Random Tuesday Thoughts - It's beginning to look a lot like random

Be sure and visit Keely, she has the gift that keeps on giving.

So...where the hell have I been?  None of your business Just really busy with wrapping up the fall band season and Thanksgiving.  The band championships were held on Saturday night before Thanksgiving and our band won second, but our colorguard won first!  A testament to the fascism teaching skills of me the staff; it's been a wild, chaotic ride this year.  It was followed by Senior circle where all the band seniors watch the band perform the show one last time - except without them.  It's always a tear-jerker, then they eat cake.  So a few weeks off for me then winterguard starts up right after New Year.

Last week, my daughter had her senior pictures taken and took her saxophone along for some shots.  Her quirky wonderful photographer became obsessed with (no, not my daughter) THE SAXOPHONE!  He actually took "extra" pictures of the saxophone!  I wasn't charged for the extra poses of the saxophone, so I didn't roll my eyes all the way back in my head complain. 

On Thanksgiving Eve (yes, it's okay to call it that) our family all got new cell phones and new cell phone service!  Yay!  We are now a Verizon Wireless family.  I do have to say that if you live anywhere near Sacramento, the Natomas Verizon Store has the ultimate in customer service.  Our CSR, Freddie P, was a pure delight and a consummate professional.  After four years with the previous company, we now actually have service inside our house.  It got pretty cold standing on the back patio in my underwear in the dead of winter just so I could have enough signal to actually call someone and have a conversation (nah, I would never do that would I?  I'd at least put on socks).

I have the new Blackberry Curve 8530 in smoky violet (doesn't that sound sexy?)  and Hubby has it in black.  The girls all have the LG enV Touch. I am not being compensated for mentioning any of this; we are just really happy with the service and products.  Customer service ain't what it used ta be, and so I feel compelled to affirm it when it is good.

Thanksgiving Eve night, we went to see the Sacramento Kings play at Arco Arena.  They've had a good season so far and we always enjoy the games.

Me and Hubby at the Kings game - Go Kings!

On Thanksgiving morning, for the second year in a row, my youngest daughter CL, her bff, and I ran  the Sacramento Run To Feed The Hungry 5K.  My goal this year was to improve my time from last year, which was so lame that I should have been able to crawl and beat it.  If you want to read about my experience last year, it can be found here.  The unofficial race results are posted online here.  I was in the female 40-44 age bracket.  Here are my stats:

Place

Name

City

Bib No

Age

Overall

Chip Time

Gun Time

Diff

Pace

94

NeCole Scott

Antelope CA

7810

44

2491

36:20.9

36:29.3

0:08.4

11:43/M

The day of the race, I was listed 92nd and the only thing I can figure out is that two ladies who didn't want to give their ages initially, decided to go to the officials and give their ages so that they could be included in the appropriate group.  SEE, sometimes it's okay to give your real age or you might miss out on something good. 

This year, we arrived early enough to enjoy some of the pre-race festivities.  We met up with a reinllamadeer.

Me and the reinllamadeer

I had my picture taken with the KCRA morning anchor team Deirdre Fitzpatrick and Chris Riva.

Deirdre, me and Chris - Chris let me hold his microphone!

And of course, here I am with my two faithful race buddies (who promptly ditched me after this picture was taken.).

CL's BFF, me, CL - they only look sweet and innocent, ha! 

The race sponsors again provided free drinks and snacks after the race. I love the combination of getting my charitableness on, running (exercise) and hanging out with my kid.  I hope to make this a long-term tradition.  After the race, we went home and cooked a small simple Thanksgiving dinner and watched football.  My husband didn't cook this year, but he did do the dishes (which was even better).

The rest of the week and weekend was low key, I am not a Black Friday adventurer. We did put up the Christmas tree - it's nine freakin feet tall!

So I'll try to be better committed with posting, BTW, thanks to all of you who are reading and commenting.  It's been very encouraging for me and I really appreciate your support and kind words.  That's all of my random for now.  Catch you on the flip-flop.

Welcome to my Blog

I have had the itch to blog for quite some time and I am finally taking the plunge. As with most significant decisions in my life, I spent a fair amount of time studying other blogs in search of inspiration, style and management techniques (but I'm still very green so keep that in mind). I have "mini-blogged" on MySpace and will use some of that content here to help me get rolling. So with that in mind, my first post is actually a repost about running a charity 5K last year. It's relevant because I will be writing a post about this year's efforts to prepare for that same race.

Sometimes a really dumb idea turns out to be a good one...(from November 2008)

I have run a few 5Ks in the past, two to be exact. When I ran them, I did it just to prove I could. It was a life goal or I guess the current term is "item from my bucket list."  My daughter came and asked if she and her friends could run the Sacramento Run To Feed The Hungry. It is an annual 10K run and 5K run/walk held rain or shine on Thanksgiving for the past fifteen years. Always one to encourage my children to have charity, awareness and empathy for those less fortunate--combined with an athletic activity--sounded like a great idea so my husband and I agreed that she and her friends could participate, and we would take them and bring them back. Then I got the itch. I playfully told my husband I would run the race if he would cook Thanksgiving dinner. He readily agreed just a tad too eagerly. You see, my focused, specific, dedicated exercise habits have dropped off somewhat here of late. In August, I valiantly decided to start running with my daughter, and after one mile in a muggy, smoggy, unpleasant trot around the neighborhood, I told myself and her that I would wait until the weather was more accommodating. Then life got really busy as it always does...

So when I decided to sign up for the race, I thought I'd have plenty of time to condition, after all, we only intended to run the 5K and not the 10K. I figured daily runs for two weeks would put me right where I wanted to be--ready to race. Once again, a busy life and a minor illness stood in the way of my good intentions (okay, fair intentions, but still intentions). The night before the race I didn't think I was going to go. The morning of the race I didn't think I was going to go. At the very last minute, I said what the hell and we all climbed in the truck.

Now, I've run a few of these races and I know better than to try to show up anywhere within an hour of the start time and of course we did not allow for much more than that. So when we arrived, the race had already started.  As you'll note in my chart, we were about 15 minutes late (gun time vs. tag time). We ran about a mile from our drop off point to the actual start line (so I'm counting this as 7K). Luckily, we had little electronic tags attached to our shoes that tracked us from start to finish. Unluckily, our lateness put us behind the walkers, strollers, pets on leashes and so forth and in almost shoulder to shoulder crowds which usually meant if I wanted to pass someone I had to run up on a side walk and across some resident's yard (the race was partially through residential neighborhoods). Sometimes I had to jog in place until a space opened to pass.

The girls intended to try to stay together and I told them not to wait for me--I knew better than to think I could keep up with them. However, I was elated when I crossed the finish line just one minute behind them. Yay me! Then I was deflated to learn they walked for part of the race, oh well. Below are my racing stats that I copied from the website. For you non-believers, here is the link but really, do you think I would make up a 16 minute mile???? My bib number was 25369. The combined 10K/5K numbers went past 30,000 but total participants ended up being about 21,000.

https://www.runraceresults.com/Secure/RaceResults.cfm?ID=RCMH2008

5K

Runner Details Race Results

Bib:25369 Overall: 6059 out of 14992

Name: NeCole Scott Women: 3372 out of 9125

Gender: F F 40-44: 294 out of 762

Age: 43 Age/Grade: 31.45% Place:6171

Hometown: Antelope, CA Finish: 49:53 Pace: 16:04

Tag Time: 49:53 Gun Time: 1:03:13

The race sponsors graciously provided snacks and drinks after the race, and after locating the girls, we walked back to our designated pickup spot and drove home. I immediately climbed into the hot tub and took an Advil. My husband kept his word and made dinner. A few more Advil and a hot pack on my right knee overnight and I was none the worse for wear.

So as the current recap cliche tends to go - running a race without training and conditioning=stupidity. Arriving at said race late=frustration. Having a 16 minute mile posted on the internet for the world to see=humiliation. Setting a good example for my kids and giving back to my community=priceless