My BIRTHDAY!

I love my birthday.  I celebrate it for about a month.  And I give most of you the day off in my honor.  But, for the first time ever, there are no fireworks for my birthday here in San Antonio.  We're under severe drought/fire conditions, so even mis vecinos aren't drunkenly firing off bottle rockets!  But, I did get to enjoy a crazy weekend.

Saturday, I woke up late and hit my long run (11 miles) - heading out down the riverwalk from the Pearl Brewery, past the Blue Star Brewery, and past the Lone Star Brewery to check out the new opening of the Mission Reach section of the riverwalk.  It was a neat run (reminded me of Milwaukee), but it was VERY, VERY hot.  Then, I hit a dinner for my friends' 40th wedding anniversary.

Then, very early, I ran 6 miles at Fleet Feet, took a nap, and hit my friend, Rochie's house to stain her fence and clean out raingutters as part of a gals-coop we're doing.  She fed us an awesome lunch - then, I headed to Holly's pool party - fun with the tri crowd.

Then, this morning, I ran the Freedom 4 miler, which was hot and hilly - here are the pics from Tom (thanks) -

 UPhill

shameless promoting sponsors

Then, I napped HARD.

Celebrating another 25 or so years

What a nice birthday weekend!  On Friday, I joined up with folks for the First Friday Cruiser ride - starting with shrimp lasagna at Guillermo's, then riding down to the Alcapulco Drive in for frosty beverages, and then to the Friendly Spot for some more libations.  Saturday morning, I ran 12 miles with buddies out of Run Wild at the Pearl Brewery.  It was a tough run in 99.99% humidity, dodging AA conventioneers downtown. 

On Sunday - my 25thagain birthday - I slowly ran the Freedom Day 4 miler out at the National Shooting Range.  It was a tough run with heavy legs and an uphill finish.  Here I am slogging through the run

And here's me phoning in the finish - I wouldn't want to be out of breath at the end, after all.

And contemplating the fact that I came in 20th in the age group!

After a shower and a birthday nap, I headed to Adrian and Darlene's house for fish/pickle/shrimp/jalapeno/onion fry and partying.  From their hill country mansion, we could see no fewer than 10 firework shows on the horizon (various Hill Country towns, Fiesta TX, etc.), along with Adrian's own show from down the hill. 

Thanks to Tom Lake and R.U.N. for the pics.  Thanks to all my buddies for the running miles and birthday fun!

Happy Birthday to me

I haven't had any ugly race pics to post lately, so I am just taking this opportunity to remind you that there are only four more days for you to pick out a birthday gift for me.  I will again be turning 25 years old.

Oh, and on that day, I will be running the Freedom 4 miler.  It's a 4 mile race held in honor of my birthday every year and runners oddly show up dressed in red, white, and blue.  And then I will eat fried pickles and fried jalapenos and fried fish and fried shrimp and whatever else Darlene & Adrian can find to fry. 

And (hopefully sometime before that), I will work in a 12-mile run.  Because it's marathon training - ON time.  Which also means it's Summer in San Antonio - which is represented by all of the red boxes below.  Bring it on, extreme danger, just bring it...

Happy Bird Day to Me

Happy bird day to you. Happy pheasant day to you, happy peacock day happy turkey daaaayyyyyyy. Happy bird day to you!

I am often depicted as a crazy chicken in my ugly race pics:

I toned it down a bit for this morning's Freedom Four Miler - but not by much!

Happy Independence Day!

Thanks to Dad for the lyrics. (thanks to Gretchen for reminding me of them)

Thanks to Jim Yanaway for the crazy chicken picture - where in the heck did you find THAT?

Thanks to Tom Lake for the crazy chicken ugly race pic of me!

Freedom 4 miler - Happy birthday to me

Well, I'm going to start this out with my birthday run. Now, normally, I just re-turn 25 every year. But, this year, I'm in a new old lady age group (not really old ladies - the Olympian, Liza Hunter-Galvan, is now my 'nemesis' in this age group until scary-tattoo Andrea joins us next month as my old lady nemesis, but more about them later). It certainly did not help my running - but I think that can be attributed to people grilling in the park - I don't like to smell food when I'm running.

Anyway, 4 miles in the books and, of course, some ugly race pics to add to the collection. This time, as we ran, SAPD ticketed all the runners and Texas Towing (evil, oft sued by me entity) towed their cars. Luckily, I didn't pull one of my smart-arsed perpendicular parking jobs, so I was safe, but buddies were not - including one buddy who rode her bike there and put it on someone's bike rack during the race - and THAT car got towed, along with the bike!

After a nap with the dog, it was 4th of July Fish Fry at a buddy's mansion. Next up, Los Chupacabras de la noche 10k trail run (7/18, 9 pm) stupidly followed by the Women's 5k (7/19, 8 am). that's going to hurt this old broad!