Hospice Chocolate Chase 10K Race

I peeked out the window early Saturday morning and sighed in relief that it wasn't raining like it had been the previous day. In West Virginia, when it rains it pours similar to the tropical rain storms I experienced while living in Costa Rica. Acalias had woken me up twice to eat during the night and I was nervous that that my sleepless night would affect my energy level during the race.

The morning was humid,foggy and dreary. I met up with my friend Dawn a fellow weight watcher member and friends from our ward at the starting line. I decided to begin at the back of the race and pass people rather than the opposite, which always makes me feel discouraged because so many runners would pass me.

The race course was beautiful, we began at the Lewisburg airport and ran through the back roads that wind and curve up and down the rolling hills. The pastures are beginning to green and the cherry blossoms are flourishing, picture perfect images when I think of West Virgina.

I had uploaded 15 songs onto my i-pod with the goal of completing the race when the last song played. It didn't work out that way because for some odd reason I thought that reggae would help me refrain from running too fast at the beginning of the race. The songs were far too slow so I had to skip the first five songs on the play list. I needed upbeat songs to help me up the huge hills.

My neighbor Dave came running up behind me and I quickly told him that he was my competition. That was a mistake. Throughout the remainder of the race we trailed each other, he would run past me and I would run past him. I started having self-destructive thoughts like, "I'm slow because of my sleepless night with Acalias"..."Wait, Dave can't beat me he had just told me a couple of weeks ago that he was recovering from an ankle injury"..."Girls don't run as fast as guys"..."I should stop, I'm feeling a migraine coming on". I looked at my heart rate monitor and my heart rate was 182, I typically run at 175 so it was no wonder that I felt a migraine pounding in at the temporal regions of my head. I kept chugging along eventually passing up Dave again, we ran the entire race near one another, him trailing me. Once I spotted the the mile marker 6, I tried to push harder. I see woman who I hadn't seen the entire race fly by me. Dave must have been holding back because suddenly he passed me up as well.


Me eyeballing Dave as he completes the race before me, dang it!
Soon enough I had finished the race and I was happy to be greeted by my smiling husband and baby. Although Dave pulled up ahead, I still shaved off 7 minutes of my 60 minute goal to complete the race so I'm happy. I finished the race in 53:20. I'm motivated to train harder for the Cinderella Half-Marathon in Oakland, California next month!

It was nap time by the time I finished the race. Acalias loves his dad.
Mi guapito bebito

White Sulpher Ward members and students at the Osteopathic school.
Dawn and I. She did awsome, this was her first race and she had never run more than a couple miles before last month.
Fit mommies:) Shay just started a walking group every morning. She is expecting her second child.
After the race, we went to the Chocolate Festival (after showering of course). The festival is a big deal in our small town, all the shops offer unique chocolate treats.
We were early but typically this street is jammed packed with people attending the festival.
We didn't have tickets but several strangers came up to us and gave us their surplus tickets. We recieved 11! It must be because our baby is so darn cute and they were compelled to give us their extra tickets. We gave away half because I knew that I would need to fuel up on something more nutritious than chocolate. These treats were among our favorites...

This chocolate drizzled cake had thin layers of toffee and other goodies that made it top my list of one of the best cakes I've ever tried.

Derek loves rasberries and chocolate so this was the perfect mix for him. It's whipped chocolate pudding, yum!

After overindulging on chocolate we finally went out to eat something somewhat nutritious. It was a fun family day, it's always so nice to hangout together!