Cover 26.2 Miles on My Own Two Feet...Check!

{my favorite part of marathon weekend}

Well, I didn't make my goal of breaking five hours and the last five miles were miserable at best, but I completed the damn thing. We all did. And that is pretty awesome.

Here's how it went down.The alarm went off at a decidedly uncivilized hour, and we were trudging toward the starting corrals with 25,000 other crazy people by 4:30am.

Since we forgot to send in times from previous races, we were all assigned to the last corral, P.  Schmoozimano put his charm to work and managed to get himself and my parents moved up to a higher corral, but the rest of us were stuck trying not to think too much about the reality of what lay in front of us while fireworks exploded overhead as the runners in corrals A through O started their races.

Finally, we got close enough to see the starting line, and by then, I was just ready to get the show on the road. I'm very sad that I didn't get a picture of the giant Mickey Mouse who was firing the starting gun because he had the creepiest blinking eyelids...

And then we were off. Despite two pre-start bathroom breaks, I had to pee by mile three, but the port-o-potty lines along the course were out of control. I decided to wait a while, but others went with a different option.

{so unfair}

The course included a lot of Disney parking lots, some Disney-adjacent highways, and the Disney waste water treatment plant. The parts of the course that wound through the different parks were welcome breaks from the long dull stretches.

{the Magic Kingdom}

{running through Cinderella's castle}

{Animal Kingdom}

{also Animal Kingdom... I think}

{costuming exhibit}

{Hollywood Studios}

Then there was a long stretch of misery that I would prefer not to talk about... 

Then there was the finish line, which was a glorious thing! With the end, literally, in sight and a vague goal of "finishing strong" swirling in my marathon-addled brain, I managed to pick it up to a jog for the final stretch. It also helped that I realized that the sooner I crossed the finish line, the sooner I could sit down, a prospect that was highly appealing at the time.

Tom totally killed it in his first marathon outing, running with my dad the whole way and finishing in four hours and 16 minutes. My mom was not far behind, so they all had plenty of time to meet up with the Cusimanos and Erin in the stands to cheer the rest of us on as we reached the finish.

{looking more confident than I felt}

Crossing the finish line was pretty great. Plus, there was the Mickey medal. And the foil blanket thingy that makes you feel like an official runner. Also the sitting. The sitting was excellent.

{Screw you, Marathon Foto, with your $30 digital download and your intentionally misspelled name.}

I still kind of can't believe I finished the thing, and I know I wouldn't have even started if not for these guys. I'm so proud of them and so proud to one of them.

{four first timers and four old pros}

{I'm especially proud of and grateful for this guy who jumped into marathon training wholeheartedly just because I asked.}

{Huge thanks to Tom's parents, Mary and Charlie, for making the trip to Orlando and getting up at an ungodly hour to wait for hours to cheer us on for a few seconds.}

It's been over a week now, and I can once again sit down and stand up without gritting my teeth and the memory of those last few miles is starting to fade, so while I'm not exactly chomping at the bit to do another one, I'm not ruling it out either.

This is Happening...

{Where dreams come true and/or blow up in your face around mile 21}

There's no turning back now. Tomorrow, I will definitely be covering 26.2 miles of the Happiest Place on Earth on foot. There will be some running, some walking, and hopefully no crying. We have to be out the door by 3:45 tomorrow morning, and I need to turn my full attention to repeating positive affirmations until I fall asleep. More soon, assuming I survive.

{My sisters and I are going as three of the 101 Dalmatians - this was taken before my shirt was fully spotted.}

San Francisco - Part II (Bike Across the Golden Gate - Check!)

Ok, back to our San Francisco adventures... In order to counteract all the eating, Tom and I decided that some exercise was in order on Sunday. Biking across the Golden Gate Bridge was on my life to-do list, so we had planned ahead and brought our bicycles.

We set out from Kelsey's and Chris', heading in what we assumed was the direction of the bridge. We go slightly off track and ended up at the Palace of Fine Arts. It was a happy accident though since neither of us had ever visited there before.

 After our detour, we followed some fellow bikers and found our way to Crissy Field.

We took our time making our way to the entrance to the bridge, partly to enjoy the view and partly because my quads were not pleased to make the acquaintance of San Francisco's famous hills.

At one point, we found a willing tourist to take a picture of us. He really knocked himself out, moving around, shooting us at different angles, even crouching on the ground at one point. By about that fifth shot, it had gotten awkward.

{Alright, buddy. Put the camera down and back away slowly.}

Eventually, we did make it to the actual biking across the bridge bit.

 Once over the bridge, we headed down the hill into Sausalito...at what felt like forty miles an hour.

Obviously, it was time to eat again, so we waited for a seat on the deck at Scoma's where we had champagne, crab legs, and a caprese salad - vacation dining at its finest.

After lunch, we walked around Sausalito for a bit and decided to sample the highly recommended (by the internet again) cones at Lappert's Ice Cream. I won again, my blueberry cheesecake ice cream besting whatever forgettable flavor Tom had the misfortune of selecting. I kid. I'm sure it was delicious, particularly with the addition of the rainbow sprinkles that my thirty year old husband always insists on.

Heavy with ice cream and champagne, we caught the ferry back to the city.

It was the perfect ending to a wonderful weekend.

Sea Fever

by John Masefield

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

I discovered "Sea Fever" in The Best Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, a compilation that my mom gave me for Christmas many years ago. Caroline Kennedy selected the poems and introduces them with a lovely tribute to her own mother. I've been trying to read a poem every night, and last night I was struck by this one...

It will probably be quite a while before Tom and I are qualified to take up the "vagrant gypsy life" on the open seas, but this weekend we did quite well navigating the wilds of San Diego Bay on our own.

It may or may not have taken us three passes to actually get under the bridge, but once we did, it was worth it.

Jibe Ho!

I'm not fully ready to cross it off the list yet, but I got a good start on life list item #22 this weekend. Thanks once again to Groupon, Tom and I spent most of Saturday and Sunday out on the bay with Captain Rob who made a good faith effort at teaching us how to sail. I was a little concerned about the direction the weekend was taking when we arrived on Saturday morning and received a stern lecture about our failure to read Sailing Made Easy in its entirety. When Captain Rob informed us that there would be a one hundred question test the following morning, I was sure the weekend was doomed.

Happily, with a little extra studying plus several hours on the water, Tom and I (along with our fellow sailors-in-training, Ben and Karen) passed the test with flying colors and are now officially ASA (American Sailing Association) certified. I think we'll be heading back out to sea the bay in the near future to practice our new skills.

{This was not our boat/}

{Acting as helmsman was not my strong suit, so Captain Rob stayed close by.}

{Tom manning the starboard jib sheet. I totally get nautical terminology now.}

{Sustenance after a hard day at sea}

{I totally won dinner.}

Life List Update

Some recent additions to my life to-do list...the under the sea edition.

I came across this video on the beautiful and inspiring photography blog, chookooloonk.

                          How to Photograph a Whale

                                                  {video via Time}


So, yeah, I need to do that.

The most recent addition to my list was, awkwardly enough, inspired by an episode of Dateline that I watched the other day. In this particular edition of Real Life Mysteries, Dateline's investigative team delved into the mysterious death of a young newlywed on her honeymoon.  It seems that the freshly  minted husband, a certified rescue diver, had convinced his young bride that they should take a scuba trip to the Great Barrier Reef for their honeymoon. Oh, and also, she should increase her life insurance policy and make him the sole beneficiary. You can see where this is going...sadly, Tina did not and she ended up drowning/being suffocated depending on whose lawyers you are talking to.  Anyway, I was less interested in the "mystery" than I was in the site of the dive that the couple was on. They were diving off the coast of Queensland, Australia and were exploring the wreck of the S.S. Yongala, a passenger ship that sank in 1911. It looks super cool, and I'm sure it's perfectly safe assuming your husband isn't trying to kill you.

{All photos via Yongala Dive}

Since both of these adventures will require a large cash infusion, it is unlikely that I will be crossing them off in the near future; but that's why this is a life list, not a do-in-the-next-six-months list.

Oh yeah, and I also decided that I am going to learn all of the words and references in "We Didn't Start the Fire." That's free, maybe I'll tackle that one this weekend...