Suddenly the weekend’s disappeared, it’s Sunday night, and I have yet to start reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. In fact, I just bought my copy tonight - yes, yes, nearly a full 48 hours since it’s been available for purchase. I’m such a bad muggle.

So, before I head off to discover who the Half Blood Prince is (Tbus has some verrry interesting theories on who it could be), a quickish recap of the weekend. whee.

Running:

  • Ran with my fellow Reds on Saturday morning, bright and early. Surprisingly, I didn’t have any trouble getting up and out of bed at 5:30am….but I underestimated the amount of time I’d need to find parking at Memorial Park. The Coaches had warned us that parking would be pretty tight, but I thought, “Hey - how crowded can it really be at 6:30am?” Well, as I discovered at 6:50am, very crowded. The parking lots were packed, and the roads were filled with runners, last minute HoustonFitters (comme moi) and serious bikers (many wearing yellow jerseys. ha).
  • At last week’s orientation, we were given color-coded tags to attach onto our shoes. I.e., since I’m in the Red group, I have a red shoe tag. This is to help Coaches and runners locate each other. Seriously. After (finally) finding a parking space, I ran over to the nearest group of runners….and realized everyone was wearing yellow tags. I hurried up the road, found another woman with a red shoe tag, and made it to the Red group just seconds before everyone took off on the run. Moral of the story: Yay for colored shoe tags. That, and leave 20 minutes to find parking.
  • We ran 3 miles….an easy distance normally, but after 15 minutes it didn’t feel that way. 7am on a July morning in Houston means 75-80 degrees with 90+ % humidity. Yuck. I really need to get used to running in the heat and humidity. I miss running in the cold.
  • I ended up running with some pretty friendly women. We chatted for the first 5-10 minutes….then, silence. “You can tell when people are getting tired when things go completely quiet,” I panted.
  • It looked like at least a hundred runners that morning. One of the women I ran with commented, “Whoever said Houston is the fattest city should see all these runners and bikers out here on a Saturday morning.”
  • One thing that impressed me on the run was how considerate runners were/are to each other. Everyone was shouting friendly warnings to the people in front of and behind them. Anytime there was a post/pole in the running path, the folks in front of us yelled “POST!!” These posts were waist high, and could seriously knock the wind of out someone not paying attention (like moi). Anytime a non-HoustonFit runner came up the path, everyone made sure that we made room for them by shouting, “RUNNER UP!” I kept cracking up. It was like an audio version of the wave, or dominoes….I’d hear someone faaaaar ahead of us yell “post!” and then slowly, but surely, it would make its way through the crowd up to we were. We’d contribute to the wave with our own “POST!!”, and then listen as it continued to travel backwards towards the end of the line. Hilarious.
  • After the run, there was a brief intro to core exercises, and then a seminar on running & hydration.

After Running:

  • Dropped by the Westpark Recycling Center to drop off my carload of junk: old desktop computer, tons of office paper, glass containers and a year’s worth of magazines/catalogs. The Westpark Recycling Center is basically a recycling drive-thru - after pulling into the center, I found myself in the middle of a huge warehouse. I stopped the car, and about 10 very friendly recycling center workers appeared and started unloading all my junk. In less than a minute, my car was empty and I was on my way. Yay for Houston’s recycling program. If only my other errands would go as smoothly and quickly.
  • In the afternoon, I met a biking buddy to play tennis at his swanky club. Gotta love that indoor tennis, yo. Plus, the club is some serious posh…..makes my gym seem ghetto in comparison. And the women’s locker room was nicer than most hotels I’ve stayed in, yo.
  • Dropped by the Phoenix School of Massage for a loooooong massage. $45 for a 90 minute massage. Can’t beat that.
  • The tennis adventures continued into the evening. Went to the Westside Tennis Club for World Team Tennis, where we watched Martina Hingis and John McEnroe play tennis (and throw a few temper tantrums). Fun! The (crappy camera phone) picture on the right shows Johnny Mac in the middle of a serve.

  • One of the strangest things I saw this weekend was something called Women’s Boom Run. It was part of the equally strange Outdoor Games on ESPN. Basically, two people run across some logs floating in a pool. Here’s an ‘official’ description:

    • In the Boom Run both competitors in each bracket will begin at the end of a dock at the same time and at the call of “GO” will run across their own chain of spinning, floating logs, reach a second dock, circle a stanchion, run back across the chain of logs and return to the first dock. The first competitor in each bracket to complete their run wins the bracket and will advance through the rounds.

Bizarre.

Anyways, off to get some HP in before bed.