Weekend in Spokane!

Hey guys,

Well I will start with the race since that's why we went down there in the first place! First off it was freezing cold....the sun was warm but the air was a little on the frigid side. Chad started first so we waited until the 1/2 started and he was off and running. I stood there in the cold for 15 more minutes before my race started. By the time I got to run I was outside for 30 minutes and my feet and hands were numb!

I have come to a conclusion about race course descriptions. When they say that it is a "challenging" or "hilly" it usually is. When they say that is a "mostly flat" course - THEY LIE!
This "mostly flat" course was 2.5 miles of gradual uphill and then a little down hill with 2 more hills. I don't know what "mostly flat" is but that was not it.

Anyway the course was very beautiful, all through downtown and the university campus. Not having run anything shorter than 21km (in a tri) since around april/may I was sucking wind big time. You may think a shorter race is easier....not when you run faster! Ouch. For and end of the year race I am happy with how I did, I think my time was 45min 27 sec? Something to that effect (I am too lazy to look it up again:). Not my fastest race, but hey not bad for not training!

Once I finished I went to get the camera and waited for Speedy Gonzallas to come in. Chad had an awesome race....waaaaay under is goal time, 1:48:something.

Okay onto the weekend highlights:

- Shopping! We did lots of it. We hit up the Zags store, a couple of malls, we found the best sports store EVER downtown, Cabela's (more on that later), and of course many a Fred Meyer!

- Chiefs game. I forgot how much I love live sports. Doesn't matter what it is. I used to watch tons of hockey when Chad was playing, but now we have been limited to the occasional flames game. It was a lot of fun. It was a toss up who to cheer for. The head coach for Spokane last year was the old coach for the U of L hockey team...who taught me (or tried to) to play hockey. Everett however does have really good outlet shopping malls (only a girl can reason this way...I know). Good ole coach Peters won out though and I cheered for the Chiefs!

- Tomato Street. This is the best smelling restaurant I have ever been in! Yummy. That's about it....good food:)

- Cabelas. Chad and I were wandering around in Cabelas looking at all of the animals, fish, etc when we came across a gun game. They had targets all set up and you could shoot at them for points etc. Chad decided to challenge me to a couple of games (keep in mind I am from the Yukon!). Well right off the bat I whooped his butt. He was getting quite upset....Chad doesn't like to loose. The guns were actual gun weight so my the end of the third game (20 shots per game) my shoulders were burning and Chad started making up all of these rules about what we could shoot. At this point he was still loosing so he had to make it up some how:) In the end it was a tie, he did keep "accidentally" hitting me....what a cheater....can't loose to a girl!

I think that covers all of the highlights. This race has motivated me to get back into regular training again. Nothing too crazy but maybe a little more structure. I am still playing around with the idea of running in the Last Chance 1/2, we'll see what happens. Off to spin class tonight and maybe squeeze in a run today!


Leslie