Austin

This weekend, Mark and I flew to Austin to see the BYU game against the University of Texas.  We like to go to BYU football games, and have been to a few away games such as UCLA, Notre Dame, and Air Force.  If we can visit friends at the same time, all the better.

This trip we got to visit with some friends who moved to Austin from Fremont 6 years ago, Garic & Nici.  Friday, after arriving in Austin in the afternoon, we drove out to their home and got the grand tour, and then went out to dinner with them.  It was really fun to reconnect with them and hear all about their busy lives.  We also got the lowdown on living in Texas.  Apparently, football is really big in Texas! (I know, that's an understatement.)  They showed us the high school where their kids attend, the football stadium, the indoor practice facility and weight rooms.  Also a huge music building.  Pretty impressive.  There are season ticket holders for high school games.  At a recent away game (2 hours away) 30,000 fans traveled to see the game.  I haven't seen "Friday Night Lights" but it is pretty accurate from what I have heard. They attended a game soon after moving to Austin and had to stand the entire game because there were no more seats.  In a stadium that would make a college proud.

Saturday morning we walked around downtown Austin taking in the sights.  There were some interesting buildings....

The Capitol building

.... and some colorful cows sprinkled throughout the downtown.  The mascot for the University of Texas is a longhorn.

Austin also has what appears to be a river running through it, except we were told that it is really a long twisty lake.  Looked like a river to me.

 Austin is also the home of the first Whole Foods and we visited that as well.  It was awesome. And big. This is Texas, after all: 100,000 square feet.

Later in the day, we visited the LBJ library and walked around the campus.  It was super hot.

Little known fact:  LBJ was a  BYU Cougars fan.

We went to the top of the infamous clock tower

 and had a great view of the downtown area:

You can see the Capitol building to the left of center

The stadium is quite impressive and holds 100,000 people.

 EVERYONE wears the school color: burnt orange.  I was impressed with the variety of T-shirts, polo shirts, tank tops, and DRESSES that I saw.  Apparently, wearing boots is also important:

The cheerleaders had interesting outfits:

ESPN was covering the game:

Every time there was a score, a kickoff, or the end of a quarter, the cannon would go off.  Those Texans love their guns.

Notice the girls in boots?

The band was huge.  Everything is big in Texas, right? Their school song sounds suspiciously like "I've Been Workin' on the Railroad."  I'm told it is called "The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You."  The cheerleaders also danced to "Deep in the Heart of Texas."

The drum major and majorette giving the longhorn sign

We lost by one point, but were leading until the last little bit.  The game started at 6 pm and it was 98 degrees.  By the end of the game it was a much better 84 degrees, but all in all VERY hot.  And everyone stands the whole game except for time outs.  Not just the students.  EVERYONE.

The next morning before we had to be at the airport, we stopped by the Capitol building for some parting shots.

 The front

 The back

Texas Rangers Monument

We saw a sign on a pet supply store that advertised "Longhorn wear for your dog" and a marque outside a church that said "Sunday Service 11-ish."

All in all, it was a bit of a culture shock. The eyes of Texas were upon us.

Half marathon

Back in March or so, Mark decided he wanted to do the Disney Half Marathon in September.  He asked if I wanted to join him.  In a moment of weakness, I said yes, and starting about 10 weeks ago, we began training in earnest.  Mark had been running all along and had done some 10Ks and we both had done plenty of cycling, but I hate running.  I AM a fast walker, however, so I thought I could at least do that.

We increased our mileage each week, and each week I hurt.  Not my muscles, but my joints.  All that pounding was making me ache.  I had settled into a system of running three songs and walking one song which was working pretty well.  I had initially tried the "run 4 min., walk 2 min." thing, but checking my Garmin that often, especially on the long runs was annoying, so I switched to the song thing. Two different weeks I did a long run of 10 miles and then began tapering prior to the big day.

Rebecca decided to join us for the half marathon, having done 2 other halfs, so she was a seasoned vet and then Mark's sister signed up as well.  It would be a regular party.  Except this party was 15,000 people and we probably wouldn't be together as we each had differing abilities.  In the end, Rebecca's IT bands acted up, so she couldn't run with Mark but she could run/walk with me which was great for me!

Sarah designed and ordered some race day shirts for Mark & I.  On the back of mine all of the kids, in-laws and grandkids had written encouraging words.

We got lots of compliments on our shirts.

The race started at 6:00 am and we were encouraged to be at the start at 4:30 am.  We didn't arrive until about 5:00 am and were astounded at the crowd.

We were assigned corrals and humanity stretched in back of us and in front of us.  Our group didn't actually start until 6:30 (we were the 6th of 7 groups to start).

 The crowd stretched back to that parking structure (above) and forward to the blue signs.

We ran through California Adventure, Disneyland, the streets of Anaheim, past the Honda Center arena (home of the ice hockey team), Angels Stadium and then back to Disney.  Disney characters were throughout the parks and people would stop and wait in lines to get their pictures taken with them!  These people were not serious about their times.

 Lots of people wore costumes to run in.

 Becca was trying to outdo Sarah's photo, but in my hurry, I didn't hold the camera still.

Running through the castle

When we left the parks, every 1/2 mile or so there would be a school cheer team, a band, or some dancing group... there was a mariachi band & dancers, Hawaiian dancers, and others.  It was quite entertaining and made the time pass faster.  There were also a lot of people cheering along the way.

 Theoretically, you would see yourself on the big screen if one knew when to look....

After the race, we received fabulous medals and had our pictures taken.

I finished in 2:43 (although my Garmin said 2:37 because it pauses when I stop for a potty break!)  That is my personal best since this was my first (and probably last) half marathon.  Mark did a blistering 2:10! He tells me my time was in the top 25% of women in my age group. What a guy to make me feel accomplished.  I felt better than I thought I would when it was done because I thought I'd feel awful and I didn't! Biggest surprises for me?  How many people there were in the race and how many people were doing it that didn't look like they'd be able to finish but did.  Which kind of lessened my sense of achievement.  Is that bad?

This was fun to do, but I still like cycling better.