Thankful

I am sorry that I seemingly disappeared after writing the extremely emotional post about my sister a few weeks ago.  I want to say a heartfelt thanks to everyone that expressed their support after that post.  That week was especially hard because my husband was also out of town on business.  I learned to be thankful for several things that week.

1.  My amazing friends, both in real life and in the blog world.  Several of my friends who also happened to be moms, conspired so that I was rarely alone on my sister's birthday, despite Mark being out of town.  Two friends met me at the Polaris Mall playground when pouring rain canceled our zoo date.  Another great friend had Avery and I over for post-nap fun and fixed us dinner.  As a result, the only time I spent alone was when Avery was napping and after she went to bed.  Since I am oh-so-exciting and rarely stay up later than she does any more, that worked out fantastic.

The additional upside was that Avery got to play with her bestie.

2.  Hourly daycare.  Whoever invented this concept is a genius and a life savor.  When Mark first told me he would be out of town for the week, my first thought was - "oh no, how will I get in my runs!"  The answer?  Hourly daycare.  I filled out all the vaccine and other registration paperwork, paid a $25 fee, and reserved the hours I wanted to go for my runs.  The place is about 0.5 mile from my house and it worked fabulous.  My husband was out of town, and yet, I didn't miss a single run.  I also didn't have to resort to forcing Avery to spend over an hour in the jogger, not did I have to resort to a treadmill.  Winning!

No.  No I didn't. 

Since I'm in the mood to be thankful - some other fun things that made me happy from the past few weeks.

First - Fuel Belt.  Many of you know that I run with one that I'd purchased at the Knoxville Marathon expo this past April.  During the week of daycare provided runs, the velcro on my belt failed.  The belt actually fell off.  I managed to rig it up so that I could finish the run (without realizing that a bottle fell out when it fell off), but wasn't going to trust it again.  Needless to say, I was not pleased that the belt failed after so short a time.  I emailed Fuel Belt explaining my displeasure.  After a few emails with pictures and stuff, Fuel Belt mailed me a brand new replacement belt at no cost to me.  Talk about FANTASTIC customer service.  

It's so shiny and new!

Second - another 5K race success.  I ran in a 5K September 23rd, and yes, I will do a recap soon.  Even though I ran 12 miles the day before, I ran the race because a friend I used to run with was the race director.  It was a small 5K and at one of my favorite local parks.  I beat my previous 5K PR set two months prior by over a minute!  

Me and my age group award.
Clearly, everyone should run 12 miles the day before a 5K.

Good things come in threes, right?  I've found another running buddy!  Yippee!  You can never have too many running buddies!  My friend Tara lives pretty close to my house and is also married to a Mark.  Too funny!  We both are pretty evenly matched with respect to pace and the need to be home early for kiddo duty.  It's worked out really well for making sure we both get all our runs in!   This increases the chances that all of my running buddies won't get sick of me before the next race!  HA!

Me and Tara.  After our 7 mile daycare-enabled run!
I got to run in daylight!

Or maybe good things come in fours?  I got notice that I won a price pack from Run With Jess for participating in her Marathon Weight Loss challenge (I didn't lose a marathon, but I did participate!).  Can't wait to see what it is!

In other news - I'm pacing another race this weekend.  It's part of the Scioto Miles Training Series.  I'll be pacing the 15K.  It is a 5K loop course during which participants can complete any of the distances, 5K, 10K or 15K.  I'll be pacing the 11:45 min/mile avg.  I'm pretty excited to pace again!

Since I fell off the planet dealing with renewed grief about my sister...and dealt with running a mom's group (what idiot agrees to DO that?  LOL), what have a missed in your lives???  Give me all the good gossip please!

And because no blog post would be right without some Avery love...

This bear would never put me in hourly daycare Mom.