Dallas Rock and Roll Half Marathon weekend

I'm back home after a fun-filled, running, eating, catching up, laughing until I almost choked on my pasta... weekend in Dallas with my cousin!

When I first arrived in Dallas I met Solar Powered for lunch! I've been reading her blog for a couple of years and I admire her for so many reasons! This lady is tough! She trained for a half marathon pushing her baby in her jogging stroller the whole time! She's just as fun, beautiful, and sweet in person as on her blog! AND she loves Mexican food as much as me!

After lunch, I caught up with my cousin and we went to the race expo at the convention center. We didn't realize that we rode the DART train illegally to get to the convention center. We thought we were supposed to buy tickets once we got on the train but there was a kiosk at the station we missed somehow. Whoops! Thanks for the free ride, DART!

We picked up our race packets and t-shirts and I got some injinjie toe socks because my cousin loves hers and talked me into buying some too. They look super weird but I'm willing to try them.

Saturday night we walked around downtown Dallas in the West End and saw the Old Red Courthouse.

There were cute little carriages and horses taking tourists around downtown.

Of course I have to show the Texas flag! I'm embracing my new home state!

We saw the JFK memorial and found the book depository building where Booth was hiding when he shot Kennedy. It's so sad to think that someone was full of that much hate and anger to assassinate a president. We found where JFK's car was driving when he was shot and we walked around downtown with heavy hearts thinking about the events that occurred here.

After visiting downtown, we headed to the Spaghetti Warehouse to load up on pasta for the big race on Sunday! Let me restate that I have not been running much! My hip and knee were hurting for the past few weeks so my longest run in March was 6 miles. Not good. No bueno. I was terrified about this race! I thought I would run the first half and hobble the last half of the run.

The stars must have been perfectly aligned for race day and my prayers for an injury free, solid race worked! The course was beautiful and the weather was perfect (although FREEZING once we stopped running!) We ran by all of the Highland Park mansions and beautiful lake filled with Lily pads. I was feeling good until mile 7 when I saw a LONG straight hill waiting for me. When I crawled up that monster (and killed my 9:45 pace that I kept for the first 6 miles) I started getting really tired. I was remembering what Solar Powered told me about hills. She says she gets mad at hills and this really helped me. I tried to get mad and gave that hill a mental cursing that would make a sailor blush! It distracted me enough to carry me up the big nasty hill!

Once I passed the mile 8 marker, I could feel the course become level and then it gave us a nice steady downhill until the finish line. I was able to run a little faster and thought I might catch up to a 10:00 pace overall. When I saw the gates to the State Fair where the finish line was waiting, I picked up the pace and heard the University of Texas band playing their fight song. With all the strength I had, I screamed BOOMER SOONER at them! Gotta' support the OU team at all times!

I crossed the finish line at 2:11:59 for a 10:05 pace overall! I felt good about that since I had not trained properly and was only hoping to finish injury free under 2:30. My cousin finished soon after me and we were both happy with our times. We thought the post race Bret Michaels concert started at 12:30 so we headed back to the hotel to shower and change before it. As we were about to board the train to go back to the concert, we realized that it started at 11:30! Boo! We missed the Rock of Love! We ate Mexican food to ease our sadness over missing the concert. I'll take Mexican food over Bret Michaels any day!

Yay for medals!!!

It has the Texas State Fair Ferris wheel on it! I like it!