An Island. 'nuff said.

My father lives on an island.  In the middle of the city.  'nuff said.

While it's technically true that his house is not surrounded by water on all sides, his neighborhood is surrounded on 3 sides by water and one side by a road so busy that even crazy GBA runners like me will not venture onto it.

The Red Dress
aka. why Marathon Training &
Brooke should be your BFFs

I mean, there's being crazy, and there's being stupid.

I'll get back to the point of this in a minute.

On Friday I headed down to Tidewater VA for rehearsal and cocktail hour for my lil sis's wedding.  It was a real stretch to get there on time, get dressed, rehearse, etc.  But regardless, I'm glad we made the effort.  The kids & I had a great time, and it meant a lot to "Yorya".

I'm totally going to put in a glory shot here of me in my cocktail dress. Reason #221 to train for a marathon and make friends with a nutritionist from TX :  THE RED DRESS.


'nuff said.

In some ways, I am an island in my family.  I married young, have older kids, and due to circumstances too boring to discuss here, I often find myself as a single mom.  I feel torn between chilling with the adults with a glass of bubbly, and laying on the floor of the Waterside Sheraton coloring in a Barbie Princess Coloring book.

That's my B'nut & C in the bridal party

On Saturday I married off the youngest of my siblings.  She is a lovely young woman, blessed with the love of a good man, and they're setting forth on the great journey that is life as a Mr & Mrs.  I truly do wish them the best.

My UBER kids...ROCKED.
Best behaved kids at a wedding
EVER.
'nuff said.

My kids were epic on Saturday.  The GOOD kind of EPIC.

B'nut napping

They were SO well behaved.  Especially C, who had important Bridesmaid duties to perform.  And G, who was The Usher for ALL the guests because the other usher was sick.  And B'nut... well, she was great.

She walked down with her flower ball... sat next to me.... and laid her head down and took a nap.
No worries, she woke up in time for the walk back up the aisle.  Life was good.

a bit toasted

We danced and partied the night away.  We ate cake.  We felt compelled to drink from the open bar.  My sister in law and I were a little tipsy...  ok, wicked toasted.  Life was good.  We wined, dined, danced, partied and then I got a D/D to drive my sorry a** back and pour me into bed.

This is my Grandmother.  She's
90...  I hope I'm as amazing as she
is when I'm her age.

Of course.  I'm marathon training.  And Marathon Training Rests for No GBA.

 Which meant on Sunday, slightly hung over and mostly exhausted and maybe even a little tipsy, I had 5 miles to run.  In all the packing for the wedding I had failed to pack my Garmin, so I had to use the old fashioned technique of mapping a route on www.mapmyrun.com and then using a regular old stop watch function on my phone (Ok, so not 100% old school when you factor in The Droid)to determine how much time it took to run.

...to determine how much time it took to run FIVE TIMES AROUND MY FATHER'S BLOCK.  Because the options were:
Drive to run in an unfamiliar city.  
Run 5 laps.  
Or get run over.
I chose D: "get run over with".

Um.  Mental prep for marathon = here we come.

I had no idea how the splits were breaking down, as the phone stayed in the house.  So I ran the 5 loops on perceived effort of "don't completely suck, but you were up all night last night, so don't fret if you run slow... just take it easy."

5 loops.  Exactly the same.  Past the old farmhouse nestled in the city neighborhood, turn, past the little yap dogs, the woman on her porch, turn, past the FOR SALE sign, turn, past the For Sale By Owner Sign, turn past Dad's House, Past the old farmhouse nestled in the city ...

And I admit, I wasn't tempted to cut even one of them.  Because the run was just going that well.  Of course, I had to think really hard at one point which lap I was currently on, "... is this mile 3 or ...?"

As it turns out, when I'm not talking to my friends or figuring out where to go, I can run pretty fast with a very low amount of perceived effort.

Like.  For example... Marathon race pace, for 5 miles, at a perceived easy effort.

So as I said, my father lives on an island.  It's a metaphor in this case.  Of course, his other house, is actually on an island, so... yeah, that's a-whole-nother running story.