TC 10-mile

The TC-10 was a great race and we were just out there to have fun. Luckily it wasn't as cold as I thought it could have been. And we decided to wear our Caribou jerseys to see if we could get a rise out of the crowd. Plus we just like dressing the same for races. (aw! I know)



The first couple miles we had to take it at a slower pace since my shins were a little warm and I knew if I didn't give them time to warm up and relax I would be paying for it for weeks. So by mile 3 we were cruising along at a comfortable pace. Normally by mile 4 the mile markers start getting farther and farther apart but surprisingly they were flying by. I was having so much fun with people in the crowd cheering "Go Caribou!" and "We love Caribou!". We were having a blast and were thoroughly entertained. Hopefully someone from corporate caught that :)




We saw a few friends cheering along the way. Jon, (one of the best cheerleaders ever!) was on the bridge leading over to St Paul.



Then we saw Steve Scarrow (have to use the last name since we now have two Steve S running friends) just up the way.



Then we saw a soon-to-be chicken making his way to the cheering spot with another chicken, a pig and a cow. He wasn't in costume yet since he just finished the 10-mile himself but hung out to cheer on all the marathoners. Here's a link to his video of the farm animals. Love it!





We finished up in 1:32:(something). Considering I wasn't going for any speed I was very satisfied with that since it was a 9:15 pace. Mark and I started and finished together but somehow that little bugger got his timing chip foot in front of mine and crossed the finish one second before me which landed him a 9:14 pace. Seriously? Yeah, for real :-P



So Mark has gotten incredibly good at doing the self-portraits of us but for some reason this one was hard to line up.

The Many Faces of Mark

Happy!


But that's not going to work (Me -3/4 smile)


Content.


A little closer but not the right background (Me-still smiling)


Concentration.


Would have been good but a little too serious there Mark (Me - cheeks in pain)


Happy! Yay!


Now we've got it :D (Me - smile stuck, too cold. Can we go get some coffee now?)

So now my concentration is on nothing but 5k speed for the next few weeks. Today (Friday) I actually ran 15 minutes on the treadmill before I went to the CRT class at Lifetime over lunch. I put my 15 minutes at a pace of 7:47 which actually felt comfortably uncomfortable. My goal is still to try to get to 7:30 min/mi for Monster. Now the CRT class was a very humbling experience. 9 months of Ironman training has done NOTHING for my ability to keep up with a 60 minute aerobics class. Ugh! That kicked my butt so bad it going to hurt until Sunday. Really.... So a secondary goal for me is to keep going to classes each week and hopefully lose 7 lbs and feel like I can keep up for the whole 60 minutes by the end of the year.



But I digress....



Last week Monday was the Packers vs Vikings at the Metrodome. There was so much hype it was crazy. 1) Monday night football 2) border battle 3) the first time Brett was playing against the Packers in purple



I'll summarize by saying the game was AWESOME! Brett was AWESOME! Jaren Allen was AWESOME! It's like we have a real football team now.



There were so many Packers fans there that no matter who had a good play there was significant booing and cheering .

There was a tank on display out front before the game, very cool

Since it was a Monday night game, the ESPN crew was there commentating. The guy sitting on the left in the tan suit is Jon Gruden. Sweet!

Well I'm finish up this blog long overdue so I'm going to cut it short here and hit "post" and then continue my more current thoughts on another post.