Half Marathon and Girls Weekend
Yesterday Sonal, Leanne, Callie and I drove to Missoula for the Freezerburn Half Marathon. I had low expectations for the race itself since our office Christmas party was the night before and I was still recovering from Thursday night's late-night Christmas party fun. I was short on sleep and heavy on belly. We had freezing rain Friday night so I wasn't sure whether we'd brave the roads but we did and we survived. However, the race course was pretty icy, which made me even less optimistic about the race. But the important thing was that we were going to go shopping afterwards and eventually bar-hopping. So the race didn't especially matter.
We lined up and started the race -- I had to pee so I immediately went to the porta-potty (yeah why didn't I do that before the start???!) and started the race as literally the last person. It was actually kinda fun passing people and moving my way up and I ran the whole race this way: trying to pass the next person ahead of me. I'm not a competitive person so I don't typically run this way but it was fun and kept me moving. Much to my surprise, I finished the race in 1:47 -- which includes my potty stop. Not bad for running on ice, taking a pee break and being relatively out-of-shape. I'm happy.
For the first time in my life I felt like my strength was better than my cardio capacity, which was an interesting feeling. I truly think Crossfit is helping me run better. Considering how fat and out of shape I am (relatively speaking obviously) I'm shocked that I ran as well as I did. Must be cross-fit and my fantastic playlist.
We met up with a couple of Callie's buddies, who were super fun and awesome girls, and had Mexican food. Kalispell has no good Mexican restaurants so it was nice to get a decent meal in the metropolis of Missoula.
Above is Leanne, me and Sonal all dolled up (dolled up for us that is) ready to hit the town.
Leanne and Danni at the bar. We first went to this bar called Stockmans which got really crowded and was really hilarious. Some country singer named Keith Anderson was there and the drunk girls were ridiculously following him around the bar. There was some confusion at first because someone said Trent Reznor was at the bar, which I suppose was possible since NIN was playing in Missoula that night, but instead it was this random country dude. Oh well :p
I was excited to run into the Missoula Hash House Harriers -- our running club will try to go down for a hash soon :-) (The Hash House Harriers are an international organization of "drinkers with a running problem.")
We met up with Kent, one of our running buddies, who had a friend visiting from Boise. The group of us is pictured below. It was fun to go barhopping (ok we went to two bars :p) in Missoula with the college kids. I wouldn't want to do it every weekend but it was really fun. We actually closed down the bar. Aren't you proud? That's way past my 9:00 pm bedtime.
Because Leanne's college experience involved drunk Pita Pit, we hit the Pita Pit before returning to our hotel room. Lord knows I needed more to eat.
It was a really really fun weekend and a good race. Thanks girls!
For Christmas I met up with my brother Dave, SIL Tina and neice Stella at my Grandma's house in Arizona. I got in a couple good runs while there -- wearing shorts! The picture above is on Mount Picacho on Christmas morning. I wussed out sadly on that adventure because it became a little technical for me all alone. There were rocks to be climbed via pulling myself up cables, and I was scared :p
The above picture is where I turned around. I ran into a really nice group on my way back who invited me to finish the hike with them -- they offered to share food and water even. I figured I should head back to Grandma's though.
This part I managed! A lot of steep rock on Mount Picaco!
Below is from Ted and my Solstice Celebration. We spent Christmas apart so we celebrated the solstice. Ted made me the hat. 
I'll be back soon with snowy pictures -- I am going for a snowshoe hike today!
