Message in a Bloggle

My good friend Kari wrote a much funnier blog post about our USAT Nationals weekend, complete with silly antics and inside jokes that most won't get. It's much better than my 'poo my race sucked poo' post.Originally, I was going to be done with the season after the race this past weekend. Marty's high school cross country team is running in the Great American cross country festival which is a big, competitive cross country meet right here in our...

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USAT Nationals Race Report

Unfortunately, this is not the race report I had hoped to write! The day just didn't go well. I felt a bit crappy the week heading into the race, but it's the taper and you don't always feel very good. Warming up I felt tight and ugh, but again, I didn't think about it too much because that doesn't indicate how the race is going to go.The swim felt fine - I totally couldn't hang with the front group and swam by myself the entire time. I felt like I was going hard but not too hard, but my time ended up being pretty bad compared to where I should've...

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Let the Taper Begin!

My A race is a coming. USAT Nationals is this next Saturday in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I realized an interesting thing the other day - my very first collegiate cross country race was in Tuscaloosa (University of Alabama's home meet; I was running for Auburn), and my very last collegiate cross country race was also in Tuscaloosa (Regionals my senior year, running for UCF).This morning, after not setting any alarms and sleeping until our hearts were content, Marty and I did a short brick in gorgeous weather. It is still abnormally hot here for this...

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Music

We have Sirius satellite in the car I usually drive and I mostly listen to Alt Nation on there. This puts me slightly ahead of the curve for new alternative music, but not so much that I'm all indie hipster or anything. Just enough to when they finally play a song on the real radio I can say, "Psshhh, that song is SOOO old." And then I feel cool.Marty doesn't like anything that was made after 1994, so he thinks all my music is crap the first time he hears me play it. Then 4 months later he'll say, "Oh, I like this song." Then I remind him he heard...

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Patriots Half and Sprint Weekend

Marty, Tassie and I left straight from Marty’s high school cross country practice on Friday evening. We were going to save a little money and stay at my sister’s house on Friday night in Chesapeake, VA. She lives about an hour away from the race site in Williamsburg, and 4 am was an early wake up call for us on Saturday morning. No trouble getting to the Jamestown Settlement where the races started and finished – temps were cool!Marty started in...

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Labor Day Weekend

These yummy little cupcakes are the death of me. I ate 6 of them over the course of 4 days. 6!! I am thankful that we don’t have Publix’s in NC or I would really be in trouble. My sister bought some for me and I shoveled one down my piehole right when I got to her house (Tassie was going to be partying with her and Carter in Jacksonville). Then once we got to New Smyrna Beach 2 hours later, I enjoyed another with my almost 3 year old niece. Couldn’t...

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Bulls and Beach

We're never bored here at Gaal Central. Tonight we're headed to the Durham Bulls game with a bunch of friends. Yesterday was an interval run in the morning, followed by work, followed by the Inside Out Sports bike ride (hung onto the front group - go me!). Swimming this morning, back at work and straight to the game tonight.Tomorrow evening we're driving down to Florida for our annual 'it's Marty's dad's birthday weekend so we're getting the whole family together.' Last year we went to Hollywood, FL, the year before we were in St. Pete. This year...

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