Houston Marathon. Round 3. And the old adage applies: third time's a charm! Here's how it all went down:

Drove in Saturday morning. Picked Mom up from Bush before heading to La Madeleine. Learned that Houston La Mad is not equal to the fireplace atmosphere of the Dallas La Mad. First world problems... Still managed an amazing blueberry muffin.



After that, en route to Les Miserables! I'd been holding out to see it, even after everyone I knew had already been a minimum of 10 times, but sooo worth it. Loved the truth and redemptive themes in the story. Trying to psych myself up to read the book now. Still have the music stuck in my head.



Expo time! I have now been fully converted into a race-detail-planning-how-did-they-handle-that-stalking nerd. Thankfully Mom put up with my constant stream of "we did this" and "look how they did that" as I snapped many-many-photos of various signage, banners, stands, barricade fencing... Picked up my bib, ran into my friend Erin, picked up my shirt, snapped a picture of Mom with the Geico gecko, ran into Mark, Chris, and Ken on the way out, and made it out in under an hour. Success.





Hotel time: pasta, debated race morning clothes, checked weather, what time should we leave?, debated clothes again, planned Mom's spectator route, laid out clothes, what time should we leave?, and checked the weather one more time just in case the weatherman really did make up 50 degrees at the start with 1000% chance of rain. He didn't. What time should we leave again?



Alarm. 4:45am. Game on. Throw everything together and hand off the keys to Mom. Here we go. Perfect timing on arrival at the convention center. A little after 6:00 I am standing outside the bag drop area to meet Chris, realizing in 2 seconds that we should've been a bit clearer regarding the exact meet-up locale. Wait a bit, and when the poor planning really sinks in along with the fact that I'm very close to running in the rain without a pacer sidekick for 26.2 miles, search for two girls trying to take a picture with the holding-out-the-phone-in-front-of-them-trick. "Hi, would you like me to take a picture for you?" (They are elated.) "Also, do you mind if I send a quick text? Trying to locate my training friend." (Sure, no problem!) "Saints." 10 minutes later, bag is dropped, and Chris and I head out of the nice warm convention center into.... cold rain.

After 5 minutes, wish for the rain cover I left in the car. Genius. Luckily, there were plenty to choose from once the gun went off and runners started shedding clothes. First 2 miles of rain, directly into the wind, but finally turned out of it and settled in. My friend Erin described the early portion of the race well in her Houston recap, but it's easily the coolest part of the course: a very eclectic, low-economic neighborhood with fantastic spectators – even in the rain.

And so the morning went. Saw Mom about every 4 miles along the way, saw the Field crew and Lindsey at 13. Started the "I'm over this phase" around 16-18, but stayed on track and logged the miles. Chris graciously (and entertainingly) paced me to mile 20, and then we split ways for the remaining miles. Perfectly set-up with plenty of room to PR as long as I could stick pace a little longer. My GPS didn't kick on for the first several miles and then went haywire after mile 23 (as did my mental state), so just hoped to hold on at that point, but for the first time in quite a few marathons, met my time goal with a 7:00 PR at the finish. Wohoo! Such a good feeling. I suppose the average person likely wouldn't choose a marathon as a primary source of confidence boosting, but I've not ever really been average so... I'll take it!



Met up with Mom, chowed down on Smashburger and made our way back to the hotel for me to clean up and relax a bit. Headed to IKEA to play walk around and then on to Outback for a celebratory steak dinner (thanks, M!). Ordered dessert, and though they were out of their chocolate-ice-cream-goodness, topped things off with a bit of cheesecake. Yum!


Made an Einstein bagel run (yes, all we did was eat) early the next morning and dropped Mom at the airport before driving back to CS for work on Monday. Whew! The weekend flew by but it was such a fun time. So grateful for lots of support over the weekend. #7 in the books, and I may or may not be planning #8 already...

• Today is National Running Day. So go run. And then register for the BCS Marathon or Half Marathon. 10% off today with the code IHEARTRUNNING. Houston lottery opens today as well. Woohoo!

• Watch out world, I have recently joined modern technology and traded in my old school LG Encore for an iPhone. The guys at AT&T laughed at me... a lot... for still holding on to the LG. It was deserved, and I'm glad to have provided some entertainment for them. Now I just have to figure out how to use everything before this model is out of date, which was like, yesterday.

• I've been on this "learn to like new foods" kick lately. It all started with avocado. I thought it pretty ridiculous that I just didn't like it, so I started making myself eat it. While I don't love straight up guacamole (unless I'm at Fuego), I'm getting there. I certainly like the addition of avocado to salads, sandwiches, and the occasional burrito. That said, my latest project is yogurt. It's healthy and seems like something I should like to eat, right? I mean, if Jesse likes it, so should I. Now, I can't do plain-jane vanilla; that's way too invasive to the taste buds. Fruit flavors are also a bit much for me. So I've been hunting down the most random flavors to start with – basically anything that doesn't seem like yogurt, i.e. Chocolate Mousse. So the other day, I grabbed "Boston Cream Pie" (had to taste like the donut, right?) out of the fridge on my way out the door. It wasn't great, but stomach-able. However, I forgot to throw the container away and returned to my car after 2 hours in 95 degree temps. My entire car still smells like Boston Cream Pie yogurt... and I am back to square one.

• I seem to have this complex lately (lately? more like since the beginning of time...) where I want to know the end result before I'm willing to be totally at peace with current happenings. Ironic is the fact that not much else in life works like that. We don't get to the know the ending before going through the process. (Unless of course you're like me and tend to read book endings before getting past Chapter 2; but that's a whole other issue in and of itself!) I'm trying to learn to relax and enjoy the journey, to not worry as much about how it will turn out. I believe great peace can be found when we are willing to rest in not having all the answers.

• Good quote I'm liking as of late: "And when each of us looks back at all the turns and folds God has allowed in our lives, I don’t think it looks like a series of folded-over mistakes and do-overs that have shaped our lives. Instead, I think we’ll conclude in the end that maybe we’re all a little like human origami and the more creases we have, the better." – Bob Goff

• Launched the new MP website on Monday, and it is amazing! Check it out here. Our friends at The Bright Agency did a fabulous job of helping us tell the story of Mercy Project. Art Auction planning is in full swing, 10 days out from the event. I've converted our dining room into my personal painting studio. Check back for a sneak peak to see what I've been working on.

Clearly it's been awhile. Honestly, I think I forgot I had to actually write something to keep this going. It hadn't even entered my mind at all until the other day I went to look something up on here and realized my last post was a month ago. Oops. Here's where I've been...

Somewhere under this:

Working  on all of this:

Having fun here:

Baking this:

And these (although mine didn't look this good):

Hanging out with my little buddies:

And going here:

Race week was insane. A good portion of that was because I moved down 10 days before race day and spent a good amount of time trying to figure out which end was up, but there was so much excitement surrounding the big weekend that I really would not have wanted it any other way. It was such a cool experience to see everything come to fruition, to see the end result of months of work. So many people gave up hours of their time to make this event great. (We had fantastic design/advertising as well – check out The Bright Agency here.) Having been to several marathons in the past, I naively thought I knew what all went into planning/organizing something like this. Ha. Hahaha. Boy, did I have a lot to learn (and still do). I also thought things would come to a screeching halt afterwards. Oh, I'm such a newb. But, let's not get sidetracked...

awesome volunteers setting up at the start

Aside from a "small" shirt order glitch, everything went off without a hitch, and we were able to step back and enjoy race weekend once it arrived. There was so much positive energy at packet pick-up and leading into Sunday morning. The weather was perfect, the volunteers and spectators were fantastic, and the race itself was a blast. I was especially excited to run the course, as I had only driven it one time and was still learning street names and my way around town. But it was honestly so much fun, maybe more so than past marathons for me. I had some doubts about running in a small event, but I loved it. And there were inevitably those moments that I chided screamed at myself for ever considering running another marathon (along about mile 22), but we all know how that turned out. I am already planning #7. 

elite athletes leading the pack

One of the coolest things about this race was knowing so many of the runners and watching them finish. Even watching complete strangers cross the finish line was inspiring to me and something that I haven't really done before in a race. It's usually finish and take off for me, so it was really neat to be there until the last runner came through. Being somewhat towards the end of the pack time-wise, it's easy for me to think the "good part" of the race is over by the time I arrive. But I was reminded that each runner has their own goals, their own race to run, whether they come in first or last, each is a unique victory to be celebrated. It was so fun to be able to witness those moments. 

By far the greatest thing over the course of the event was that so many new people were able to hear about Mercy Project and the stories of the children in Ghana. It was a great platform and opportunity with which to share our work as well as help out a local children's charity in the process. What started as a small idea (not mine!) back in the summertime completely snowballed into something far greater than we could've imagined. Once again, God used some very ordinary people to accomplish great things for the Kingdom.

A few facts about the race:

• In it’s inaugural year, the BCS Marathon was the largest marathon/half marathon in Texas outside of the four major metropolitan areas (D/FW, Houston, Austin, San Antonio).

• Marathon ranking website www.marathonguide.com currently shows the BCS Marathon with 5/5 stars on organization and course, and 4.5 stars on fans. This is based on nearly 200 reviews from runners and currently makes the BCS Marathon the highest ranked marathon in the state of Texas, over Houston, Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio.

We're pretty fired up about these things for several reason, but mostly because we think this is a great opportunity to grow awareness in the community and raise a good chunk of change for children locally and globally. They are the true winners out of it all.

banners along the final stretch

So, mark those calendars for December 9, 2012. We're adding a children's race on the Saturday before the big race and expect to host many more folks this year. Registration opens on May 15 via the race website, and we are already planning for another successful event. Can't wait!

*Photo credits go to Mr. Field. You can view these larger by clicking on them.