Will the Real ATR please stand up?

More from the dueling Photoshoppers:


Margaret B's version ( i wish i were that ripped )


Rock's version (look closely for all the details)



original photo

SO, did I mention we ran 8 miles (really 9 with the .5 warm up and cool down) last Saturday? Yep ! lame knee me..
SO, did I mention how happy this is making me?

By the way, if I never post to this blog again it's because I'm too busy playing umpteen games of Scrabble on Facebook, and in real time at the dining room table... now you know the source of the original photo.. joking about cheating at scrabble.

Nooka CHAMPS !!!

Val, Gina and I owned our age group podium up at the Nookachamps races, held in Mt. Vernon, WA.
Val took 2nd to some speedster in the 5K race, I got 1st and Gina 3rd in the 10K. So we took our ribbons and went to breakfast. and didn't eat the rest of the day.

My time? 53:50 so you know all the fast gals were in the half marathon or 5K. But I still felt pretty good about my effort, as I haven't done a long tempo run in quite some time. We had a fun time, and plan to find some more races to do.

I also was a winner because i saw 2 trumpeter swans fly overhead... and heard them, too.

And today my photoshopping buddy, Rock, sends this little gem..

Titled : Train to Win

Happy Birthday to Annalise

I'm getting lazy in HER old age , 17 , and posting something I made ages ago.. (July of 2005). Obviously, I had not yet learned to add music to my slide show. Also, now that I tested it, it moves rather slowly, so you might want to just manually slide the slider along.

The sweet young thing in this video is now old enough and legally able to drive a car. Now that would have been an awesome birthday gift. Wish I'd thought of it earlier. oh well.

OK having serious issues uploading my video so instead i found this lil nugget...........get your maracas ready!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrff-R0iyXo

American Idol starts tonight...

God, I wish I didn't know that.



Here are a couple entrants that should be on tv but somehow missed the call.

What I did on my Christmas Vacation

I posed for photographs with my relatives.

bob

kyle

krissy

tara

kyle

bob and patty, and scarves (NYC style)

patty

patty and jim

patty and mom

mom

Art... isn't this a diverse blog?

News from one of our runner buddies in California... the leader of the famous Women on the Run team. T erri H ill. She's not just a super fast runner, a great leader and motivator for the team, uber organized for the relay races, and extremely attractive and charming. T ee H ee. Did I mention she's just a really nice person and good friend? and fast ?
Gawd, I don't know how Laura lives with her...

Terri is also an acclaimed artist. And it's time to toot her horn ! She is always having an opening or a showing or juried show, or whatever, down in California and we never go. (loser friends that we are) But she is spot lighted on a watercolor artists blog this week.

http://brush-paper-water.blogspot.com/

and I can certainly share the awareness with my loyal blog readers.

http://www.designerhill.com/ her own website

Congratulations, Terri.

Icy dips

So, here are the race day shots from Fotojack.com


coach lesley
(the kid in the orange was not going to jump in, i encouraged him to do so,at about 100 yards out) (he thanked me later) not.


gina water's at her thighs, only up to the knees of super tall hat & glove guy


ATR no, i'm not cold..

P-nak vows to never to this race again.

Resolution Run and Polar Bear Dip

Here are a few pre and post race photos.... the funny thing is we all look like we're freezing in both .. it was not a nice day, weather-wise.


Before -- katie, P-nak (patricia), michael, steve and jan


After -- p-nak , steve (already changed clothes) gina, atr, coach lesley, andrea, katie



fuzzy finishers !

michael and jan coming out of the water. and looking like it was FUN !!

mystery woman in the white see thru shirt.

pre-race.... don't worry, we tossed those ugly orange t-shirts...( burnt rust ) along the way.

Happy New Year

Running Crazy is the name of this darn blog. So, running it will be. This past week I managed a 6, followed by a 4 (yes, back to back days !!) then a spin class, then a 5k race, a day of rest, and today 6 miles with the Saturday morning group.

Life is as it should be.

I've only got a photo of the post race beer garden.. Coach should have a few pre and post shots.
Andrea, on the right side, is part of coach lesley.com running... we suckered a few of them into diving in. Couldn't get them to the garden. And the 3 others are BGB's (beer garden buddies)(strangers, but really nice and fun) and the dude didn't even change out of his wet shorts... brrrrrrrrrrrr
Loyal Blog reader Laura ran the race. Judy F and Wendy J ran but did not dip.

But where was Pam Banks ??

It stopped snowing

Gina went out and took a few shots this morning.



ahh, the beautiful blue trim on the garage

Snow

lights, under snow


morphed into the walrus



starting to tilt, needs to work on core exercises

And On and On.............

From Margaret, re-visiting the Tonya H. Nancy K. (whyyy me-e-e-e) saga

And On and On it goes

from Rock..

is that a great name, or what?

FOTO FUN all around

Gina's cousin Margaret has fine tuned this photo...
click on it to make it larger and more readable.
Have at it... everybody..

Bus hanging over I-5 near Denny overpass

Bus hanging over I-5 near Denny overpass click on that...

we don't handle the snow and ice well at all, here in Seattle.

Snow Day in Seattle

A biking friend stopped by to visit.


Rock had some more fun photoshopping my pictures.
I could use a hug, though.



Lance Snowman
Jeez, do my feet look HUGE in this picture ? esp. compared to my skinny little legs?

Refreshing Dip

Isn't this just the coolest? no pun intended.
Many thanks to our buddy Rock (aka Surfer Dude) for digitally playing around with the blog photos. He is gifted in so many ways.

Ed's Christmas Lights

Our first stop on the night we got home from Maui was at Ed's (and his little dog, Katie) house. To see how many lights he put up... as you can see, zillions. Actually, it's an apt. bldg, and fortunately, there is a vacancy in the upper apt.
Ed is a gym member, extraordinaire... I think he logs more hours in there than us.

Maui News

So, here's the narrative to go with the photos that I posted yesterday.

The trip started out perfectly. We left the house in the dead of morning, 5:00am. Got to the car park, no problem. Opened the trunk to give suitcases to shuttle dude. OOPS, "where's my green suitcase?!" In my sleepy stupor I made sure I had my coffee mug, the newspaper, the garbage to take to garage but I HAD LEFT MY SUITCASE IN THE DARK LIVING ROOM !!!

Fortunately, I was travelling with Mario Andretti. We hopped back in the car and set out to get it. Trying to plan for contingencies all the way. Traffic was pretty heavy but no back ups (we were way early for our flight) Mario/Gina was able to drive 80+ the whole way, in and out of lanes, zip zip zip.... The intersection at Ravenna and 65th, the light didn't want to turn green so of course she ran it.... (and we worried all week that it was a red light camera intersection and we'd have a little gift in the mail when we got home- it isn't, we didn't) Got the suitcase, 80 mph all the way back. Got to the car park and the same shuttle dude was there. He thought we must live close by, when I said Green Lake, he was totally impressed. We didn't need to worry about exercise that day, the heart rates had been elevated enough. And we still had time to go thru the way long security line, and relax and wait for our flight.

So, we made it just fine to Maui. And our vacation went as it usually does. Here is a typical day's agenda:
6:00am wake up
7:00am running or a spin class
8:00am laps in the pool
9:00am select chaise lounges, drink coffee and read newspapers poolside
10:00am apply sunscreen
11:00am Lupe delivers first Heinekin to me
12:00pm we move to the tables for lunch and crib game
1:00-3:00pm fool around in pool, keep lookout for whales, talk sports with Jerome the bartender
3:00pm move down to beach for an hour of swimming, wave thrashing, people watching
4:00pm to the room for a bit of Rachel Maddow show, shower
5:00pm head to dinner (we actually tried a couple new places, and they are permanently on our list now)
7:00pm try to watch tv
8:00pm zz zzzzz


We did go do a bit of snorkel-less snorkeling. Which is perfect for me. Otherwise I spend the whole time concentrating on my breathing and not the fish. And we saw the big turtles swimming very near us. I think Gina could have touched him. (her?)

On Saturday we broke the routine and we drove to Wailuku to run a 5k race that I had read about. It was a fund raiser for a local HS kid who has cancer. We met the kid, Jarron. He was impressed that we came all the way from Seattle to run in his race. Talked with a couple of the local runners. It was a really nice time. We won a couple raffle gift certificates, which we re-gifted to Lupe and our spinning teacher.

The state of the economy was evident. The hotel was at about 50% occupancy. Which is a real drag for the staff, but nice for those of us staying. That week is usually slow but not that bad.

No rain all week, so it was perfect.
And then we come home to 20 degree weather.

Mahalo for listening to my stuff.

Lupe ! Here it is !!!

Lupe is one of our favorites at the hotel ( and Robert, Allison, Keisa, Jerome, Eddie, the latte ladies, Linda, well, we like them all ) Could it be because she knows when to bring my first Heinekin? No,no she's really a nice woman. And we've got running in common. She does a few races there. I get exhausted just watching the miles she puts in at work.

The Westin staff Christmas party had a "Dancing with the Stars" contest. We'd asked Lupe if she wanted to join us for a 5K race on Saturday. She declined, cuz of the party the night before. Later Jerome tells us the whole story.... Lupe is one of the dancing contestants !

We stopped by the party that night to watch. We are practically family there (well, we think so). It was really fun and the dancers were all great. Lupe was paired up with Trent, a very talented and handsome young guy. They did a great job, and we found out later they actually won the contest. It's all very funny because Lupe is such a sweet and shy gal. It must have been totally out of character for her to do this.

We had won a gift certificate in the raffle prizes at the race so we awarded that to Lupe .

My photos SUCK ! The lighting was for the stage. And of course I don't know how to use the special features of the camera that might offset the back lighting. And cuz we were essentially crashing the party I didn't think I could stroll up to the stage and snap away. I softwared them up as best I could. She wanted to see them, so I told her she'd have to suffer thru the blahhgg to see them.

the video screen catches Lupe

Poodle skirt flying