Back on Track!

It's been a while since my last post, and I was wondering the other day why that was? I think it's because it's taken me a while to get back on track after getting sick in Turkey!!! A bacterial infection and some parasites later......I can honestly say I didn't feel like myself again until late November!! I'd like to thank Udo's oil probiotics for getting me back on track!!! I think I've gone through 8 bottles since being September!!
After going down to Florida in November to work with the National Canoe and Kayak Team during their training camp, I felt motivated to get training again! Being around Olympic caliber athletes can do that!!!
I was feeling sluggish still, and trying to build some muscle I had lost in the time I was sick, all the while trying to keep my mileage up to run the Marathon in Vegas in early December.
As it turned out, I ended up only running the half....a decision I made because of the volume of runners this year- 40,000!!!! I knew that the marathon runners only started an hour and a half before the half marathon runners, so that I would have to merge in with them at the half way point after their race had been under way for only 10-20 minutes!!! I thought it would be chaotic, so I decided to run the half with Jason!
It was a great decision, as we ran the strip at night, chatting and having lots of fun!!!! On the second half, we had almost 5 lanes of road to ourselves!! There was no one around us!!! We had such a fun run!!! And by the sounds of it, about 20 minutes behind us was pure chaos, with so many people on the road, you couldn't hold your pace!!! Great decision!!!

So, as you can see, my good friend Robina and I ran the strip in matching tutus!!! It was so much fun....from the look of disdain from the "serious" runners we were lined up with in corral 1 to all the people cheering and complimenting my tutu!!!! My major claim to fame, and where my only bragging rights from the weekend come from is that I was the first tutu to cross the finish line!!! How fun:)

So after Vegas, it's been back to the bread and butter of running.....building endurance, some speed work and hill repeats. My next race is Chuckanut in the middle of March, which seems early for a 50 km!!!  The saving grace has been our weather....it's been a relatively mild winter so that we can get out on the trails, and not have to contend with too much snow.  I've been having so much fun running with friends, and doing more running on the road too!!!
One thing I've really missed this past year is my bike, so I have been doing at least 3 hours of biking a week! It feels really good to be back in the saddle again..... I feel like I'm back to my old self, feeling good and running happy again:)