT exercises I got on Friday will start helping me soon. This not running business is for the birds!
After we got home, we totally went back to bed. It is lazy Sunday after all.
I still don’t know what my official time is, but I suspect it may have been just under or right at 40 minutes. My RunKeeper said around 40, but I started it before we crossed the start line and didn’t stop it until I was out of the finishing area. Who knows! We’ll find out tonight I think. I thought I remembered reading something about results going out by 7pm the day of the race.
I really need my leg to feel better. It’s really affecting my mood.
Don't blink. Just run. 