Eat Drink Run Woman

I confess: I’ve been holding back on you.

After pouring my heart out week after week, sharing the minutiae of my training for North Olympic, I decided to operate in stealth mode for a bit.  (Pretty funny coming from someone who has no problem sharing the intimate details of her biological functions).

However, it’s not that I haven’t hinted at my shenanigans.  After North Olympic my darling and I started thinking of other marathon goals to have besides Boston.  Given the Marathon Maniacs are based here, it seemed a natural.  We originally thought we’d try for membership after Disney (it falls 91 days after Royal Victoria; as long as we had run a marathon between the two we’d qualify).

But one thing led to another and we signed ourselves up for Skagit Flats on September 7.  We figured we’d run a November marathon, thus qualifying for MM status.  But once again, one thing led to another and we soon were signing up for the Tunnel Marathon, which was… TODAY!  A quick look at the calendar confirmed we’d be eligible for MM status after Skagit Flats, as that race is 91 day past North Olympic (their website states you need to run 3 marathons within 90 days, but I confirmed they’d allow 91).

I’ll post my race report soon, but we had a fabulous race today.  It was primarily downhill, going along an old railroad grade from Snoqualmie Pass to the town of North Bend.  We ran through a 2-mile long tunnel within the first three miles, hence the name (we had to wear headlamps which they collected at the end).  I was familiar with the final five miles of the race, as it ran along the same trail as the Mt. Si Relay.  It’s a wonderfully wide, compact dirt trail that’s easy on the knees.

So there you have it — I can soon officially call myself a “Marathon Maniac” (capital M).  Here’s my list of upcoming races:

Sept. 7: Skagit Flats
Oct. 12: Royal Victoria
Jan. 10-11: Goofy Challenge
June 29: Seattle Rock ‘n Roll Marathon

Knees don’t fail me now!

P.S.  Oh my goodness; I almost forgot to mention!  Based on my performance today, I’ll also be running a race back East the third Monday in April.

I get home from work today, logged onto one of my running forums and saw the following announcement:

The newest Rock n Roll marathon is in Seattle on June 27, 2009. If you go to http://www.rnrseattle.com/ today August 5, you can register for half price! You must register before midnight today.

How could we pass up a deal like that?  The course isn’t published yet, but based on the brief description it appears it’ll be quite flat, save for the hill leading up to Greenlake (I’m assuming they’ll take us on Stone Way, which is .9 miles long, but very gradual).

So who’s with us?  Come on; it’ll be fun!  And since part of the course runs within 2 blocks of our house, we could always take a quick beer break 🙂

I don’t consider myself a particularly artistic person; sure, I have spurts of creativity but I get easily bored. For a while I made a bunch of whimsical refrigerator magnets out of femo clay (my mom has begged me for one for years, but I moved on to my next project). I then got into making my own greeting cards using wooden stamps (I even made our wedding invitations). But again, that phase soon passed.

I started keeping a portfolio of my race numbers years ago (I even have the bib number from my very first 5K). They’re all contained within a basic black portfolio with plastic sleeves. If I received a medal or had a picture taken I’d add those to the page, but I wouldn’t do anything more elaborate.

Then I ran the Goofy Challenge.

Anyone who’s run Disney knows it’s all about the bling, and with Goofy I not only received medals for the half and for the full, I also received the coveted Goofy medal. We’re talking serious bling, people! Disney does not skimp on the medals. When I got home I couldn’t see just putting them in the portfolio; they needed to be shown off somehow. Sure, I could have purchased a pre-made shadowbox from one of the Disney vendors, but I had already spent a ton of money.

I then read a post in a Runner’s World discussion about a home-made race shadowbox. The poster had designed his own for a fraction of the cost of what most vendors charged. A lightbulb went on over my head: I can do that! And while I was at it, I decided I’d make up one for Medoc as well (after all, it was my first marathon).

As I was deciding on what color mat board to use, I remembered the piece of zebra cloth I picked up while putting my costume together. The creative juices really started flowing. I first checked out an artist’s supply store, but none of their frames — not even the custom ones — would be thick enough for what I wanted to include. But I then scored at Michael’s craft shop. Not only did they carry the perfect sized black shadowbox (16″ x 20″), it was 40% off! I also picked up two large sheets of mat board (one for Medoc, one for Disney).

Total cost of materials? Less than $40 (that includes the entire sheet of mat board; I only used about a quarter of it). Mind you, we already had spray mount and hot glue, and we also have a mat cutter. But I think it looks a heck of a lot better than what I could have gotten done “professionally”!

Stay tuned for the Disney version. It may take a while since my darling will most likely be making the frame.

(Oh, and my apologies to Angie. I totally stole her headline style!)

Ummm…

You know how I said we’d be back for Goofy, but not until 2010? Well, there’s been a slight change of plans.  Let’s just say my credit card is now $500 further in debt.