I did it!!!

I did it!!! Actually, I did 2 things: I finished my Apricot Jacket, and I finished a marathon with no problems! My Apricot Jacket is beautiful. It was all done last Monday with the exception of buttons. I didn't get a chance to look for buttons until Wednesday afternoon, then a friend of mine at my LYS found the perfect ones. They're square-ish and mosiac looking, with bits of blue, pink and green in them. Their colors and geometry go well with the jacket. I wore it to work on Thursday and was astonished by my cuteness every time I saw my reflection in a mirror! It's such a great piece to knit.

On the marathon front, I ran the Country Music Marathon yesterday. Because of my past inability to finish a marathon, I was really weird about this one. I waited until the last minute to sign up for it, I didn't tell anyone except for my husband, my hairdresser, and one of my swimming and running partners that I was doing it, and I didn't taper at all. (Usually people take it easy the week leading up to a marathon by not exercising as much as they normally do; I didn't do that at all. I wanted it to feel like just another training run for me rather than a marathon.) I took it easy during the race and walked 1 minute for every 9 minutes I ran, whether I felt like I needed to walk or not. I didn't look at my watch every time I passed a mile marker, and I didn't look at the clocks at the mile markers. I didn't want to get caught up with my time; I just wanted to finish. I actually did pretty well: 4 hours, 19 minutes and 4 seconds. That's over 11 minutes faster than my previous fastest marathon. Today my legs are very tired and sore, but I'm very happy. I really wanted to cross the finish line of a marathon before going to Madison in September for Ironman, so now I can cross that off my list! And now I can stop worry about long runs and spend more time on my bike! Yay!

Off to knit now. I've got only 2 projects going: the Koigu pants from the Winter 2004/05 issue of Vogue Knitting, and the Tempting sweater from knitty.com. Tempting is my idiotic project that I do while in the car or waiting in line somewhere, so I think I'll work on my pants right now.

Knit on!