The Color Run. FAIL.

Because of smart phones and Instagram, blogging is kind of over for me. I also don't take many pictures with my other camera because it just isn't as handy when you can't upload them right away. I was looking through my camera just now, and I thought I should post about the huge failure that was The Color Run. I was so excited for this race. It's a 5K, you wear white, and they throw colored powder on you at every K. My mom and our friend Jared were even in town for it. 

The morning of the race I got an email from the race people saying because of the rain we'd been getting, leave your jogging strollers at home because it's too muddy. So what were we supposed to do? We didn't have a babysitter, so we thought we'd brave it. We got to the race (finally, after a long wait and a long walk), and the race started an hour late. It was freezing, so we had to just dance around and try to keep warm. (Yeah, my pictures suck.)

showing off my Color Run tat.

we were all so unaware of the crap race we were about to start.

Finally we started the race and went through the first color station, where I got a speck of yellow on my shoulder. It was muddier than I thought it would be, and Matt decided to pull out with the stroller/Beck. I thought he should've kept going, but it's so good that he didn't. People with strollers ended up having to carry them. Another person's wheel broke. The whole three miles was a mud run. But way worse than a mud run. It was the most miserable three miles I've ever walked. No one ran because it was mud up to your ankles, and everyone's shoes were being sucked off nonstop. Some people just took their shoes off and walked barefoot. At one point one of my shoes goes sucked off, and it happened so fast that I kept going and couldn't get back to it. Someone that was passing by brought it to me. I don't think I ever passed another color station. Later I got on their facebook page to see if anyone was as annoyed about the whole thing as I was, and The Color Run people said that they couldn't drive out to the color areas because of the mud, so the color wasn't there. (If the conditions were that bad, why didn't they warn us?!) Other color stations ran out of color after a little while. So I finished with that same speck of yellow that I got at the beginning. I was so mad at the whole thing. Some people on the facebook page were like, "The race was so much fun!!" WERE WE AT THE SAME RACE?!

Here's what my legs look like at the end.

I haven't run a race since.

The Color Run

Facebook alerted me to a cool 5K race called The Color Run. You wear a white shirt and get colored dust stuff thrown at you as you go. It reminds me of the Festival of Colors in Spanish Fork, Utah that I've never been to, but I've seen pictures of it on facebook since a lot of my friends have been. The race in Austin is in February, and I'm thinking I should do it. Anyone want to do it with me? They will be all over the country next year: Vegas, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Boise, NY, DC, Raleigh, etc. I kind of just want to follow it all around!

Here's a video:

Short post to balance out the novel below

Yesterday I hit 500 (running) miles for the year 2011. I pretty much quit running about 6-8 weeks ago, so I should have more, but oh well. I'm now training for a half marathon on New Year's Eve. Had to get one more in before the end of the year, and I'm cutting it close!

Randoms

- I love pinterest.

- Sometimes I keep the previous description on a pin I'm repinning, but I delete the exclamation point because I don't want to sound THAT excited about it.

- I don't have an iPhone, but I like the conversation bubbles it has for texting. I got an app to do that, and now I want to text all the time. I don't want to sound desperate, but TEXT ME PLEASE!

- THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN YOU'RE AND YOUR IS NOT HARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- I guess I'm in a yelling mood today.

- Tonight I might go to the YMCA and try out BodyPump.

- The YMCA here has a theater room! I can run my little heart out (hopefully not literally) while watching movies.

- Matt and I watched the first season of Friday Night Lights this past week. I have two new crushes.

Tim Riggins:

from

Coach Eric Taylor:

from

That's all for now.

Camp Pendleton Mud Run

I almost forgot about this one. This will catch me up as far as races go, and I'm sure there won't be another one for a while. After my half marathon in May, I wanted to keep doing them because I had worked so hard to get to that mileage. After a few weeks I decided to drop to the middle range so it wouldn't be hard to work back up, but it's hard when I don't have any races to train for. (Races in this Texas heat would be murder. No, suicide.) That was a long explanation about why there won't be any race posts for a while...

Anyway, on June 18th, I ran in the Camp Pendleton 10K Mud Run with my family (that's in California if you didn't know). Matt, my mom, aunt, four cousins, and two cousins-in-law ran in it. The girls got matching shirts that said Hirschi Squirts (Hirschi is a family name) on the front and We got the runs on the back. We're a classy bunch.

During the beginning, it was really slow. We were all hyped up when we started the race, the fire engines hosed us down, and then it got backed up and we took pictures and became friends with the people around us. This guy was going to hold my mom over his head like a barbell for a picture, but she got wimpy. She also said she saw my face that said, "Mom dont!" I don't know if I really made that face, but it could be true.

 

we had nothing to do but take pictures

We were fake running here, recovering from the hill we (or was it just me?) ran up. (Preposition fix: The hill up which we ran...?)

Jami got so gross.

While some people (Alex) took this race seriously and swam across quickly, we just leisurely floated along. This was nice.

Jami tackled Lori in the mud.

Jami also tackled Kelly and they had a wrestling match (where everyone cheered). I got tackled too, but there's no evidence.

One of our walls we had to climb over. The first one was easy to jump over, and I thought I could do the second one by myself too. This marine was standing there asking if we wanted help, and I yelled, "I can do it myself!" acting all tough. Then I got to the wall and realized it was taller than I thought, so I said, "Uhhh I think I need some help," and he let me step on his thigh and jump over it. I felt stupid.

Real running this time.

Oops, mud on the lens.

The team had to run through the finish line arm in arm.

All of the runners.

Go Hirschi Squirts!

Firefly

I have another race to document. This isn't the last, so if you think these are boring, come back another time.

On June 4th, my mom, Matt, and I ran in a night race. It was a 5K or 10K at 9pm, so you were supposed to wear glow sticks or anything that would be good in the dark. On the website, it said that for the 10K, you had to finish the first 5K (the first of two loops) in 30 minutes. I emailed them and asked if that was strictly enforced because I run closer to an 11 minute mile. The person wrote back and said that it was strictly enforced until last week because they were approved for a new route and that we would have two full hours to finish. I signed us up. The website continued to say that you needed to finish the first half in 30 minutes, so I asked them again on their facebook page. Again, they said the time limit had been lifted. 

After all day of working on costumes (mainly Matt's), we got to the race. We should've gotten there earlier, but it was an hour away and we had to carbo load (ha) at Ihop and pick up Beck's babysitter, etc. We looked for the end of the line to get our bibs, but we couldn't find the end. We kept walking, walking, walking, and walking! It was crazy long. We became friends with the people in front of us, and we weren't sure we'd be able to run. We definitely wouldn't start on time, but that's ok. Around six or seven people asked Matt if they could take a picture with him. About 45 minutes later, we finally got our bibs and some velcro things that had blinky lights on them that we could put on our legs. 

We finally started the race, and we left my mom pretty much at the beginning. It was so packed with people that we had to weave in and out for a long time. We saw a water station that was filled with people, so we didn't bother to stop. That ended up being the only water station during the whole 5K, so we had to wait until the 2nd half to stop there. People made comments the whole time about Matt's costume. A cop that was stopping traffic said, "That is a secure man." Everyone loved it. 

The 5K runners split off and went through their finish line, and we kept going. After about a mile, we should have seen the runners behind us, so we wondered if they closed the 2nd loop to the people behind us. Sure enough they did, and they didn't let my mom complete the 2nd half. That was very annoying since they assured me twice that there was no time limit. I know Matt and I didn't finish the first half in 30 minutes, so I don't know what was up with that.

When we finished, there was a costume contest. The prize was an iPad2, and I thought Matt had a good chance of winning. The judge looked at a few people and then gave the iPad to some kid and his dad, and they didn't even run with their costumes on. I was really annoyed that she didn't even look at everyone when it was such a nice prize.

The idea of the race was cool, but obviously some aspects were not too great. I'd recommend doing a night run if you have the chance! I'll do it again next year if I'm around since I'm sure they'll learn from their mistakes.

(Oh, then I was dying in the car on the way home and ran as fast as I could into the house and went to the bathroom. Running is FUN!)

My feet hurt from kicking so much ass

Ok, here it is. Half marathon. May 7, 2011. Provo, Utah. 8am.

Let's see what I can remember...my mom, Matt, Jared, and I were running it, so we all drove there (from Orem to Provo, not Texas to Provo) together. I was planning on running with my mom, and Matt was deciding whether or not he was going to run with Jared the whole way. We got to the starting line, and we started looking for the pacer for a 2:30 finish. We didn't see it or anything longer than maybe 2 hours, so we were thinking that we were too slow to even have a pacer. But no, we found her. We talked to her until the race started, and then we kept talking to her as we started running. Some chumps took our spots as the pacer's friends, so we just ran behind them until they stopped for water. We didn't need any water yet, so we kept on trotting (with our feet, not with other body parts, if you know what I mean. That comes later.). I knew that as long as the pacer stayed behind me, I'd beat my goal of not taking longer than 2:30. No problem.

So we ran. And ran. And ran. Then around mile 5 I said hasta la vista to my mom. And ran. And ran. And ran. I would also like to mention that I did all this running while holding onto my giant, dinosaur-of-an-iPod from, like, 2005, and I didn't even listen to it. Because we were talking to the pacer as we started, I didn't have my earphones in, and I just didn't want to bother putting them in. We ran through neighborhoods for a while, and I often thought about putting it into someone's mailbox.

I'm trying to think of anything noteworthy to mention between leaving my mom and mile 8 or 9, where Matt caught up with me. The only thing I can think of is that there was a pretty old lady running, and she was going pretty fast for how awkward her running looked. She had to be like 50. Ha, just kidding. She was way older than that. At least 55. Man, I'm a comedian tonight. Oh, another thing I thought was funny was that I passed this area with all these people, and I thought it looked like a place that should have water and all that stuff, but it didn't. I didn't realize until wayyyy later that it was the relay pass-off place. Whatever you'd call that. I was like, "I think that girl just got to the race and came in there." Duhhhhhh. Oh, and these girls were doing the run/walk thing, and it annoyed me, so I was glad when one of us passed the other for good.

Ok, so Matt found me at mile 8 or 9. He told me he was glad to find me because he was getting really tired from running fast after leaving (abandoning) Jared. So we ran. And ran. And ran. And I wanted to stop because I was having my fun intestinal issues that popped up during my training once I hit 8 miles, but Matt didn't stop, so I didn't stop. I tried entertaining myself once after a water station by stepping on as many uncrushed paper cups as possible as I ran past them. Quite satisfactory. Better than crunchy leaves. Highly recommended, but only if you're not running in front of me, because that would be rude of you to take my cups.

Let's see, let's see...I guess I don't remember that much to talk about until we came to the end. There was a bridge that went over the freeway, and we had to run over it at the beginning, and since I was having a really stupid day, apparently, I didn't think about how we'd have to run over it at the end too. I saw that bridge, and I was like, "Oh crap." Just like Peter Boyle from Everybody Loves Raymond, even though they really don't love him. I don't. But I did like Peter Boyle's character. RIP, Pete. Anyway, looking up at the bridge at the end was totes different than at the beginning. At the beginning, you'd look up, and the whole thing was covered in people. At the end, I saw like four people. (Dad, when I write like, I think of you. No Lexus for me.) So we ran up that damn hill. RAN. And ran. And ran. We probably did it slowly, but we ran.

As we came down the other side, we could see the blow up finish line thing. It looked so far away, so I didn't feel excited or anything. Then all of a sudden, I felt like it was close. Really close. And I started crying like a freaking idiot. Not just tearing up, like sobbing crying. I turned to Matt, and I was like, "I'm CRYING!" I knew I would cry, but this just hit me, and I was surprised. So I said, "I'm so stupid! Marathoners can cry. Halfers can't!" So I made myself stop. But then I looked up and saw my friends who came to cheer me on, and it all started again. The stupid sobbing! I covered my face so they couldn't see how lame I was, and then I tried to keep it in. And I did. And I finished.

And that is the end of my ass-kicking story. Because the race then kicked mine, and I went to the bathroom. A few times.

Oh, here are my stats:
1st half: 1:11:12, pace: 10:52
2nd half: 1:12:55, pace: 11:08
Total: 2:24:07, pace: 11:00

Matt's:
1st half: 1:16:59, pace: 11:45
2nd half: 1:07:08, pace: 10:15
Total: 2:24:08, pace: 11:00

before

One year ago

I randomly looked over at my slideshow gadget that always runs on the side of my computer, and I saw this picture. It's almost exactly one year ago today.

6.5.10

I don't know what's up with me. I need to update this stupid blog, but I just don't have the motivation. Soon, though. Soon. Maybe all of my blogging energy is used up running. I still need to write about my half marathon that was about a month ago and also a 10K that we ran on Saturday night. Then in about two weeks we'll be running a mud run 10K in California. Yeah, that's pretty much all I do. Run and watch Barney. I never thought my kid would watch Barney, and now I wake up with his songs in my head. That's the life.