Kendra Babbles

Yes, running can become an addiction.  I’m there now.  Proof can be found in that almost all of my birthday presents were some sort of running gear or recovery gear.  My family is baffled by one of the items:

This is the GoFit foam roller.  It’s also known as the poor man’s massage tool.  Basically you roll different parts of your body over the roller to help stretch muscles and do a sort of deep-tissue massage.  It hurts like hell, but you feel a whole lot better afterward.  I’ve been using it a lot to try and work out the muscles that cause my knee pain.  It can be difficult to use the first couple of time, but this one came with a DVD that shows you the different exercises you can do, so I just refer back to that when I’m confused.  It also does a pretty good back massage that I discovered today.  Still confused?  Here is a You Tube video of one of the exercises I use.

I used this baby a lot after last week’s long run.  We did the half marathon course!  Ended up at 13.17 miles total.  I felt awesome and finished in just over two and a half hours.  My goal when I started training was to finish under 3 hours, so I think I’m totally there.  :-)  So my new goal is to finish the actual half at 2 hours and 30 minutes.  I struggled a bit around mile 10 as my knee started to hurt, so I’m hoping the additional strength training and stretching I’ve been doing will pay off and allow me to finish at my goal time.

There it is folks, the half marathon course.  The hill section on the DRC Half marathon course is not as hard as the Tour de Fleurs 20K, but its still harder than the White Rock Half Marathon course.  I think it will be a good test for me, since I’ve been doing some hill training with the DRC group in the last few weeks.

So now that I’m a week away from my first half marathon, we did a shorter run yesterday.  The group went 8 miles.  I made it about 7.  I did not have a good run.  I was tired, I was out of Gu, and my knee was still cranky from the previous week’s 13 miles.  It was a rough run, but I did finish.  I’ve learned that runners never really have consistency (well, maybe elite runners do).  Some days are good, some are bad and you just learn to deal with it.  I’m okay with that.

*The Racounteurs

Pretty much everyone knows that Blake is a big bike rider.  Or cyclist.  Or whatever you want to call it.  His friends Rob and Zach got him into it almost 2 years ago and now Blake rides at least once a week.  Lately he has been commuting to work on his bike, so sometimes 5 or 6 days a week he is out there racking up the mileage.

So on September 14th there was this big road race scheduled to start and finish at Victory Park in Dallas.  112 miles!  That’s far.  I was excited to be able to attend this one, since all of the other races are in tiny towns and start super early in the morning.  Then Hurricane Ike came along.  And the race was cancelled.  No one was happy.

However the town of Bonham had a race already scheduled for September 27th, so they invited the TX Tough riders to join them and enter in their 64 mile race.  Almost half of what Blake had trained for, but he had already paid the entry fee and raised the money for charity, so he planned to go to Bonham.  I decided to join and support him, since I haven’t attended a bike race yet.

Maybe next year I’ll pick a bigger race.

We loaded up the car early on Saturday morning with Blake, Ned, me, 2 bikes, lots of gear and 2 puppies.  We made it to Bonham in just over an hour, and quickly realized there was nothing there.  The race started at a community center just outside of the town, which was basically a large one room building with bathrooms in the middle of a giant field.  Luckily I planned ahead and brought 2 books.

After a quick breakfast, the guys geared up and lined up in their places for the 64 mile race.  Just a quick announcement about the route changes from the man on the mic, then an unceremonial “okay go!” and the pack was off.  Some poor man in the back already fell off his bike and was still picking himself back up after most of the group had left.  Then the 55 mile group moved forward to start, inducing another pile up with 2 people hitting the ground this time.  I must say bicycle people are far more graceful when they are pedaling than when they are just trying to stand in a line.

After the start of all the groups, a man driving two miniature horses pullling a small wagon offered to give me a ride back to the parking lot.  I didn’t get a picture, but seriously you only see this in the country.  I spent about 15 minutes with this man and learned his opinions on where children should be raised (in the country), interracial marriage (I’ll let you guess what that was) and also discovered that he used the miniature horses to talk to ladies, because its really not acceptable to just go up to a lady my age and start talking with her, you need a conversation starter.  He really was a nice man and I enjoyed hearing all about the horses that he raises, but it did make me appreciate the diversity you get when living in the city.

After that, I moved the car closer to the finish line, set out a blanket for the pups and set up my chair to read a book.  And about 2 hours and 45 minutes later, Blake crossed the finish line!  He finished the 64 mile route with no stops and an estimated average speed of 22.4 mph - his personal best!  Go Blake!

Our friend and neighbor Ned finished the course right around 4 hours after pushing through some apparently very painful leg cramps.  Now that is determination people!

After some recovery time, we loaded up our gear and headed back to Dallas.  It was a great day to hang out in a field and see Blake in action, but I think next year I’ll pick a race in a larger town!

The puppies also enjoyed the trip.  They slept the whole way home.

*Autumn in Bonham is not a song, but its a catchy title anyway.