We're enjoying it thoroughly on our side. Shane is on vacation this week so he's been keeping us busy non-stop. We went to a local amusement park and got night passes after I got off work on Monday. It was fun to go for only a couple hours and not worry about riding everything. We'll save the whole day passes for when Gemma returns from visiting my grandmother.
Yesterday I took a half day vacation from work and Shane, his niece, and I drove to Punxsutawney, PA for their Groundhog Festival. It was a really long drive but we kept ourselves thoroughly amused by spotting all the rural oddities. Horse and buggy, check. Hotel that looked like a shack, check. Farms and livestock, double check. Of course, we knew we were close when we started spotting groundhog statues along the highway.
Drive-by groundhog sighting
We saw so many groundhog statues that we decided to make a game out of it. Of course, we had to actually race first. The 5k started at 7PM and ran through the major roads of Punxsy. The only complaint I have is that the town doesn't close the roads to traffic and the drivers were not very polite about sharing. The course was advertised as 'fairly flat'. This was nowhere near true.
Shane had told me he thought I should go out at PR pace and see what happened. What happened is that we hit two average-type rollers in the first mile which took my PR pace to 13 seconds slower than PR pace. Then in mile 2 we hit a freaking mountain! I'm not kidding, this hill took forever to climb and the grade was enough to make my legs scream mommy! Then we went down the other side to the turnaround and got to do it again! Yippee!
I lost almost a minute on those two climbs and by the time I was on the downhill headed back to the finish my legs felt like lead. I kept telling myself, "Embrace the suck." I have no idea where I got this from but it fit and it helped me keep pushing. I ended up finishing in 27:04 which was good enough for second in my age group. Shane finished in 23:xx and also got second in his age group. Gabby's age group was stacked with local cross country runners but she still put up a good fight. I think she got 4th in her age group!
Posing with Liberty Phil
Race Shirt and medal. Even the swag is groundhog brown.
Afterwards we went on with our plan for groundhog hunting. Our version was bloodshed-free though. We wandered around the town locating groundhog statues and taking pictures with them. We also spent some time at the festival itself. My marathon munchies have struck with avengence and a gyro, half a large order of fries, and an ice cream cone with sprinkles all fell victim. We all had a really good time and it made the 4 hour round trip worth it!
High five Phil!
Bellhop Phil
Nature Phil
LSD Phil? Shane looks high anyway.
After a good night's sleep we were ready to party! We had a cookout for family and had a grand old time pigging out. Unfortunately, marathon training won't wait for the holiday so I've got 7 miles to run before we reconvene for fireworks. Hopefully I'll burn off at least a quarter of what I ate!
Ash learned how to eat from her mother
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