Mercedes 2011

I know I've been bad on the blogging thing...my bad. It really is hard to blog when I work as much as I do at this time of year. This week is my 2nd 60 hour week and before that I had a 57 and a 55 hour week, so I've been pretty slammed the past month, needless to say. Since I've been so busy with work, I haven't really had time to do anything that's "blog worthy" until this past weekend. I ran the Mercedes 5k on Saturday morning with Carina. I honestly had no idea Mercedes had a 5K until this year. Carina came up to Birmingham on Friday night when she got off work and spent the night at my house and we both woke up bright and early to head downtown.

This was my first 5k since my spectacular fall during the Race for the Cure on October 9th. In fact, it was only the 3rd time I've run at all since falling over four months ago. I was slightly disappointed in my 32 minute time for the 5k, but I'm blaming it on the not having time to run at all...and the fact that my ankle actually still hurts a little bit. I should probably get that checked out, but don't have time. Oh well. I think it's funny because a few people I work with have said "what does it matter that you haven't run in four months?? You climbed a mountain in Africa!". Allow me to explain the difference in three little words: run vs. walk. On the mountain we were walking and at a very very slow pace due to the altitude. So even though that was an awesome athletic thing that we did, it is on the total opposite end of the spectrum as running a race.

My sister-in-law, Jennifer, walked the 5k with my father-in-law. Her husband, Aeron, was there as well as her mom, for support. Carina and I talked to them for a while before the race, but then got in line with the 10 minute mile runners (because we both hadn't run and knew we wouldn't be beating any of our previous 5k records). After the race, we had to leave immediately because I had to be at work at 10am. I don't have any pictures of that day because we didn't bring a camera, but I did take pictures of Justin doing the full marathon on Sunday.

Justin ran the 26.2 miles in 4 hours, 10 minutes and 7 seconds. INSANE!!!! That is seriously super fast for him, I mean, he runs incredibly fast already, but that's an average of a 9:30 mile for 26 miles. That's a lot of endurance! I am so very proud of him!

Aeron, brother-in-law, ran the half in just over 2 hours. Our friends Stacey and Will came out as well because Will's brother ran the full. Here's few couple pictures from Sunday:





Notice the lack of I-pod or other music device?? Like I said...INSANE.



Even though the clock above says 4:11:18, it was really 4:10:07, because Justin didn't cross the start line right when the timer started since so many people were running.



The siblings and their spouses



So proud...and kinda pissed at the same time that because of my busy season, I'll probably never run Mercedes :( I just don't have the spare time to train.

On an non-race related note, Justin and I decided on Saturday that we would like to spend way too much money and buy a bunch of toys. Justin really wanted an IPad and I really wanted a Wii, so we both trotted over to Best Buy with our friends Carina and Yarbrough in tow and purchases our toys:



Excuse the quality. The picture is from my phone.

Not gonna lie, whenever I do have free time from working my 60 hour weeks, I may be glued to the TV. I'm LOVING my Wii!!! I've never played one before, EVER. We've done the wakeboarding, waverunner game, archery, tennis, baseball, bowling, plane flying games, canoeing, boxing, not to mention the fabulous old school games such as Donkey Kong, Mario Kart, and Super Mario World. I'm loving that you can exercise on this thing too! I've had numerous people tell me to buy Just Dance II and that they get great workouts from it. I may even ask for a Wii Fit for my birthday in April :)

I hope everyone has a wonderful Valentine's Day!!! I honestly didn't think Justin would get me any flowers because I told him not to since clearly the fun toys we purchased over the weekend were enough for me :) But he surprised me anyway with flowers delivered to my work. Heart him forever :)