Friday Mishmash

Last Saturday night Jeff and I went to the championship matches for both the men's and women's USA Rugby college teams, which was the culmination of a two-day event held at Texas A&M.  Our friend's niece was playing for Norwich University, and her team won!  Let me tell you, those players are tough.  I think I'd last about a minute on the field, or until my first tackle...then I'd be carted off the field on a stretcher, crying for my mommy. 

Neither of us had ever watched a rugby match before...it was a crazy combination of football and soccer with some gymnastics randomly thrown in - you might think I'm exaggerating, but look:

You can see the white ball being thrown in - not sure why they do this, but it made me laugh every time it happened.

Here's the trophy presentation - Norwich is in the red jerseys. 

These women are hardcore! 

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I might have mentioned that there's this race on Sunday.  Well, this being Texas, we are experiencing stupid weather for December - the temperature predictions are for a warm and muggy day, with a chance of thunderstorms in the late morning.  Right now it's looking like 66 degrees for the start of the race, with temps warming up into the mid-70s fairly quickly.  While I'd rather have one damn race, just one, dammit run with the temperatures in the 40s, it's not like I can't handle these temps - after all, we've been training in it for most of the year.  But people are freaking out on the race's Facebook page - I guess maybe they are faster runners, and know that these conditions mean that they won't have an optimal race?  Any case, the race director has gone above and beyond to make things as safe and comfortable as possible.  He sent out an email yesterday outlining the following:

• the race will now be open for 7 hours to allow runners to slow down in the heat and still finish
• they will have towels in iced buckets at certain aid stations along the course
• "cooling zones" in the form of school buses, with A/C running at full blast, will be parked at the last two aid stations along the course - you can go in and literally chill out for a few minutes, if need be - plus they will have more cooling zones at the finish
• they've also increased the amount of liquid on the course by 20% (good thing because I like to not only drink water, but pour it down the back of my neck when it's so hot)

These temperatures are still about 10 degrees cooler to start than we had in San Antonio.  Plus, I'm not a fast runner.  So honestly, the weather isn't huge on my worry list.  You all know what my deal is...and I'm going to try my hardest to run without freaking out.  Enjoy every mile.  Cross the finish line not only with a smile on my face, but feeling proud of my accomplishment.  Those are my goals.

Oh - and guess what the low is supposed to be the day AFTER the race?  A lovely 42 degrees.  At this point everyone is hoping the cold front will move in a day early, but it's doubtful.  Texas weather...not exactly convenient.

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One last thing.  You may have seen references to gizoogle.net floating around - it's a parody of Google, but done in translations via Snoop Dog-speak, which is to say, pretty foul language.  I put my blog in, and busted a gut laughing at their version of my last post.  It's even given me an additional mantra to silently repeat as I run, so thank you, Snoop Dizzle.

Have a great weekend!