Happy Lunar New Year, everyone!

2006 is the year of the Dog.

Since most people think the lunar new year is just a Chinese holiday, I’m including some links about Korean celebrations of seolnal, the New Year. Enjoy!

3:17pm. The phone at work rings.

Me: Hello, this is Jen.

Mom: JENNIFER???!!!!

Me: Mom?

Mom: WHERE ARE YOU??!!!!

Me: Uh, at work.

Mom: YOU’RE NOT IN JAIL, RIGHT???

Me: What the….?? No, I’m not in jail……

Mom: WHEW!! I came home and saw your phone number on the caller ID. Then I checked voice mail and there was a voice message from Harris County Jail asking for collect call. So I thought it was you.

Me: hahaha - You thought I was calling you to come bail me out?

Mom: Yah! Oh, I was sooooo scared! I was thinking, ‘what did she do?? what did she do??’

Me: Ok, obviously the call from the jail was a wrong number…..Hey, wait a minute…..how come you automatically thought it was me and not Christine or Daniel? Am I the child most likely to be a convicted felon?

Mom: hahaha - yeah!

Me: Gee, thanks mom.

Mom: I just went to a health fair and got lots of free pens. Come home and I’ll give you some.*

Me: Ok, thanks mom.

Mom: Ok bye.

Me: Bye.

I love my mom. The woman is hilarious.

* My mom feels her children don’t visit her enough, so her strategy is to constantly bribe us with random things like free packages of toilet paper, oranges, soap, carrot juice, free pens from health fairs, etc.

[ok, more random posts]

I don’t watch a lot of TV these days, but the one show programmed into my DVR (until the new season of The Sopranos) is Project Runway. Pure brilliance. If you haven’t watched it, you’re missing out on the best competitive reality show on television. I realize that’s not saying much given all the crap on TV, but really, this show is awesome. It’s 60 minutes of high camp, cattiness and real talent rather than being able to eat bugs or impress some millionnaire with a hairpiece. heh

For the most hilarious Project Runway recaps ever, visit four four. Some people say his recaps are better than the show itself, and I agree. Talk about brilliance.

lunamania, home of my favorite bay area spinner, MT blogger and Tamu-owner has a seriously awesome new layout, complete with the ever elusive - yet preeeety - three column layout. lunamania rawks.

I’ll admit, i’m jealous.

The new & improved lunamania is reviving my long lost dreams of updating escapevelocity’s own format, which would involve leaving Blogger for the tech-sexy and Houston-grown Wordpress (yup, WP was born right here in Htown). I got as far as installing WP on my server and applying a WP template. View the chaos here.

As a coincidence, Joe came across a running blog using the same template. That website is seriously awesome, by the way.

I waited too long to register for the Surfside Half Marathon (which reached its max capacity this week, I think), so I’m doing the Park to Park 5 Mile Run instead. The Park to Park is part of the HARRA Spring Series (and one of the Ironfoot requirements) so it’s all good, yo.

Hi. I’m back. I didn’t intend to be away from escapevelocity for so long, but hey. The past two weeks have been mostly about catching up on work and life stuff I’d put off till after the Marathon.

It’s only been two weeks since the Marathon, but it feels longer than that. I snuck in a quick run and it felt great - there was a slightly different sense of confidence that wasn’t there before. It was either Holden or Edwin who said (at the Expo) that after completing 20, 25 and 30K races - as well as a Marathon - running shorter distances feel much easier.

My 2006 Running Goals:

2005 was all about discovering the Houston running scene, building endurance and facing my personal challenge of completing a Marathon.

2006 is going to more about speed. Speed, speed, speed. Last year’s target was the Marathon finish line - this year, the target is the clock.

• Run a 5K under 30 minutes. Target race = Stepping Stones 5K, Sunday April 30th.
• Run a 10K under 60 minutes. Target race = ??. Need to find one. The Bayou City Classic in early March is too soon, methinks.
• Get a Spring Ironfoot award from HARRA. Since it’s unlikely I’ll ever win awards for speed, why not get something for perseverence? heh.
• Get used to running in the Houston summer heat/humidity. A grim necessity, but heat stroke ain’t no fun. Yuck.

I registered for the Spring session of Power in Motion, which starts on March 1st. Sponsored by HARRA, Power in Motion is the program that introduced me to the Houston running community. When I first registered in Fall 2004, I selected the “New to Running” option. Today, I selected the “Can continuously run 3+ miles” option. woo hoo! Each season, Power in Motion trains towards a certain race - this season, it’s the Stepping Stones 5K on April 30th. I hope to make my sub-30 min goal at that race.

Location: All over Houston
Distance: 26.2, yo!

Splits:
6.2 mile: 1:14:04 (avg 11:56 min/mile)
13.1 mile: 2:39:48 (avg 12:11 min/mile)
18.6 mile: 3:52:46 (avg 12:30 min/mile)
Final: 5:45:55 (avg 13:12 min/mile)

Average Heart Rate: 171
Max Heart Rate: 236 (can’t be right)

Calories: 4,046 (!!!)

Pre-race jitters:

Following a fitful night’s sleep, I arrived at GRB at 6am. Paid $10 to park near the finish line - a bit high, but I figured my legs would appreciate a short walk back to the car after the Marathon. Grabbed my trusty endurance bag, and headed into Hall A.

The minute I walked into GRB, I felt the energy in the air. Thousands of people were crammed inside the convention center crowded around running club tents, standing in line for the portacans, going through stretching rituals, etc. I wandered through the crowds and found Sarah, Jessica and Jon at the Houston Running Bloggers meeting spot. After a little check-in, Jessica and I headed over to the bag drop off and the port-a-can line (which was HUGE)….and then we headed out towards the starting line.

The minute we stepped outside, my excitement and nervousness kicked into high gear. It was chilly outside, but I hardly noticed. Jessica was running the Half, so we wished each other good luck and went to our respective starting corrals. As I walked through the Marathon starting area, I kept running into people I had either trained with or met at races during the season - we’d exchange hugs, and excitedly wish each other good luck. Awesome.

I was stretching when I spotted Holden wandering through the crowd. I told him about how I kept waking up in a panic, thinking I had missed the start of the Marathon…..and he said he had experienced the same thing! Hilarious. I’m sure we weren’t the only runners out there that morning who had the same nightmares.

At 7:00am, the gun went off and the Marathon began!! We were near the back and it took about 6 minutes to reach the starting line. Holden said he hoped there was a water stop on the way to the start since we were so far away. I was so excited, I started jumping just as we approached the starting line.

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