So I got up early Saturday morning (would have loved sleeping in especially since we had no kids Friday night). I went down the road to the race. It was in my little town so it was literally 5 minutes away. I got there 15 minutes early and there was no one there. We were to meet at the city hall. The actual Pecan festival was down the road a little bit. I drove down there to see if they had changed the meeting place. There were lots of people there, but they were all vendors setting up for the festival. I drove back down to city hall and repeated the process every few minutes.
Finally, I saw a city truck on my way back to city hall and stopped to ask the guy if he knew anything about where the race was going to be. It was now 8am, the time we were supposed to meet. He said he didn't know, but the city manager was right there. I turned around and saw a car approaching. I flagged the car down and asked where the racers were meeting.
She informed me the race had been cancelled due to lack of participation. I asked her did they not realize there wasn't going to be enough participants when I registered the day before. I also asked was it too much to ask for a phone call since they had my phone number specifically for that reason.
She said they still wanted the racers to run in front of the parade and they'd recognize all the runners. I asked what time the parade started and she said 10am (2 hours later).
Frustrated, DW and I just went to get groceries (always nice w/o kids and definitely faster). We brought the groceries home and went to the Riverwalk to get our run in. We both had our best times yet!
All in all, the weekend was nice. I have a very large family. My dad (who's mother had passed) is one of 12 children. There are 53 grandchildren and 63 great-grandchilren. Needless to say, it was a weekend around a lot of people. I got to see family I haven't seen in years and eat some amazing food.
I've also been re-thinking my running. I've got a race coming up in less than 2 weeks. This will also be DW first race. It's a 5k. I'm going to push hard training for that over the next 2 weeks, but I'll still do my long, weekend runs.
I've decided I'm definitely going to do the 1/2 marathon in March as opposed to skipping and going straight for the full. I'm going to keep with the same basic schedule of changing my long runs every 2 weeks, but instead of going up a mile every 2 weeks, I'm going to add a minute to my run time vs. walk time.
This weekend, I'll do 13 miles at a run 5/walk 1 ratio. In two weeks, I'll go to a run 6/walk 1 ratio. My goal by the time the 1/2 marathon gets here is to either do very little walking or none at all. I'm currently able to do a 1/2 in less than 2 hours. I'd honestly like to get my time down to 1:30-1:40. If I cut the walking out altogether, I don't feel that is too difficult to achieve.
I'm going to stay with my current goal of my first full marathon being Disney 2013. I want to do that marathon w/o any walking as well.
I appreciate all the prayers and support in our loss and through my running journey. It's good to have folks to share it with.
