Your Boston Marathon Entry has Been Received!

RELIEF!  I can't explain how happy I was to see the above email, and know that I got through this morning.  Now I am just waiting verification, and from what I understand, could take several days.  I am not terribly worried about that part, as the email/confirmation screen stated if there is any problem with the results,  you will be contacted, and they already ran the credit card, so if I had made a mistake there, it would have been caught.  I checked and double checked everything, so it should be good.  When I checked on the application on Monday, it did not list the Martian Marathon in the drop down of races, so I didn't check for it today, and the system caught that I should have used the drop down.  I have high confidence that I am in good shape!  An aquaintaince from my OLD track group before kids posted on his f/b today that the BQ - 10 confirmation emails should start going out today, so I doubt I will get mine before Monday or Tuesday. 

I used the desktop, since the laptop touchpad sometimes makes the curser jump, but I had the faster newer less finicky laptop next to the desktop, just in case.  I pulled up my official results from the Martian Marathon on it, as well as the other sites.  They both run off of wireless (there is no cable outlet near the computer desk), and I was fully prepared to drive to Starbucks, about a mile down the road or bust in on one of my neighbors if something funky happened with our internet connection.  Thankfully, there were no cut cables, internet outages, or major crashes (although there were some interesting noises) upstairs where Soren was watching TV during this.  Yeah, I probably am going to lose my mother of the year award for this, since I let Soren watch TV all morning so I could relieve some stress by doing mindless small cleaning tasks and packing for our trip to MI, as well as keep him out of my hair during the actual registration process.  I will also be pulling Keira out of school for the actual race, she will miss probably 3-4 days of school, since we will be driving and not flying, unless I can either win something and sell it, start ebaying A LOT of random stuff (we already donated a lot of random stuff too), or start selling a product online.  (I've had my eye on a particular company for a while, so please don't pitch me yours.  Ryan doesn't care for that sort of business venture, but he also doesn't care for the price of this trip, so he is starting to entertain me temporarily trying it out to earn some trip money, but still hasn't said yes yet).

On that line of money, Ryan did what he considered to be the "inevitable".  He drove into the garage with his bike on top.  I didn't see this as an inevitable to me, as every time I pull into the garage, I do it under the assumption that I am going to hit something, thus, go painfully slow.  My garage in college had lots of holes and chunks in it on account of me hitting it so many times.  He was going slow, but fast enough to put two dents from his brake levers into the wood above the garage.  I am sure that will be easy enough to fill.  He is stressed out about his bike.  I don't blame him, but I think it is fine.  His roof on his truck was fine too, however, we did take a loss on our rack.  Our rack outlived our previous truck, and sat outside all day and all night for nearly 9 years.  We had purchased new crossbars for it this summer, and just hadn't swapped them out.  The old ones were rusted because the plastic covers on them had split open.  We wrapped them with electrical tape when we transferred it from the old truck to this one 2 years ago.    Well, when Ryan hit the garage, it moved the towers back on the rack.  Since they needed to be moved, we figured might as well swap out the crossbars.  Well, if the towers were not so old and seized, it would have been simple and the damage practically none.  Sadly, the roof rack is in a heap on the floor in the garage right now.  We think it was beyond its useful life.  The trays are fine, so that is a major plus.  I am not including a picture because Ryan was plenty mad at himself for this, I don't need to document it further.  Thankfully, we are headed to MI this afternoon, and will be able to go to REI and get new ones.  That is not going to be cheap, though.  Ryan is bummed that there is a baptism scheduled for tomorrow right in the middle of when he would want to ride (there is an organized century that his club does that is tomorrow), but if it was not for the baptism, we would not be going anyway).  We do have another bike rack (that is mine, but doesn't hold my tri bike or fit on my car), if he wants to take his bike (I may encourage this).  I've already said I would take the kids all afternoon to various farms and festivale (HELLO CIDER AND DONUTS), so he can decide if he wants to ride after the baptism (during football) or not.  As long as I bring him cider and donuts, he doesn't mind if I go without him so he can ride/watch football.  I am excited to run with Valerie through the old 'hood.  Neither of us has time to go to Kensington and I did 11 yesterday so I don't need to do a full lap.

Speaking of my 11 yesterday.  I did that on the treadmill.  Yeah, it was boring, but I rocked it out Brad Pitt/Burn after reading style.  I even sang out loud a bit, and didn't care what people thought.  I did my first mile on the treadmill without a TV, which would have been fine except the iPod jack wasn't working, and I didn't think I had enough juice to last the whole run otherwise.  About .8 miles on that treadmill, the guy on "my" treadmill finished up, so I finished out my mile and hopped over.  It has a TV, iPod jack, and better (softer) belt.  I ran 7, then reset it for my final 3, for a total of 11.  I totally spaced on what time I started, and accidently went over by over 10 minutes on my childcare because I thought I had time for abs and a shower.  Oops.  After leaving the gym, we stopped by Keira's school for the Tiger Trek.  I wasn't really sure what this was.  We got one flyer about it at the beginning of the year, with a pledge sheet.  We don't know anyone here that doesn't have a child at her school doing the Tiger Trek, so I had already pretty much planned that we would be making the sole donation.  Then I forgot about it until we got a reminder call to make sure we dressed our kids appropriately for the weather on Wed.  Ryan and I made our donation, and wrote our check.  I mean, what kind of running mother would I be if I didn't support Keira in this, even though I feel like we are asked to send a check for something almost every week to school.  I was not planning on attending the trek, except I forgot to put Keira's snack (which I did pack in its container) into her backpack.  On my way in to the school, I ran into a neighbor who asked if I was there to watch it.  No, but what a fabulous idea!  She said she would be back later too, her son was walking in the morning.  We got there right as it was starting in the afternoon.  It warmed up beautifully, and Keira had a blast.  They had a DJ and the gym teacher was trying to help them pace themselves for the full 30 minutes of movement.  They were to walk, run, dance, ect around the parking lot in a circle for 30 minutes.  Here are a couple pictures.

Soren had a blast too, and Keira won a door prize.  Both kids were completely tired out after this.  I am so glad I went.  I was pretty dead tired too, because I had run 11 miles and then walked, jumped, and danced with the kids for 30 minutes.  Although, it was a heck of a lot easier to jump around in running shoes to "Cotton Eye Joe" than high heeled boots like the college days :)

I hope you enjoy your weekend!  Any big plans!  I had better finish packing so I can head to MI.  I keep wanting to say "home", but our home is here now.  Hopefully this trip will get me my fix of MI until the Detroit Half, and then when we go back for the holidays (no plans are determined yet, except Christmas morning WILL be in our new home here- I don't want to put anything out there for anyone to try to hold me to), it will likely be cold and yucky, so I won't miss it as much :)  I am going to enjoy being a runner again for a while.  Ryan has been working too late for me to go on my ladies ride anymore, and I skipped my swim to get registered this morning.  I'm going to keep swimming, and need to get my bike trainer set up, but I am thinking I am about done riding outside for a while.