the best weekend ever!

so to sum it up, i had a terrific weekend. heres my story


saturday it was pouring all day. I met with my friends who were driving me to the marathon, and we drove the 4 hours to nagano city, then we checked in the hotel and hopped on the train to get our race packets. we ate dinner and i was in bed by 8:30. it was still pouring. there was a typhoon.

3:45 sunday morning, i was up to stretch and get myself woken up before the big race. got on the train at 5:08. no rain. got to the race area at 5:50. no rain. looking nice. stretched, got nervous and waited till 7:20 when the race start was. there were about 5000 people who ran this race. still no rain and it was shaping up to be a beautiful morning! the race started and i zoomed along. feeling good. i was running with my friends husband who i rode up with. we were feeling good. finished halfway in 59 minutes. YES its possible to finish in uner 2 hours if i push myself. around km 12, my friends husband went up ahead and i stayed consistent. keept running. ate and orange. no problem. ate a cucumber around km14. almost vomited that cucumber at km 15. the last part of the race was long and short. a little of a mental challenge. you can do it jen! keep going. and i did. got to the 2 last loops an saw my friend and her baby there cheering me on! looked at my watch on the last loop. kicked into super speed and finished with an official time of 1:59:02 (however, due to the delay for crossing the start i really finished in 1:59:??) got a towel some free fruit and wandered around feeling like a rock star.

but just wait, it gets better... i got my certificate and i was 100th place out of women, and 14th in my age group. now im not sure how many were in each group, but i saw so many women and i am guestimating around 1000 at least. so i rocked. i love the half marathon. its such a fun race!

next we got in the car and drove back to our area. got to nagoya and headed down to yokkaichi to meet a friend at starbucks, then continued down to stay at another friends place. and use her shower.

monday (sea day) 4:30 wake up, got on the train with renelda, stephen, paul, tomomi and kumiko. we headed 2 hours south of mie prefecture to catch a ferry and go to the beach! perfect weather. we played and played. so much fun. we all got sunburnt, except for the japanese representators. we played frisbee, swam to a floating dock thing in the water, jumped in the waves. then got back on the ferry at 5ish and headed back to reneldas where we ate dinner and talked till it was time to make the treck back to kasugai. it was such a fantastic weekend.

oh and get this. that earthquake was around the area that i had my race in. good thing we left right after the race! wow. this means that everytime i have run a running race in japan, there has been and earthquake within 24 hours. maybe i should stop rnning races!

now its monday and i skipped the gym due to sunburn and tired muscles and not wanting the old women at the gym to comment on my sunburntness in the shower. so thats that. ill post a picture of the beach. there will be more to come.