Marathon Redemption - Week 4

You may be right,

I may be crazy.

But it just may be a loooonatic you're looking for.

Billy Joel, "You May Be Right"

Not a lot to report from the running in week 4, as it was a "rest" week. And by "rest" I mean keeping myself so busy at work that I barely had time to read emails, much less respond to any, and feeling so completely frazzled by the end of the day on Friday that I just went to the gym and did the elliptical for an hour instead of running 6 miles - because that way I could read a magazine (Runner's World) and totally zone out. And since that's really the only time I get to read recreationally lately, it seemed like a good idea. And no, I don't think it's at all ironic or weird that I was reading Runner's World on the elliptical when I should have really been running instead.

But I capped the week off in a big way with a Running Quadrople (that would be yours truly, the Running Dork, Running Worm, and Running Sri Lankan) reunion complete with the Running Chicken and our own personal Sherpa. We ate, we drank, we were merry...and we ran a 10k in there somewhere, too.

Someday we'll find it, the Rainbow Connection...

Running Quadrople weekends are fabulous things, if not a little insane -- we don't get many chances to all be in the same town, so we have to cram about three months' worth of fun into 48 hours. This weekend was no exception. Saturday morning, after an early 7:30 am spin class for me, the Running Dork and I finally made it out of town and headed towards Kansas City. After some Glee soundtrack action and a few pit stops here and there, we wound up at the Legends eating at a sushi restaurant called Stix.

The Running Lawyer and the Running Dork - did you really think we'd eat sushi without sake?

The dork looking lovingly at me, and me looking lovingly...at my food. So typical.

After a little saki, a little sushi, and a ton of laughs, we headed over to the Nike outlet where Dork and I scored ourselves matching hoodies at half price and Worm and I scored ourselves some matching black 3/4 length tights (yes, we're matchy nerds, deal with it) and then we went to see When in Rome. Which was mostly just good because it had Josh Duhamel in it.

We finally ended up a dinner at a place called Blanc Burgers and Bottles in Overland Park. If you live in the area and haven't eaten there - you NEED to go. Period. Everything at this place is amazing, right down to the homemade ketchup. The inside out burger with the blue cheese middle is probably the best burger I've ever eaten in my life, and the sweet potato fries come in these cute little shopping carts:

Not to mention the incredible beer selection. I don't drink all that often, but when I find a chocolate stout on the beer menu I have a hard time turning it down. Did I mention that the burger was really, really good? Okay, moving on....

So the whole point of this weekend (besides drinking good beer, eating good food, and spending time with good friends) was this:

The 2010 Groundhog Run 10k, a race that's run entirely underground. The race is in the Hunt Midwest Subtropolis in Kansas City, which is an empty mine with several miles of paved trails. The beauty of the race is that the caves are a constant 65-70 degrees, which is amazing because the temperature outside on the day that we ran was something in the 20s. Of course, that meant that the 4 of us girls and the Running Chicken all walked in with plenty of winter gear on. Enter the Sherpa:

This is a good man.

Besides driving us around all over the place, eating dinner with us, taking a million pictures and generally putting up with all of our girly insanity, the Running Sri Lankan's kind husband became the running Sherpa on Sunday, carrying all of our winter gear for over an hour while we all ran. Well done, Sherpa, well done.

Of course, the worst thing about running underground is that you have no Garmin signal. Not a good thing for me when I'm attempting to run a PR. All things considered, everyone had a good race on Sunday - the Running Chicken ran ridiculously fast, as usual, the Running Dork was one second away from a PR (which I blame on timer error), I missed a PR by around a minute, and the Running Sri Lankan conquered her 10k demons and walked away from the race pain-free. And of course, we couldn't leave without throwing up some jazz hands:

The Running Chicken apparently isn't man enough to do jazz hands, he had to give us the thumbs-down instead. Boo, Chicken, boo.

We all regrouped at the Flying Saucer in the Power & Light District after the race for some well-earned post-race food and beer. Again, I'm not a huge drinker but I do appreciate places with really good beer menus and the Flying Saucer doesn't disappoint. If you ever go there and like sweet drinks, I highly recommend the Hummingbird Water. Pure deliciousness.

All in all, the Groundhog 2010 Quadrople + Running Chicken + Sherpa weekend was a huge success...good food, good company, good running, a little shopping, a little beer, some new words, a few old words with new meanings - it was exhausting, but in the best sort of way.

Week 4 stats:

Run 1: 6 miles easy

Run 2: 60 min on the elliptical (don't judge - sometimes a girl needs her elliptical)

Run 3: Groundhog 10k, 58:38

Week 5 is a 2 mile easy run (whoohoo, 2 miles!), 6 mile tempo run, and 16 mile long run. I haven't run 16 miles since - oh, last spring. When it was much warmer than this. 16 miles used to be a good distance for me, and I'm hoping it still is. Otherwise this marathon plan isn't going to be very much fun in a few more weeks.