Austin Half Marathon

This past weekend, I headed to Austin with 4 others to run in the Half Marathon that was happening on Sunday morning. We headed out from school on Friday afternoon, and arrived in Austin at almost 11pm. The drive is close to 7 hours! I did some outlet shopping on Saturday (had lots of success at Banana Republic!) and got to visit some of the stores I'd been hearing about from my new-found American friends (REI = American equivalent of MEC and Whole Foods, which yes, has arrived in Canada, but I had never been).

The race was at 7am on Sunday morning. Both the half marathon and the marathon started at the same time. There were 12,000 runners gathered by 6:30am, in the dark, with a temperature of about 40 degrees farenheit (not warm!). The half and full marathons followed the same course for the first 10 miles. Along the race course were many bands and tons of spectators. The race bibs that were printed with our numbers also had our names printed on them which meant that there were random people in the crowd yelling "Go Ginny!" which was a pleasant surprise when you didn't expect to have anyone cheering for you.

While I had been doing some training to prepare for this race, I really wasn't sure how it was going to. I'd been feeling pretty crappy for the past couple of weeks, with random colds and coughs. I'd also had some trouble with both my new and old pairs of running shoes (both were giving me blisters)... So, I didn't have huge expectations for the race. I was hoping to finish in just under 2 hours, which is something I had accomplished in the past.

At the race expo on Saturday, I found out that the course, being in the USA, was only going to have mile markers instead of kilometer markers. It took me a little while to get my head around this because I am used to pacing myself by the kilometer. I have a good idea of how fast I should be running each km, but I hadn't ever thought of running in terms of miles. I did a little math that night and figured that if I ran 9minute miles, I would finish in approximately 1hour 58 minutes, so that is what I set out to do.

I guess adrenaline and the crowd, and the gorgeous sun that came out gave me a little push because I finished in 1:54:14. I was soooo happy. I can't wait to get emailed the pictures of me crossing the finish line as I'm expecting to see a huge smile across my face. That race time meant I was 387 out of 3006 women, which made me quite proud.

Because the race was so early, we got to enjoy the rest of the day in Austin (had lunch at Whole Foods, played Shuffleboard, went to the Alama movie theatre, where you eat dinner while you are eating, and had the obligatory nap). Austin is definitely a city I can see spending some more time in. It has a very laid-back, unique feel to it. There are many independent stores/restaurants as well as local chains. The city has a river running through it with some great running paths. I was very impressed.

We had opted to take Monday off of work so that we wouldn't have to sit in the car for 7 hours after just running 21km. This was absolutely the right choice. My legs were quite sore on Monday, as well as Tuesday, but feel great today. I'm now trying to pick my next goal race.. There is an upcoming 10k in Monterrey, so perhaps I'll do that.

I'm waiting to get emailed some races pictures from the others who went with me... I'll try to post them when I get them.

Small Adventure Turns Big...

This weekend, while many other staff members have travelled south to Playa del Carmen, I decided I wanted to stay put in Monterrey. I'll be heading to Austin in two weeks for a half marathon and wanted to be sure I could get my last long run in and spend some time relaxing around the house.

Abby and I decided that we would take a day trip to the nearby city of Saltillo. Saltillo is the capital of Coahuila, the next state over. The drive is not far - it should take less than an hour. We set out early on Saturday morning and unfortunately were driving in an incredibly thick fog. Visibility was horrible. We could barely see the car in front of us.


Despite this. the drive didn't take much more than an hour and 15 minutes, and we made it to the Museo del Desierto (Desert Museum) just as it opened.

This is a pretty neat museum - with dinosaur fossils and all sorts of information about the vegetation and animals of the desert region. It was a challenge though - as all the information was in spanish. I managed to understand a surprising amount. I'll have to tell the kids in my class to visit this museum. We've been studying dinosaurs for the past month in second grade and most of them are pretty much obsessed. I took some pictures that I'll share with them.



After the museum, we parked downtown and went to the market. Saltillo is known for its "sarapes". These are basically the Mexican blankets that a lot of people think of as being a typical souvenir of Mexico. I bought myself a brightly colored striped one that I'll leave out in our living room as a little bit of warmth and a lot of color.

We ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant and I was impressed with how adventurous we were. I had a chicken soup (caldo de pollo, I think) and then there was pollo en una salsa de queso con arroz (chicken in a cheese sauce with rice). On the side there was avocado, and some lettuce and tomato. Though I ate everything else, I didn't trust the uncooked veggies, so I skipped out on my greens.

Shortly after, Abby and I decided we'd seen enough of Saltillo and would head back to Monterrey. It was only 2:30, so I was anticipating we would be back by 4:00 which still left quite a bit of the day in Monterrey. After maneuvering some one way streets, we eventually got to the highway and headed towards Monterrey.

Around 3:00 traffic slowed right down. In fact, we were essentially stopped. In one hour, we moved maybe 50 feet. People were getting out of their cars and trucks to try and figure out what was going on. We were at a junction on the highway and we could see that the lane from the other highway that joined ours was backed up for as far as we could see. I got out of the car and in broken spanish asked a man what was going on. He told me that a truck had fallen over and some pipe had broken and there was liquid all over the road. I asked how long he thought it would be until we moved, and he guessed 3 hours. Abby and I had already looked at the map to see if there were any sideroads we could take to get out of here, but there weren't any in the nearby area. I asked the man if he knew any other way to get to Monterrey. He said we could follow him to Monclava. A few others cars were going to do this, so I got back in the car with Abby and off we went.

Now, Monclava was 170km from where we were. It was also directly north and we needed to travel only 56km more to Monterrey (which was west). We decided we'd rather be moving than sitting on the highway for who knows how long, so we headed to Monclava. At Monclava there is a second highway that takes you south-west to Monterrey - an additional 170km. We ended up getting back to Monterrey around 8pm, exhausted, slightly frustrated and ready to be home. We convinced ourselves that we had chosen the better option, saying that we were sure those people were still stuck on the highway.

This morning I checked the news to find out what had happened. Well, it turns out we did make the better choice, even if we ended up driving 340km instead of 56. The crash had happened just before 3:00pm. The highway didn't get cleared until at least 11pm, though some reports were saying it took 15 hours to restore the highway to normal use. Yikes.

Well, at least we got to see a little more of Mexico, treat ourselves to an icecream sandwich at the Oxxo (like a 7-11) in Monclava, and get home only 12 hours after we'd left that morning.

Observations about Mexican life...

I’ll be the first to admit it – I haven’t been as regular about updating my blog lately as I would have liked. While I don’t have major stories to tell, I’ll fill you in on some of my recent observations about life in Mexico.

After two and a half weeks of HORRIBLE weather (horrible for Monterrey, not for Canada…), we’ve finally been enjoying a couple days of sunshine. This past Saturday I actually got a little burn on my nose while doing my long run. It is currently 24 degrees and still light out. This warmth and light helps me understand why in Mexico they don’t say “Buenas noches” (Good night) until at least 8:00. You start saying “Buenas tardes” (Good afternoon) around noon and don’t stop until quite late. In Canada, especially in the darkest days of winter, it feels like bedtime at 4:30… Here, with the light and the warmth, 5:00 seems like the middle of the afternoon. It’s lovely!

In Mexico it is the law that public schools close when it is less than 4 degrees Celsius. Fortunately (or unfortunately??) my school stays open because we have heaters (though their effectiveness is severely compromised by the lack of insulation and thin, thin windows). However, two weeks ago, there was a day when I had only 10 students (half my class) present because of the cold weather. I guess I can understand it – we wear our jackets and hats almost all day long INSIDE when it is cold like that… but still… it isn’t like it is necessarily warmer at their houses.

There are certain roles that the sexes play here… and one of those is that generally, men play quite a masculine, almost macho role. This transcends all the way down to my own kids where the boys will take an awful spill during a soccer game, but want no nurturing, or sympathy. Instead they simply get up and keep playing (no matter their pain). They definitely don’t want to show that they got hurt. It’s quite cute. You also see the boys walking around with arms over each other’s shoulders. This is extremely cute – especially when the boys are 6 or 7 years old.

I had my first set of tacos from a street-side taco restaurant. It wasn’t one of those carts that they can just set up anywhere, but a permanent restaurant that is completely open to the outside with a bar that you can sit at and see where they are cooking the food. This past weekend we did this crazy scavenger hunt around Monterrey for someone’s 30th birthday. One of the things you had to do, as a team of 4, was eat 30 tacos. So… we did. And they were quite good! So either health standards aren’t as bad as I’ve been imagining them to be, or my stomach has made some gradual adjustments to Mexican cooking. Hopefully any future experiences will be just as positive.

So it is now the time of the year when people teaching internationally have to figure out what they are doing next year. In fact, we actually had to re-sign our contracts before we went home in December. Recruiting fairs are happening now and some people from my school are headed to some pretty exciting places… One man to Paris, a couple to Chile, another guy to Singapore.. and a bunch are going to job fairs this weekend. It is crazy to think that it was at this point this year that I was heading to the Queen’s fair with no idea where I would end up. It is equally crazy that in less than a year from now I’ll have to make a decision about the next year…

I’m off… Would love to hear updates from home… see pictures of snow… my kids are fascinated by them!