Just a few random things from this week… may as well make it a list post.

1. I’ve been watching plenty of Olympics coverage. Earlier this week, I watched the gold medal final for the men’s speedskating 10,000 meters. You can imagine my excitement when they announced the name of the skater from the Netherlands: Sven Kramer! That happens to be the name of my treadmill.

Back in Vancouver at the 2010 Winter Olympics, Sven was robbed of a gold medal in the 10,000 meters due to a mistake by his coach. He was out for redemption this year, but ended up taking the silver medal and second place to his fellow teammate.

2. This past Wednesday, the registration for the Marine Corps 17.75K opened at noon. Gaining entry into, and finishing, this race guarantees entry into the Marine Corps Marathon. I want to make MCM my second full marathon this fall, and luckily I secured a spot in the MC 17.75K! I got really lucky, because the race sold out in NINE minutes. This means I won’t have to throw my hat into the MCM lottery this year.

Instagram {turkeyrunner}

I roped my dad into helping me get into this race. Luckily, he found out in advance that you can set up an MCM account, which saved me precious time for registration. He set up a “ghost” account with my first and middle initial instead of my first name. At noon on Wednesday we were on the phone together and both went through the registration process. He followed me through, so that he could register me if I ran into connectivity issues. But I made it through. I thought getting to the point of putting in credit card information meant I was in, and as I was reviewing my info before clicking the final submit my dad was yelling “click submit, click submit!” It’s a good thing I did, because just moments later his registration kicked him back to the main screen and said the race was full. My heart was beating as fast as it does during a track workout going through that registration process!

3. This morning I ran 8 miles. I ran the first 3 miles with Sven (the treadmill, not the speedskater). Then I headed in to town and met up with Kim for another 5 miles. As we suspected, we found that the low water bridge was underwater on the trail.

There’s so much water rushing by that some of the trail is getting washed out, too. We could see other areas where the creek had been up over the trail. I guess that’s what happens when you have over 18 inches of snow melt, along with two days of heavy rain in the morning. This bridge was 2 miles into our run, though, so we just headed back to the parking lot and ran our last mile around town. No big deal. It was a gorgeous day outside, too. I got to run in shorts and a t-shirt!

Have you been watching the coverage of the Olympics? What has been your favorite? 

Have you ever had a race registration experience like mine? 

Anyone racing this weekend? 
Next weekend kicks off three weekends in a row of racing for me!