Happy Early Mother's Day Gift to Me!

Haha....I knew I could angle things to get my way if I wanted.

There's a half marathon in Georgetown, Colorado in June that I really wanted to do. It's called the Slacker Half Marathon, because it's all downhill. This is a bit of a misnomer, though-downhill races will fry your quads, for one thing. Secondly, this race starts at Loveland Ski Area. Elevation....10,600 feet. Yeah, good times. Slacker-my ass.

This race initially appealed to me for the quirk factor, and when I realized it would present a unique challenge that you don't find in most other road races, I started thinking seriously about it. Add in the not-too-big, not-too-small runner field (it looks like there were about 800 runners between the half, and accompanying 4-mile race last year), cheap entry ($35....about half of what most other races this distance typically want these days), and a chance to get the heck out of town for a weekend without all the hassle of a full week's vacation away-this sounded like a dream weekend.

So, Frank typically gets me a nice, thoughtful gift of some sort for Mother's Day-a piece of jewelry, clothing item, or something else. I don't really need any more "stuff," as thoughtful as that is-plus, we're sort of broke until the house sells. I didn't want to miss this race, though. I'll have to run something like it in preparation for the Marine Corps Marathon anyway. It's probably not normally kosher to say, "hey, here's what I want for Mother's Day"-but this seemed to make perfect sense to ask if the race could be my gift. Much to my surprise, he said heck yeah! :) So, I just signed up today, a few days before that $35 entry goes up five bucks. It feels good to have a "big" race on the summer schedule-I have several short, fun runs coming up with the girls, but I don't want to slip totally out of the training mindset.

In theory, we've got a good chance of the old house selling by then, too-that would be spectacular to go into that weekend in two months completely worry-free about finances. Well, NOT completely worry free.....but free of the stress of trying to sell a home. I just want to be "Slacking" with the best of them, and doing the family proud since they're giving me the gift of running the race that weekend.