A Wee Halloween Interruption

I will post more about the Epic European Tour, but before it gets too far past the festivities, a word about some Halloween goings-on:

First things first, there's this:

XD

It didn't last long, as expected, but it was a nice surprise anyway.

Then we had a race:

Go Mom!

Go Dad!

Go me!  I made it!!! *dies*

We have done the Hale Center Theater's annual Highway To Hale race for several years, since we like it so.  It's a little expensive, but they have good prizes, nice shirts, and are pretty fun, especially to see all the costumes.  This year I wore all gray and, um, went as some kind of gray ghost/elephant thing.  It was just what I had on hand.  Mom and Dad joined us, and Julie sat this one out, as she was recovering from a little bug she caught at the tail end of the cruise (right, Elise??) and hadn't been able to get back in the running routine yet.  I decided to do the 10K again this year, in an attempt to make up for last year's food poisoning fiasco.  I met my goal (under 45 without walking!!!) and came in at 44:17, 4th in my division (missed 3rd by 20 seconds, eurgh), and 22nd overall.  It was some kind of something at the time though, it was pretty hard at some points, there are a lot of hills on that course, and I kept saying, I know I said I wouldn't walk, but I'll just run to the top of this hill and then walk for a block...  And then by the time I made it up the hill I just decided to keep running, and thought, I don't have to walk, I can just run a little slower for a break instead.  And it worked!  And I was able to make my goal.  Mom and Dad did the 5K and both placed 1st in their divisions.  And it wasn't until days later that I realized we didn't even take our traditional group photo.  Well, we've had one before at this race, that will do, and luckily The Wife was ready on hand to take pictures of us crossing the finish line.  Dad's just taking his time.

Then we had Halloween!  We had a Groupon deal for a fun little Halloween cruise on the Provo river, which was fun, though a little short, and we were glad we had a 2-for-1 deal for it.  We might even do the same thing for Christmas if we find a similar deal.  We didn't have a big party or anything to host or attend on Halloween, but our ward DID have trunk-or-treat, and we had a sort of last-minute costume idea, so here we are:

The Boy With the Bread

The Girl on Fire (and with bread also)

We were Katniss and Peeta!  It was fun watching who caught on.  Lots of moms did, though some of the younger ones took a minute to figure it out, if they did at all (even tweens I thought would surly know!).  Some people thought I was just a baker (the idea!) but once I sat closer to Julie and dropped some hints people figured it out (see here for reference).  We didn't have a bow-and-arrow on hand, but Julie pulled off the look with her jacket and Mockingjay pin and boots anyway.  We were a big hit.  It made us wish we had a party or something to go to so we could be seen somewhere else, especially since we ran out of candy to hand out pretty quickly.  So we went to the mall to get some really awesome SubZero ice cream and walked around a bit to check out the scene there.

The artfully placed baking supplies on my clothes make all the difference.

Angst.

And that's about it!  Festivities.  It was a subdued Halloween, but it was fun.  And now it's time to start filtering in Christmas music and looking forward to a wonderful Thanksgiving and stop being distressed when people pronounce Halloween like Hollow-een.*

And then this happened:

 

My wife is ever so creative sometimes when it comes to cooking, especially when it comes to one of our favorites, gourmet grilled cheese.  So resourceful!

And soon I will post pictures from the cruise.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled Epic European Tour anticipation programming

*  I know, I know, I'm sorry, but it's just one of my favorite annual pet peeves, I can't let October go by without mentioning it.

A Tale of Two 10Ks

I had planned to blog last week all about Halloween weekend, and the glorious (and not so glorious) events that transpired surrounding that holiday, but then The Wife blogged about it, and in such a complete and stylish fashion, it seemed like it would be kind of redundant for those of you who read both of our blogs.  So, instead I just decided to link to her post for some of the details.  Look here for information on Julie's lovely sister visiting and our fast-food experience that brought a whole new meaning to the phrase "In-N-Out Burger," and in general, look here for more delightful posts featuring the Most Amazing Cake Ever and sundry amusing things.  I will say briefly: on Halloween night, we went to a party thrown by a mission friend and his wife, and it was fun and we brought leftover Most Amazing Cake Ever and watched Sleepy Hollow and of course came dressed, surprise surprise, like this (we didn't have much time to follow through on The Wife's exciting new costume ideas...  next year!):

So, now, for the real substance of this post.

While Marci was here visiting, we ran the Highway to Hale race, sponsored by the Hale Center Theater in Orem.  We did the 5K at this race last year, and it was pretty fun, but this year we decided to do the 10K.  We just thought it would be nice to see the other course they offer (and thereby avoid the horrid hill that is the last mile of the 5K course).  So on Friday, after our day-long nightmarish bout with food poisoning, we went to bed, hoping that we would feel better by morning.  And we did!  So we had as much breakfast and water as seemed wise and made it through the race.  It wasn't our best race ever, having eaten very little the day before, and as we were still more or less recovering.  I even walked a handful of times, which is something I never do in a race (my pride wanted to shout "I had food poisoning yesterday!" as people ran past me).  I probably pushed myself a little too hard when it came to running, which caused me to have more walking periods, but I go into this race mode where it's hard for me to run slower than I would like/can, especially when my little GPS watch is telling me my pace.  So I felt a little breathless and low on energy at times, but we had a good time, and we prevailed!  We reclaimed our stomachs and finished the race.  I still placed third in my age group, 17th overall, and had a pretty decent time (44:38, 7:29/mile, though it was just under an actual 10K at about 6 miles even), so I wasn't too disappointed.  (Julie, meanwhile, had a great run at a nice, steady pace.)  We decided to forego the suggestion to run in costumes since it was a longer race, though I decided to wear all black and be a running ninja.  We were SO happy to be feeling better, seriously, we were just glad to finish and be well and hungry again.

They just gave medals to the first place in each age group.  I was actually third but the top 2 were overall winners, so I won first by default.  I'll take it!

 

The next week, after we said a sad goodbye Marci and had Halloween, we had another race, this time the annual First Dam Run in Logan.  We decided to do the 10K again, which we have done previously on this race.  (I think I at least also wanted to redeem myself from the previous week's race...  I mean, I know we were on the other side of a pretty bad illness, but still.)  It's a nice, scenic course, and it's usually nice weather for a long, later-morning run.  On Friday night, we picked up Mom, Amber and Cami and headed up to Grandma's house.  There was a huge rain/snowstorm the whole way up, but we made it all right (though in a longer time than it would normally have taken).  We had a little visit with Grandma and then had a good rest before the 10:00 am start time, which I love.  It was a beautiful, snowy morning, cold but not frigid, and clear and crisp, which I thought was great running weather.  All the ladies decided to do the 10K too, so after gathering everything up (including my iPod, which I forgot at the house, and HAD to rush back to get, only to make it back with moments to spare before the race started), off we went.  It was a much nicer experience than the week before, though I'm a little perplexed that my times for both were pretty similar...  (44:11, 14th overall, 1st in age group, 7:07/mile, though this one was closer to a full 6.2 miles, maybe even a little over, so that could account for the similarities in time)  But Julie cut five minutes off her time from the week before!  Nice work, lovah!

Go me!

Go Cami!

Go Mom!

Go Wife!  You look so tiny in the distance!  You're almost there!

(I ran back to find Julie but by the time I doubled around and cut some corners she was far ahead of me and I couldn't catch up with her by the finish.)

Go Amber!  And random stranger!

Go Grandma!

Waiting for the awards.  It was pretty cold after all.

Woot!  I wasn't expecting that.

Go Team!

 

So there you go.  Two weeks, two 10Ks.  We are just hardcore that way.  I'm so glad I have a wife who likes to run!  It's a fun hobby that we can do together.  We've been joking lately that if ever anyone were to write a musical about my life, there would be a big belty showstopping ballad entitled "Not Without My Morning Run."  I can already hear it!  Now THAT'S something I want on my running playlist.  And now we can sleep in tomorrow and maybe just take a relaxing regular Saturday morning run.  It's so nice to have cooler running weather.  At least for now.  *cold*  We'll be saying hello again to the treadmills before long.



And just like that, three blogposts in one week.  We shall see what other blog-worthy wonders November will bring!