St. Patricks Day Weekend and Race Recap

As noted in my last post, we had a funfilled weekend lined up.  We got a late start on Saturday, but still made it to pick up my brother Pat and down to the Boston Museum of Science a few hours before closing.  We learned that the girls are really too young for most of it, but we made the best and still had a lot of fun.  After that we went over to South Boston and hung out with family and my wonderful Aunt Maureen made us some yummy haddock for dinner.  The guys took the kids down to the beach to see "the biggest moon ever"(it was actually the closest the moon will ever be to the earth) and Devin was super excited about that.  Since it was already hours past Devin and Cori's bedtimes, we called it a night and went back to my grandparents house to get them to bed.  My lucky grandparents are in Florida, so they weren't there to visit with us. :(  I then stayed up chatting with my brother Pat, went to bed way past MY bedtime, and then slept horribly because some little girl I know was hogging the bed all night. Good thing she's cute. :)

Sunday was Race and Parade day.  I got up before everyone else and just hung out and had coffee for a while because the race wasn't until 11am.  I still limited myself to one cup of coffee (when I would have liked a lot more) because I know better before a race.  My (soon to be) sister in law Amanda was running the race with me, so her and my brother Jack picked me up when they got to town and he dropped us off at the Boys and Girls Club to run the Boys and Girls Club St. Patricks Day 5k.

Amanda and I (after the race of course)

Amanda still had to get her number so we ran inside and I waited in line for the bathroom while she got her number.  We got outside just a few minutes before race time and we couldn't even get out to the street.  It was craziness.  There were just under 2000 people running.  After the gun went off we ended up going under the rope that blocked off the sidewalk and the street and sneaking up to the starting line.  It took a couple minutes after starting to get away to loosen up from the pack, but not as long as I expected.  And then I had to do a lot of bobbing and weaving.  The streets are nice and wide so fortunately it wasn't too clogged.  The route was actually a lot hillier than I had expected, but it was a nice little run and due to the parade a couple hours later there were a lot of people cheering on the runners.  I was FREEZING for at least the first half of the race and I think next time its in the 30's I will not wear shorts.  So I ended up finishing in 21:25 and 10th in my age group (there were actually 593 in my age group) so I was pretty happy with the race, although I left it feeling like I could have done better.  That feeling stinks after a race, but I could have pushed it harder at a few points during the race I could have changed the fact that I had (this will be a little tmi) pee almost the entire race.  I even went to the bathroom right before we started and I stopped drinking water at 930am.  This is a big problem for me during races and I don't really know how to fix it.  But I'll tell ya its really difficult to give it all at the end of a race when you feel like you are going to pee your pants.  I joke about it with my family, but it really is starting to be a big problem.  Does anybody else have this problem?  Any suggestions as to how I can make it better?

After the race was the St. Patricks Day Parade and so it was great to spend the entire day hanging with family and watching the parade. 


After the parade we all went back again to my Aunt Maureens and she made some DELICIOUS Guinness Beef Stew.  As soon as I have the recipe I will share it with you!  Hope you all had a great weekend as well, tell me what you did over the weekend?