The time I rode a horse and then ran a 10k in the rain

So Friday night, this happened.

And then 12 hours later, this happened.

Don't worry, I'll explain. 

So Friday evening I went down to the Stockyards with some of my favorite work people to ride horses down on the Trinity Trails. Even though I'm from DFW, I can seriously count on one hand how many times I've been down to that part of town, with the most recent being the Cowntown. It's a really great area, but pretty touristy so I guess as a local you don't really find yourself down there all too often. Mostly because it usually looks like this...

But Friday night it looked more like this:

Except less Christmasy. And more people. Pretty huh?

Anyways, about an hour of horseback riding and a very sore butt later, we headed over to Cattleman's for maybe the most outrageously good steak I have ever had. Ever. 

What?!??!! Saturday was race day. Onion rings = carbo-loading. (Oh and the reason you don't see any vegetables on my plate is because there were none. Get real, this is the south y'all.)

Oh and this guy came too. 

After a sunny and warm past two weeks, Texas decided it wanted to piss everybody off and get really cold again. Hence the scarf. Friday morning started off at about 60 degrees and gradually dropped down to the 40's as the day went on. That is just too cold. So Friday night before I went to bed, I said my prayers and crossed my fingers and hoped it would warm up to a comfortable temperature for the Lonestar 10k. 

Saturday morning roommate and I woke up bright and early at 5:30am to head to Arlington for the race. As we were getting ready, we noticed thunder, and lots of it. I did my impression of a totally cool, calm, and collected person and tried to convince Sydney that it was definitely not going to rain and would surely warm up to a delightfully sunny 75 degree morning. 

But the weather channel app is a jerk and refused to back me up on that...

Nonetheless, we tried to stay optimistic and headed to the race and tried to act tough. But let's be real y'all, no one wants to run in a 45 degree storm. And if you say you do I will call you a liar. 

Once we got to the race site, we were in the middle of some major thunder and lightning. As we hiked  around the ballpark to packet pickup, I convinced myself  that things could be worse, because hey, at least it wasn't raining. 

Oh just kidding.

So with about two minutes until start time, we put on our sexy ponchos and ventured out to the start line in the rain to see what the hell was going on. 

You already saw this picture but I thought I'd
refresh your memory with how good looking we are. 

(Also in case you were wondering what the freak is on my head, let me remind you, this was the Lonestar race. I was trying to be all patriotic with my Texas themed outfit and bandana. But no one else really cared about their Texas pride so really I just ended up looking a little silly. Luckily, I think people were so distracted by the hot mess poncho that they didn't notice.)

When we got to the start line everyone was just standing around, so we did the same. After about five minutes of the standing around, someone came by and announced that we were delayed for forty five minutes because of the storm. Since we'd had enough of that rainy nonsense, we headed inside the ballpark to wait it out.

As we were standing around and freezing our butts off, some random guy casually walked by and set a big cardboard box on a table and just walked away. All without saying a word. As soon as he walked away, and four million people flocked to the box and started tearing it open and started grabbing stuff out of it. I don't like to be left out so even though I had absolutely no idea what the hell they were doing I yanked something out of the box and HOLY COW BEST DECISION EVER. 

Stolen croissant. 

It was the weirdest thing ever but I am not one to argue with free and delicious food. 

As I was scarfing down my croissant they announced that the storm was passing and that we were getting ready to start the race. As we walked back out to the start line the lightning had cleared up and it was only slightly drizzling so I made an executive decision to ditch the poncho so that I wouldn't get hot. (Come to find out, that may not have been the best idea...)

The gun went off right before 99 and off we went. My goal for this race was to come in under 53 and to be honest with you I did absolutely no stretching whatsoever and so when I started running my legs were cold and tight and my shins were hurting. I'm so responsible. But I sucked it up and finally felt like I was getting into my groove around mile two...

And that's when the rain started. 

Um, I call bullshit on that^. Big fat lie from the very pit of hell. Running in the rain is awful. The raindrops pelting me in the eyes, the squishy shoes, the wet hair. I mean it was FORTY FIVE DEGREES PEOPLE. 

Stop that Tim Tebow, you look like a damn fool. 

Anyways, it rained hard for a solid mile. And it was terrible. The only good part about the rain is that it hides the tears. I mean I didn't cry, but I almost did. Finally, the rain let up. Thank. You. Lord. The rest of the race was pretty uneventful except for the giant hill right at the 4.5 mile mark. That sucked. When I got to where I could see the finish line, I pushed with what little energy I had left and came in at 52 minutes exactly. 

Aaaaand then I took a picture of myself. 

If I'm being honest, I don't know how much I cared for this race. Obviously I wasn't a fan of the rain, but the course was really strange, and we actually ended up running squiggles in a parking lot for about a half a mile. It seemed a little disorganized, but what I was most disappointed with was the finish and the fact that there were almost no spectators. I'm sure 75% of that had to do with the weather, but still. The best part of a race is the very end where the finish line is in sight and the energy is high all the strangers are cheering for you. This race had none of that. Since I was kindove bummed out by that I decided to find a perfect spectator spot to scream and cheer for my sweet roommate and her friend as they neared the finish line.

 

That's some fine Iphone photography right there. 

Survival thumbs up!

I was so glad to be done with that race. Once we got home, I took the world's hottest shower and then headed out to Taylor's where I did this for the entire afternoon:

Saturday evening we headed over to a charity dinner and auction benefiting an awesome organization called Our Father's Children (you can read about my company's work day experience with OFC here). It was such a fun event, and y'all that dinner was out of this world. 

I'm not kidding when I say that chocolate cake was the best I have ever had. And that's a bold statement. 

And we won something! As we were checking out the silent auction, the very first thing that caught my eye was this amazing love sign. I absolutely had to have it, but I that the chances of me winning that bid were slim to none. Silent auctions are pretty ruthless. But even though I didn't win the bidding war, Taylor did! 

He's the best. Really, he is. 

I apologize for the length of this post, and for all of the incessant picture posting, but really if you come here often, you shouldn't be surprised. 

Weekends like this make it really really hard to go back to work on Monday morning.

LOVE&HUGS,

Nat