Friday Mishmash

Tomorrow is a big day - running club begins again!  We are doing a 24 week training program for the BCS Marathon/Half Marathon in December.  I'm excited about it, but also a little nervous - you see, I ended up stepping in as the organizer this season.  It's not something that I particularly wanted to take on, but it needed to be done, and since this group was such a big help in getting me to my first half marathon, I figured I should be willing to help keep it going so we can be there for other new runners.  Thankfully, I've got a really wonderful team of coaches who are bringing a lot of enthusiasm to the group.  We've got lots of fun extras planned, plus our schedule this year is much better than the one we did last year - we start out with low mileage and very gradually increase it, plus we even have some weeks where we run a shorter distance on our long run than the previous week...I can't tell you how much that helps, both mentally as well as physically.  I'm sure it will all come together just fine, but I will be glad when we've finished with the first day and are sitting at Blue Baker, having breakfast and rehashing the (successful, I hope) way everything went.

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Now THAT'S a cool cake!

Speaking of my running peeps, last Saturday was the one year anniversary of the opening of our local running store, Brazos Running Company!  We gathered there for a 6:00 am run, followed by shopping, door prizes (I won a technical shirt, woohoo!), and cake.  Then several of us went to Blue Baker for breakfast, where the funniest conversation took place - I had to get up and take a picture:

Jeff and Amy were discussing Game of Thrones, but refused to look at each other so they wouldn't give away any spoilers.

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With all the goings on about getting everything ready for the start of running club, I haven't had time to knit much lately, but I was getting frustrated about that - I'd bought such lovely yarn at the Madtosh store and I wanted to knit it!  I finally put everything on hold for a couple of hours and started a baby sweater.  I was making great progress, when I looked down and my heart stopped - the cable on my needles had broken off, and I had live, loose stitches just hanging there!  ACK!!!  I wasn't at home when this happened, so scrounged in my knitting bag for whatever I could use to corral the stitches:

Luckily, I got all of the loose stitches saved.  Crisis averted!

This is the second time it's happened, and I swear, I'm not that hard on my knitting needles!  Not sure if it's the brand - ChiaoGoo, which I really like (except for the whole breakage situation), or what, but it's not a good thing.  I'm going to carry an extra pair of needles in my bag, just in case.

Here's the sweater now, on different needles:

A little farther along, too...I'm smitten with how cute it's turning out to be!

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Finally, the giant hibiscus flowers are back.  I saw them on Monday during our walk and noted that they were the size of Julia's head, so I brought my camera with me on Wednesday to document it:

Seriously, almost the same size!  And don't you love what a good sport Julia is, posing like that?

Alright, I have to run - literally!  Have a great weekend!