Saturday with the team

Today was a busy day for me with Team in Training. I was coaching the spring and summer teams - all alone (well, I did have a lot of help from Diane, who is injured but still helped anyway). Yikes! About 10-15 summer team members showed up, and 6 spring team members, despite 2 inches of snow at the start of the workout, and continuing snow throughout the workout. Yup, it snowed on us ALL morning long.

The summer team was great on their first workout - everyone easily completed the miles, and there are a couple pretty fast runners on the team. I was able to keep up w/them racewalking, but only for a short time (which was all I needed to do this morning, since I had to touch base w/the whole team in only 3 miles' worth of time). I will obviously need to do some running with them, but I think it can wait a couple weeks until my IT band is a little better, so that's good news. Anyway, I really like the new team members, and I'm excited about working with them. It's so encouraging to see so many who want to raise $ for LLS to fight leukemia & lymphoma. I just feel so good out there helping them, because I feel like I am doing something for my dad, even if it is not directly benefiting him at the moment - I feel like I am fighting back against the disease that will take his life unless a cure is found.

After I finished w/the summer team, Diane (one of the sweetest people I know - she has been a walk coach for TNT for 10 years now, and was out there today despite her broken patella - she was driving, not walking) drove me to find where the team members were. We found Starr, who was hurting from a knee injury (might be IT band, poor thing) and picked her up; she'd done about 8 miles and had to stop. She told us that Rachel, who she was running with, was lonely and needed some encouragement to finish her 16 miles. So Diane drove me and Starr to find Rachel, and I racewalked alongside Rachel for about 8-9 miles. It was snowing hard, but not terribly cold. The slush did make our feet quite wet, but my feet stayed warm because of the physical activity. I was thankful for my waterproof pants & jacket, and for the baseball cap that kept the driving snow out of my eyes.

When Rachel turned to go to Liberty Park for the final stretch of her run, I found Kale & Cassandra and walked around SugarHouse Park with them (my 2nd time around!). We had a great time walking and talking despite the really crappy weather. It was snowing sideways for a great part of the walk around SH Park, and we were saying how crazy we all were to be out there. But Kale and Cassandra are SO awesome, and they will complete the marathon for sure. Anyone who does 14 miles in the driving snow can do 26 in better weather. They are doing the Country Music Marathon in Nashville on April 25th, and it might rain, but I am relatively sure it will not snow there :).

I did have some GI trouble for the last few miles, but it wasn't too bad (though once I got home I had a lot of problems for several hours... I realized after the fact that I ate a lot of stupid things yesterday and have to be more careful before my long walks!!!). When we got back to Liberty Park, my Garmin said 13.24 miles, and I was pleased. But... turns out that when I got home and downloaded the route, that I had actually had it paused for about 1.72 miles or so. Oops! I paused it to take off my Yaktrax (which were rubbing my feet weird and bunching up my left shoe - strange because have never had trouble w/them before) and then forgot to restart until the next water stop. So, I actually did 14.96 miles or thereabouts, and all with NO IT band pain! Yay! Of course, with the snow, I was pretty slow, but who cares? I am just very happy to be well on my way to recovery.

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Tonight we have a babysitter (kids went to PJ night at the day care) and we are home alone - I made dinner for Loren: filet mignon with red wine shallot sauce, garlic mashed potatoes, and steamed asparagus. Chocolate mousse cake forthcoming shortly for dessert, followed by a hot bath in the jetted tub before we have to pick them up. And yes, we are relaxing at the table now - he's reading me interesting factoids from a couple books he got from the library, and he's listening to me blab on about racewalking and blogging :). Happy Valentine's Day! It's great to have a little time at home with just the 2 of us.