Finished!

The marathon kicked my immune system's butt, so I won't write much now. I felt like I had a cold coming on the day before the race, and now it's hit me full force.

As you can see from the photo, my father and I successfully finished our first half and full marathons! It was quite the life experience, I must say. I ran for 5 hours and 14 minutes, but finished without throwing up and with no injuries, so I'm really happy with that!

More to come later...

The Day Before

Tomorrow I'm going to run a marathon. I'm going to run 26.2 miles, and it will probably take me nearly five hours. Though I run intervals (run 4 minutes, walk 1 minute, repeat), I don't think my body will care about that one minute of walking once I hit mile 20. Or mile 21. Or any mile thereafter. Afterwards, I'll cry and hug my friends, eat free food, confirm plans for a pedicure on Monday, and go home to an ice bath. Twenty minutes of sitting in icy water - I'll probably need 30 pounds this time - should just about do it. So, what am I thinking at this moment? I'm so excited I can hardly stand it! I'm so excited in fact, that my friend Marisela, my father, and I have already signed up to run a half marathon in Austin on February 15th.

I can still remember when I started running, back in Nishiokoppe. Over and over I told Aaron that I just wanted to be able to run a 5K. Three miles would be good enough for me. Our friend, Nao, was married to a marathoner. I would occasionally pass her in the chilly mornings as she trained for the Tokyo marathon. Later I would shake my head in disbelief, unable to comprehend what would drive someone to run such a great distance. That all changed last November when I ran in a 5K race which preceded the San Antonio Marathon. As I watched all the marathoners run past me, I was nearly brought to tears as I thought about the struggled they would face for the next few hours, the dedication and craziness of it all. Then the thought crept into my head, slowly at first, building in intensity until I found myself sitting at home looking at the website for next year's inaugural San Antonio Rock and Roll Marathon. By the end of that day, I had paid my money and become obsessed with the idea of it all.

So here I am, a year later, resting before my big day. I still can't really say why I'm doing it, only that I know it's going to be wonderful and I can't wait to plan my next one. I'm met some great folks along the way: Carla and Marisela who are my perfect "pace-mates"; Speedy Tom, Veronica, April, and Katherine, and Justin - whose wife is also running and who had enough dedication to find a sitter at 5:00 a.m. every Saturday for six months! I've read books and magazines, watched Marathon movies, and risen early morning after morning. Not a single second of it have I regretted. I've never been what I would consider an athlete, but tomorrow it feels as if a journey that I began on a cold morning in Japan will take on a new life. For after tomorrow, I can officially say I'm a “Marathoner”, and to me, that suddenly means that anything is possible. If I can go from couch potato to Marathon Mom, what other possibilities lie ahead of me? Only time will tell, but I'm excited to find out.

Never, never, never give up!

Catching Up

(by the way, the main photo here was taken after my second 20 mile practice run - feel free to be in awe of us, because, yes, we are still smiling!)

Okay, okay…so I know it’s been forever since I’ve written anything. Can I, yet again, blame the crazy fast pace of our lives? I hate to say this, but I suspect that my blogging is going to be pretty consistently inconsistent for a while. However, I will endeavor to cover the past two months as best I can.

Ridge and Holt began school without a hitch. Ridge is, of course, in second grade and Holt is in kindergarten. We are extremely lucky to have landed absolutely fantastic teachers for both of the boys. Last week their first report cards for the year were sent home and I am proud to say they are doing extremely well. Ridge is reading above grade level and Holt is very enthusiastic about learning to read. He simply loves sounding out words he sees written around him.

Ridge continues to enjoy JuJitsu and even competed in an in-house tournament on Saturday (that means it was a tournament at our school). He fought well, but more importantly he had fun. In addition to JuJitsu, Ridge has also started taking weekly guitar lesson and continues to forge ahead with is Japanese school every Saturday morning. As for Holt, he is taking Hip Hop lessons every week. No matter what, we couldn’t convince him to join us in our JuJitsu lessons, but instead asked for “dancing lessons”. Both boys will have a recital in December. It should be interesting!

Aaron was finally accepted in to the nursing program at San Antonio College. I won’t go in to details, but lets just say that the red tape that goes along with getting into nursing school is a pain! He’s excited about finally getting underway, though. For him, the next two years will no doubt be busy and stressful.

As for me, my marathon day is nearly here and I am so excited I can hardly stand it! I have done two 20 mile runs and survived them both, thanks to my WONDERFUL Team in Training teammates. My friend and I have already decided on our next race (we are insanely optimistic) – the Austin half marathon in February. In addition to running, I’ve discovered that I, too, just love JuJitsu. On Saturday, I also competed in the tournament along with Ridge and Aaron.

Many of you might be aware that I began a new job this year. I’m part of what I like to call a Behavioral SWAT team. When schools are at a loss as to what to do with special education kids with extreme behavior problems, they call us. I work district wide with all grade levels to support school staff. If you find that you are just dying of curiosity, you can even go to my school district website: http://tw.neisd.net/webpages/mfelke.

So, all in all, everyone is happy and busy – but not too busy. In fact, maybe now that I’m officially caught up with my blog I’ll be better about posting more often. Cross your fingers.

Here is a sampling of pictures taken over the past few weeks. Most should be self-explanatory. There’s one that’s a little blurry – that’s me fighting Laura, the Brazilian girl who works at the Jujitsu school. The man in the photo with Ridge is our teacher, whom we call "Marra" (pronounced "maha").