Friday Mishmash - Beach Palooza Endnotes

Thanks for all of your patience during this week of palooza posts.  I promise, this is the end.  But really, if I hadn't been posting all of the crazy pictures, I would have just been whining about my upcoming surgery.  So see?  I saved you from that.  P.S.  Come back Monday for the whine. ;)

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Speaking of that race (oh, WERE we???), I saw on the BP facebook page that one runner had videoed the race as he ran it (In a ridiculously fast time of 27 minutes. Seriously?!?  I have no hope of ever running a regular 5K in 27 minutes, much less one with obstacles!  Poor guy, he definitely didn't get his money's worth, either.  Slow and steady, dude.) - I guess he strapped the camera to his chest.  Anyway, even though he speeds up the boring running parts, it's a little long, but if you want to see the race as it happens (and the obstacles that we didn't manage to photograph), here are the You Tube links:

Part 1 - Around the 3 minute mark he hits the platforms.  Pause it and look how far it is from one to the next.  Nevermind how easy he makes it look. ;)
Part 2 - Must have been a waterproof camera, as you'll see when he goes in for the icy swim!

After the race we hung around and watched other runners jump over fire.  It was really fun to cheer them on - I felt a strong kinship whenever an overweight woman did it.  Yes!!!  You GO, ladies!!!  Love that they were brave enough to get out there and do this - I wouldn't have had the nerve 100 pounds (or even 50) ago!  Then we went out for a late lunch - we were all STARVING.  When we walked into the restaurant, Jeff immediately notified me that he wasn't splitting a burger with me - he wanted a whole one.  So fine, I made the sacrifice and managed to eat one all by myself.  We did get a huge cookie to split:

This picture cracks me up because Kelly is dispensing Motrin from her gigantic bottle to all of us - she poured a handful and we were all "two please" and "four please" - well, maybe you had to be there.  We weren't going to let a little pain stop us from enjoying the rest of the day!

And speaking of pain - yes, my ankle hurt more than normal.  But not enough to stop me during the race, luckily.  So I guess it's a good thing I'll be having that surgery on Tuesday.

Later on, after we finally got cleaned up, we hurried to the Strand, where our favorite places were:  Fit to Run and La King's Confectionery.  Unfortunately, Fit to Run was closed!  Sad faces:

 

 My favorite running store!  We went back on Sunday and got to shop and chat with the owners - they run the USAFit Galveston program and do a lot of runs from the store.  Except for the occasional hurricanes, Galveston would be a really fun place to live!

Since we couldn't get our running store fix, we went for the next best thing - ice cream at La King's!  Kelly and I posed while Jeff took our picture:

Notice the man making creepy eyes in the window?  Chuck slipped into the store and managed to get in the picture and make us laugh when we realized what he'd done!  As you can tell, we had a good time. :)

Oh, and finally - the best ice cream in the world:

Now THAT'S what I call a race reward!

I know you are probably Palooza'd out, and I thank anyone who is still reading after this week.  I have to tell you that this was such a fun race to do, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.  To paraphrase what Anne wrote in one of the comments this week, "obstacles" became "confidence builders" and that is so true - I felt about 10 feet tall when I finished this race.  Loved every minute of it!

My medal - this was a fun one to earn!

Have a great weekend!