Blessed be the tie that binds

Unfortunately, though, these days, most of those ties involve cancer. Stupid cancer.

In reaching out to those around me, and sharing my personal stories with cancer (the blood cancers, anyway, don't get me started on the others, those hit even closer to home), it seems that almost everyone knows someone who's had a blood cancer: they've had a family member battle it, or they themselves have had it (there's a woman on my team who is in remission for Lymphoma and she ROCKS). These diseases affect everyone, and it sucks. Cancer sucks.

There's a bunch of stuff on my mind and it's probably too scattered to put in one post, so I'm just going to recap the weekend for now, and then wrangle these lottery ball thought patterns into something coherent and share them later.

SO.....

Saturday: 6 miles. I shortened my inervals to running 7 minutes and walking 1. I finished with a mile pace time of about 10 and a half minutes- not bad, but the coaches still seem to think it's too fast still. UGH. Oh, and it was windy so it felt like I was running uphill.....bleh.

Anyway.....OH! I almost forgot- when I finished practice last week, I got back to the ramada where everyone checks in-out and there was a pair of socks waiting for me:

Aren't they NEAT???!?!?! So APPARENTLY, they were an incentive gift because I reached $500 already! They were SUPER proud of me and were really excited about the progress I've made with my fundraising. So, those of you who have contributed already, THANK YOU so much. As of right now, I have $975!! (my website says otherwise, because some checks are being sent in). Only $1525 to go!

Sunday was spent reading books 1 and 2 of the Twilight series. Addicted? Probably. Vampires. Who knew?

Monday: What better way to spend Labor Day than run an EIGHT MILE RACE????! What a GREAT IDEA. Um.....

Ok, really, I had fun because I ran it with my coach, Lauren, and teammate Jennifer. But holy crap, this course had some hills. Here's the course profile:

We decided to run it to practice our intervals and hill training......which meant we were automatically in the "Not in it to win it" category. But we were towards the bottom of the stack, which was quite the test for me to put away the competative streak (ok, so it's more than a streak) and run my own race. It wasn't easy, for multiple reasons, but I stuck with the intervals and I finished! Go TNT chicks!

Here's me finishing- No, I'm not showing tons of leg under the skirt, the spandex underneath are pink. :)

Speed Racer!