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Monday, March 31, 2008 

Fun In The Sun

This past weekend was one to remember, one I had been looking forward to for a long time. I got the chance to head to another city and see a good friend of mine, and at the same time run my first half marathon. I flew down Friday night to meet my friend there, and when I arrived I found that 12 other people had come down! They had come down to run as well, and we spent a great weekend together.

That Friday night we all met at a restaurant for one of my top 5 favorite foods of all time.


Look at that meat!!

It was great to hang out with some good friends, it's something I don't get to do much of over here. I hang out with people a lot over here, just not those that speak my language or have my viewpoint or believe like I do. It's always good when I can get together with others doing what I'm doing. I feel like I can relax and just enjoy the time together.

Aside from spending time with good people, I did go to run a half marathon. My friends had been training for like 6 months for this thing, and I had been training for a month or so. With that in mind, you'd think we'd have been a little more serious about it, but we were having too good of a time together.

The day before the marathon we went and got registered, then spent the entire day touring around and seeing all the sites. The marathon was in a small city, but the place was packed with historical sites, from the prophet Daniel's grave to a place where Seth (as in Adam's son) once lived, to a well owned by Paul. I'm not commenting on the authenticity of those sites, but it's pretty impressive that they would make the claim anyway.




After walking a good 10k or so touring the city, we all headed back for a pasta party. Pasta parties are a good idea before a marathon, but ours didn't get going until 10:30 at night! It was fun nonetheless, and we had a good time carbing up. After a full day of walking around, historical site seeing, and pasta eating, we finally got to bed around 1 in the morning.

We all got up at 6am and promptly headed to the race site. I was really tired, but I perked up when we got to the race. Around 9am we joined the thousands of people running through the old city. To make a long story short, I ran for a long time and then finished. I was doing pretty well until the 14th kilometer, and then the going got hard. I was really tired, and it occurred to me that I need to train for more than a month for a half-marathon. But, I did manage to run the whole thing and finished with a respectable time.

After the race we lazied around and had some more of that wonderful meat, then it was off to the airport to head back home.