Jo's Adventure: 26 on 26

This year was my lucky birthday because I turn 26 on the 26th. I signed up a 10k on my birthday. Why did I do that? I still don't know. I started training myself after I got back from Utah the end of August. I originally was going to sign up for a 5k. I had just about two months worth of training. I ran few times a weeks for few weeks. I actually did a 5k and decided I should push myself and do the 10k. I realized I need some type of program to tell me how many miles I should run. A friend of mine gave me a website link to help train myself such as run this many miles on this day and so on forth. I follow the program pretty religiously. There was one or two times I didn't run. Sometimes I had great runs and bad runs. I hate bad runs and I think about why am I doing this?! The most I ran before the race was 5 miles. When I ran five miles, it was a great run and I felt like I could do more.

The race I signed up was the Monster Dash, we got dressed up. Our theme was 80s aerobic instructor. Before the race, a bunch of us got together and make our costume.

I was pretty nervous before the race. We didn't run until 11am which I felt like it took forever to get 11am. The group sang happy birthday and show me their "warm up" dance which was great!

I was told weeks before the race that there was hills and halfway through the race there is a steep hill which scared the crap out of me because I haven't train on any hills whatsoever! Around me is flat, I didn't want to drive to a hill just to run. It wasn't worth to me and not fair to Diesel. Boy, Diesel sure does like to go running with me. He always have so much energy! He would get tired but never tired enough for me to drag him home. I finally reach Diesel's tiredness which is running after 4 miles. I was so surprised that I actually had to drag him home at the end of the run. He was pooped and lay around for the rest of the day.

My goal for the 10k was 1 hour and 30 minutes but hoping to do around 1:15-1:20. I gave myself extra time because of the hills. We finally started the race, at the beginning we already got separated through the crowd. I debated whither to find them or just go run. I decided to just go run(Sorry guys!) My goal was to run as much I can and only do walking on the hills. As I got closer to the halfway point, I was trying to figure out which hills was the "hill". Man! They were steep! I walked a little bit a hill and hoping it was the "hill" but it wasn't! I was mad at myself and told myself to move on and keep running. I walk again on the "hill" and the rest of the way was a breeze because it was pretty much all downhill.

My time was 59:52! I did MUCH better than I thought and I was so excited! After all, it is my lucky birthday! We all went to Texas Roadhouse and had lunch. They make me sit on the saddle. :) Josh, Averie and I went to the Pumpkin Patch and got two pumpkins for ourselves. Averie already had a pumpkin for herself that we got few weeks ago. It is a nice Pumpkin Patch. They had goats and mini ponies which Averie Jo got her very first pony ride! She loves it and wanted more! She was mad when I took her off of the pony. We went home and had a relaxing evening.

I had a great birthday and thank you for all the presents and birthday wishes! I feel so loved!