Who's on that stage?

Back in November, I accompanied my friends down to the Rock n Roll Expo so they could pick up their race packet.  While we were hanging around at the expo we passed a stage where a woman was speaking and we just happened to be passing by when she was telling people to "move their booties".  So my friend Kris and I started goofing off and she saw us and told us to come on stage.  We figured, what the heck.  So we joined her on stage, joined by Linda and later by Herb and Lorena and we jumped around on stage for a song.  All fun, right?  After we got off the stage I looked at the board to see who the speaker was and what the whole point of that was.  It said the speaker was..........Suzy Favor-Hamilton, a three-time olympic runner. 

A few months later a story broke that for the past year Ms. Favor-Hamilton has worked as a high-priced call girl in Las Vegas, as well as doing motivational speaking at various Rock n Roll marathoon events!  We can now check dancing on stage with call girl off the bucket list!   

Just keep running, just keep running...

To make sure that I kept up with training after completing Ironman Arizona, I made sure to sign up for a race in January.  I decided to go with the Endurothon half-marathon in Bulverde because it was close to home and only $25.00!  The bad side is that it's a fairly hilly course (one friend would call it mountainous).  So I am officially on a "running" training plan from my coach.  It still includes some swimming  (which I have not done!) and biking, but the majority of the plan, of course, is running.  I have never done a running plan before and, yup, there's a lot of running!  Running and I have had a love/hate relationship these past few years in triathlon.  There have been days that it just feels like the most wonderful thing in the world and days where I just wanted to throw my running shoes in the trash and say, "screw it".  But man, when you do have a great run, you just feel like the best runner in the world.  These are the things I have to remember when I'm looking at my plan and see all the run days scheduled.      

So far the plan hasn't been too bad, but it's picking up now that I'm three weeks into it.  And, now that I'm mostly recovered from Arizona and picking up my training more, my HR is staying in the zones I want it to and my legs and body feel great (minus the few neck and back aches and pains I've been having off and on).  I'm really excited to see how I can do at this half-marathon considering the only stand-alone half-marathon I've ever done is the San Antonio Rock 'n Roll race.  I know this race is going to be challenging but I'm ready to see what my running legs have got to give!