Good Monday morning to all! If you’re in Boone, I hope you’re dry, warm, and safe. If you’re not in Boone, well, I hope you’re safe. It has been raining since yesterday non-stop here in my little mountain town with no signs of letting up soon. Makes for interesting travel and dog walking. But enough about the rain…I want to share about my weekend with you!
It was pretty much a normal, uneventful weekend for me; but a big one for some people in my family. Why? The New River Half Marathon, of course! Every year the New River Marathon is held the first weekend in May (because that’s when things start to warm up around here. Heh, heh, heh. More on that later.) and my sister-in-law love, Fran decided to train for the half marathon.
In addition to Fran running, Evie, Mary Fran, LeeAnne, Ward, and Ruthie all decided to run the kids fun run on Friday night. As we Petreys are known to do, we went out the the marathon site to cheer on the kids as they ran one mile around the field.
All of the kids did such a great job, and I’m so proud of them!

Mary Fran and LeeAnne post race. Yes, LeeAnne wore her boots to run in.

Ruthie and Evie post race. Ruthie came in 8th and Evie 10th! Way to go, girls!
Ward didn’t want his pic taken, so just imagine his cute smiling face here.

Me with my running girls
While it was overcast and cloudy on Friday night, the weather wasn’t too bad. I wore a fleece vest and was perfectly comfortable. Then I woke up on Saturday morning. I’ll let Ward show you how we felt:

COLD. We were COLD.
It was somewhere around 40ish degrees with a brisk wind and misty fog. It wasn’t so bad once you got over the feeling of numbness in all of the exposed parts of skin. No big deal.
We were able to watch Fran run to the finish line and cheer her on which was fun. I then started to feel sorry for her because when you run 13.1 miles you’re going to sweat (it’s inevitable, folks) and when you sweat and its 40ish degrees outside, you get cold. Well, at least I get cold. Fran didn’t seem to be too cold, but perhaps she just has a great poker face?
We are all so proud of her for accomplishing this goal! She said that it was 11 years in the making (to clarify, unlike me it did not take her 11 years to train it was simply that the timing did not work out until now for her to run a 1/2 marathon. I think some fellow named Drew got in the way
) She did really great, and it was fun to cheer her on the sidelines as she ran in accomplishing her goal! In the words of my other sister-in-law love, Daphne: Way to go, Frances!
Yesterday, I woke up to a cold, cold rain in which I had to schlep about so my dog would go to the bathroom. Can someone please explain why it takes dogs f-o-r-e-v-e-r to use the bathroom while it’s pouring the rain? Anyone? I did my best to stay dry, but my poor little pink raincoat is dying a slow and painful death. It’s time for a new one. Lands End, here I come!
In closing, I would like to share with you my feelings of walking a dog in the pouring, freezing (did I mention it is cold?) rain:

It’s a joy, folks. A joy.
Have a great Monday, and stay dry!