Kathleen's Adventures

Wow - what a weekend! Friday afternoon Mom and Dad came through Houston and picked me up on their way to San Antonio. My nieces' school was doing their first ever production of Beauty and the Beast . Molly was Chip, the teacup, and my sister was the choreographer. I was one proud aunt and sister that night! They did a fabulous job. I was absolutely beaming throughout, and couldn't stop from laughing out loud when Bennett, my 3 yr old niece, was singing along at full volume on some of the songs. She's heard them for months now and saw no reason not to sing along this time since she had every other time they played previously. Saturday Mom and Dad handed me off to Jon in San Marcos at the outlet mall. The place was an absolute zoo - I guess because the sun came out for the first time in ages. I did score a few things at Nike and a little clutch I'd been wanting from Kate Spade for a while. We didn't have tons of time because I still had to get to the expo for packet p...

You know, if people hadn't sat around and told me that the AT&T half course is way harder than the 3M course and that it would be nearly impossible to better my 3M time at AT&T, I might not have had to nearly kill myself today to prove them wrong. Today I achieved PR #7 since September. This one rivaled the Houston Marathon in difficulty as the top 2 of my PR list. However, I think the hot pants pulled me through today. This race was pretty neat because the half and the full shared the same start line. I knew a handful of people aiming for 4:00 in the full, so that meant I could run with them for a while - definitely my first time to do so. I started off with my cousin Scott and his friend Charlie. Greyhound was also close by at the start. I introduced him to Scott because they are both doing IMCDA in June. Less than a mile or two into the race, I ran into Clea and we stuck together until mile 6 or 7. It was great to catch up with her and talk about many Sunmarts to c...

Warning: This is going to be long, but I have to tell my pre-marathon story to make my marathon story more meaningful. January 18, 2003 was the first time I ever ran a mile in my life…no lie. A boy dumped me that day and started something huge. Over the next 2 months I ran every other day on the treadmill following a "couch to 5k" plan I found on the internet. I was interning in Houston at this time and pretty much hated life. I did look forward though to getting to run, and running a tiny bit farther each time. By spring break when my internship was over, I could run 3 miles in 30 minutes on the treadmill. When I went to run outside, things were much different. At first, I could only run about 15 minutes without dying and going home, so I basically had to start over to be able to run outside. By April, I could easily run 3-4 miles at a time around campus. I had signed up for the Danskin Triathlon in June and was swimming and biking to get ready for that as well. I was offici...