Racing Update

Happy February ….

I’m happy to report that I accomplished my goal in the Tukwila to Alki Half Marathon (I’m in the final stretch in the first photo in this post) and qualified for New York with a time of 1:43.54. (I just got my acceptance email this morning!)

Next up was the  Surf City USA marathon last weekend in Huntington Beach (the second photo shows me before the race). Although I was signed up to run the marathon, I didn’t expect to be able to do the full 26.2 miles so soon after running a fast half, but I figured I’d see how far I could go.

The night before the race, I decided I would run 16 miles and use it as a long training run, pacing my running partner for as long as I could. The first 10 miles were easier than I expected, so I ended up pacing Andrea for the full 16 I had planned to run.

I was going to stop at that point, but I saw another friend who had come down from Seattle with us for the race and she wanted some support, so I ran another 3 miles with her.

Andrea had asked me to meet up with her for the last few miles of the race after the turnaround, so I waited until she came back down the strand next to the Pacific Coast Highway and finished the race with her. I ended up running almost 23 miles — and it felt amazingly good. (That’s me jumping for joy after the race — but it took all I had in me to jump high enough to clear the water.)

Now it’s back to cooking. I’m making shortbread cookies for Valentine’s Day and I’ll post recipes for those on Friday so you can make them before next Tuesday.