Happy Independence Day, everyone! For us, (okay, for P,) it's the most eagerly anticipated day of the year. We ran our fifth straight Peachtree Road Race. We will never ever get to say this again, so here it goes: "We SMOKED Jack!" But let's explain. Laura is a super-athlete, so she of course left us all behind at the starting line. We worked really, really, hard to outrun the JK/JK team. We intended to stick with them the whole way, but then Matthew became a world class runner out of nowhere and pushed me harder than I thought I could go, considering I had major thigh rash after a couple of miles from my new shorts that had become wet ("What's that vaseline for?" I asked at the starting line) and was in considerable pain. I was also fighting off back spasms and had, ahem, estrogen-related fatigue. Oh, and did I mention that I was coming down with a cold but didn't know it at the time? It was like the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon when a man is in his house happily cooking with a runaway train, a plane, and a meteor all headed toward his house.
I don't think I could have been more off my game. The Mangler, on the other hand, shrugged off a frustrating lack of training and proceeded to school my butt. We decided to go for the "run 'til it hurts, then walk a block, then run 'til it really hurts." Repeat for 6.2 miles. I accidentally paused my iPod for almost a mile, but I'm pretty sure we beat our PR by one or two minutes.
Then there were the fireworks in the square. We had a great setup:
and some good eats:
Chip was a little scared at first and decided that fireworks are bad because they sound like guns:
...but he acted his fear out through his cars, driving them into Mommy's shirt sleeve until they were ready to come out and watch the show:
