Spectating at the Houston Marathon

Most of my Houston friends ran the Houston Marathon or Half, so I decided to go spectate and cheer for them.

Pre-race dinner was at Pronto Cucinino.

It was so Yummy and we had so much fun! I think I got my core workout for the day just from laughing so much!

Race morning Cassie and I met Chris and Ramona at Ingrid's. Chris made a life size cut out of Ingrid! It was awesome! We walked a couple blocks to the 5 mile mark and watched for everyone. The course was crowded and it was really hard to find the people we knew. We missed Matt (he sped by before we even started looking for him). We were annoyed to miss Matt, since the only chance we had to see the half marathoners was at mile 5. We almost missed Ingrid and Kim, but Ingrid saw her big cutout sign and started waving at us.

Ingrid was obviously having a great time!

We saw Lisa and Stacy, we missed John, Rick, Kathleen, Steph and Loanna. I could have sworn I saw Julie (from Kickrunners), but it was someone else named Julie who looked a lot like her. I even called her brother Kyle to tell him I'd just seen her. oops!

Richard ran by us and yelled "hey Heather" and then I finally saw him. I have no idea how I could have missed his bright neon yellow shirt! Richard ran with me for the last 6 miles of the 30k last month. He had a great race today, ran negative splits and was only a couple minutes off a PR.

Cassie's Houston Fit Yellow Fever sign. Cassie was a cheerleader in high school and it really came out today! She was awesome! We both had a 5 hour energy shot this morning, so maybe that was part of it too.

I guess I was a pretty good cheerleader too. I actually ended up with a couple blisters from cowbelling and this morning I barely have a voice! Cindy from Trizones is always saying you have to train for cowbelling, maybe she's right!

Cassie saw her friend Kelsey and ran onto the course to cheer for her. I think she may have scared Kelsey with all her enthusiasm!

Next we went to the 13 mile mark, it's a really pretty part of the course, but we got to this point about 2 minutes after Kim and Ingrid went by! We did see Steph at this spot and Cassie saw some of her Houston Fit friends.Next stop was the HRTC "Hoopla Station" at mile 24. We found Kathleen, she had finished her half and was cheering for the full marathoners. We also found Penny and David and Gillian.

Penny's husband John ran a sub-4 hour marathon!

The Statue of Liberty running!
Ramona made signs for Kim and Steph. I wanted to find something fun to put on a sign for the 24 mile stop. I found something that said "Your feet hurt because you are kicking so much ass" I put a variation of it on a sign and lots of people who came by smiled, laughed, and commented about it. Cassie and I were both really happy that people liked it.

Ingrid came by with the 4:30 pace group and looked great!

This was Ingrid's first marathon. She was hoping if everything went perfect to run 4:30, she ended up finishing in 4:29:23!! Nice job Ingrid!

Kim was just a couple of minutes behind Ingrid. She had a better race at San Antonio, but I think she still had fun today.

We also saw Rick, he did Poolsharks and a few Zephyr rides with us last season.

David and Gillian both did long runs today. Gillian actually did her longest run ever and then came out to cheer for everyone!

Cassie being the mega cheerleader!

Steph finished in 5:06, she looked great at mile 24 too! She said she wasn't feeling too great in the middle miles, but at mile 17 she started feeling better and really picked up the pace. Apparently, Loanna was just ahead of Steph, she saw us, but we missed her.

Ingrid showing off her medal at Onion Creek. We decided to go to Onion Creek for lunch, it was insanely crowded! And it took over 2 hours to get our food! At least I got to hang out with my Houston friends and hear about their races.

Steph post-race. She looks so happy!
Steph, Matt, and Cassie. Matt got a half marathon PR today! He said he was hurting pretty much the entire race and seemed surprised that he was able to get a PR.

I had so much fun spectating today! It made me even more excited for the 3M half next weekend and Austin in 3 weeks!

New Year's Eve

Jeff and I decided to go to Austin's First Night Celebration. We thought about 6th Street, or just having a few friends over to our house. We were also invited to Cassie's party in Houston (which I heard was really awesome) but we didn't want to drive to Houston. We heard First Night was going to have a bike parade and fireworks. I love parades and fireworks, so we decided on First Night. The festival had an art and environmental theme and it was a lot of fun.

The parade was big and had tons of butterflies.
and lots of people on stilts

these guys from Nicaragua dressed like cows

There were tons of bike floats and many of them had been made into butterflies

This was a super long caterpillar, there were 8 or 10 people riding bikes inside it.Of course there was a bat float

There was also a huge praying mantis bike float that played music, he was really cool, but I never got a good picture. There were also lots of kids in the parade with art projects they had made in school.

At 8pm they had the kid's finale, there was a big wooden clock tower built for First Night and people pinned papers with their resolutions or memories to the tower then at 8pm they set it on fire and had a few fireworks too.

There were tons of projects, shows, bands, and activities. This was called "Regenerate: Butterfly Resolutions" it was made of twigs and cornhusks. They had cornhusk butterflies and you could write your "resolutions and wishes for our planet" on them then hang them on the twig hangers. there were thousands of cornhusk butterflies, Jeff is next to ours, it says sustainable energy.

me at Auditorium Shores with the Austin skyline in the background

We also got to see Arc Attack. We had heard of them, but hadn't seen them yet. These guys built Tesla Coils in their garage and now they have a music show using them. Their website, videos, and pictures don't do it justice at all. They had florescent light bulbs stuck in the ground around the coils and they kept lighting up all the time just from the energy from the coils. It looked like lightening coming out of the coils and they made noise that went along with the music. It was really cool.

The midnight fireworks were awesome! I love fireworks and these were way better than I expected.

They lasted over 20 minutes

At least 3 times I thought I had just seen the finale and they were finished, but they just kept going.

The reflections on the water were beautiful too

What an awesome way to celebrate the New Year!

What Would You Do?

So Jeff and I don't know our next door neighbors, we've said hi going to our separate cars, but that's about it. They have an adorable golden retriever, she looks about 2 or 3 years old. She is constantly jumping her fence and when she does, she just sits in her driveway, waiting for her owners to come home.

The neighbors have been gone since at least Sunday. She jumped the fence and sat in her driveway barking all night, we barely got any sleep at all. We got home Monday night and saw she was still sitting in the driveway, the neighbors were obviously still gone, so we decided to put her back in her yard. She was super sweet and obviously loved the attention from us. She looks really well groomed, she has long golden retriever hair. She has a dog house in her yard and the owners left lots of food and water for her, so we didn't feel bad putting her back in her yard.

She stayed in her yard all day yesterday, but when we came home last night at about 1am she was in her driveway. As soon as we got out of the truck she came running over and was super excited to see us. I thought maybe she just wanted a little attention so I hung out and petted her and talked to her for a minute. Then she tried to come in the house with me, and instead of sleeping in her driveway she slept on my front porch. We were too tired to put her back in her yard (it's kind of an ordeal). I put her back in her yard this morning, we'll see what happens.

What would you do? Leave me a comment and let me know. Obviously I'll have to talk with the neighbors when they come home. Jeff says call the pound, but I hate to do that, I'd have to tell the neighbors I did it and I'm afraid she'd end up on doggie death row (although she probably wouldn't, she's beautiful and super sweet). So in our situation, what would you do?