Heavily Made-up Runner Dancing

No, no photos of this yet. :P

It's end-of-the-year performance day today with the studio, so in a little bit, my two oldest daughters and I get to shellac our hair into impenetrable helmets and coat our face in a heavy layer of stage makeup just so we look normal from the audience in the darkened theatre. It's probably weird to mention ballet on this blog, but since last year's show was sort of a breakthrough for getting out of my comfort zone and learning to train and compete, it's worth mentioning that I'm back again this year with nowhere near the performance anxiety and stress I had the first year. After four years in the class without ever dancing in the show, I'd never planned to do it but a chance spur-of-the-moment accepted challenge to new classmate to dance in the show kind of brought me into the gig. And the rest is history.

Alexis dances in a buttload of dances today-first year she's needed her own garment bag for all her stuff. Kaia also has two dances, and I'm happy to say that we've progressed well beyond sliding around on the floor and licking things like when she was "that kid" in the preschool ballet classes.

I was going to run this morning-just something short-but Frank recommended against it, and knowing he's probably right I'm going to skip it and do a nice long run tomorrow at o dark thirty. My dance is this very trippy thing set to American in Paris and I spend a lot of my time doing this very stylized walk on my tip toes leaning forward, running, or doing other off-balance things-just what you'd expect from our wacky class that is neither a super-serious group of expertly trained dancers, nor underachievers who never want to progress beyond a bare minimum of basic steps. I do want to look good and not tired/sore dancing....so in a bit of dance performance taper madness keeping the legs rested for today's two shows. Oh well, it'll all be worth it if it keeps me from falling on my butt!

Oh, and random running related note from the Bolder Boulder....Alexis didn't finish in her goal of sub 1:00 on that tough course, but that's okay....she ran strong the whole time, ran negative splits from miles 3 to the finish (many adults go out too fast and aren't able to do that on that course), and was 5th in her age division! Pretty cool....and seeing Deena Kastor in the elite race, though it was not really her day, was just awesome. Well worth the night before in the sardine can hotel room.

Okay...off to (hopefully not) break a leg!