Bolder Boulder 10k

This is a picture of our friend Kris Williams. A photographer for the Daily Camera took a picture of her cool sign. We got the picture off the Daily Camera website. My head is to the right. She got lots of good comments about the sign, and people even told them their name to put on next year!

I dropped Steve off at the runner drop off around 6:20 am. He had written me directions to get to the part of the course I wanted to watch from. Of course every street I had to go on was closed! Some of the larger signs said road closed starting 7:00 am. Since it wasn't really 7:00 yet, I just drove around the road closed signs. Probably a bad idea, but all the cops I passed didn't say anything! I was literally the only car I saw on the roads! For 10 minutes it was just me! Then I got blocked into the closed parts and couldn't get around any of the barriers. I drove under the 8.5 km banner, and went to the nearest parking spot, which wasn't even a block away. I had wanted to be at the 8 km mark, but 8.5 was perfect. The way the course wrapped around, 2 km was at one corner, and 8.5 km was one block down on the same road. So I went to the 2 km first, but unfortunately I didn't see him run by that time. Each wave of runners (76 waves total) was anywhere from 45 seconds to 1 minute behind the other. So at the beginning there were just zillions of people running by and I missed him :(

After I was sure he had passed, I walked about 2 minutes to the 8.5 km mark and waited. The leader passed me at 7:28 am. Steve ran by at 7:32 am. I cheered for him when he ran by (so did Troy and Kris who luckily got there about 2 minutes before he ran by). I looked at my clock, and tried to calculate how much longer it would take him to finish, and I came up with about 10 minutes faster than his goal time. I was about right. His official time was 39:03, 9 minutes under what he wanted to run.

We hung around maybe 2 more hours cheering for some friends from church. We got home at 11:30 and took an hour and a half nap. Getting up at 4:30 for a race isn't very fun! At 2:30 we had friends over from church for a little cook out. It was a good day!

~*~ Ashley ~*~

By popular demand, here is a picture of my new haircut. It is kind of being stupid today. Plus I took the picture myself, which never really looks good!

On a side note, for all of you short haired people out there, I found a styling product that I really like. I don't like to use moose, gel, or hairspray because it makes your hair hard and not movable. So you can't go out in the wind, or touch your hair all day, as it will be messed up. I have been Garnier Fructis Texture Paste. You put it in your hair wet and style it like you want, and it stays. You can go out in the wind, or run your fingers through your hair, and it goes back to how you wanted it. I think it is pretty awesome. So if you are looking for something different to try, this one is good!

~*~ Ashley ~*~

Little Update

We started off our Saturday by getting 9 inches cut off my hair! WAHOO! It started to bother me on Monday, and I have been dieing to cut it off since then. It is right about at my chin now. I was kind of bummed when we left the salon though. The lady told another lady that if I would have had one more inch, I could have donated it all to Locks of Love. If she would have told me that when she originally measured how much she was cutting off, I would have said to go ahead and cut off one more inch. It would have been a little shorter than I was planning, but it would have been okay since I would have donated. Oh well. Maybe next time.

Next we drove to Boulder so Steve could register to run the Bolder Boulder 10k on Memorial Day. He wanted to be in the 4th wave of runners, so he had to qualify by running on a treadmill. For the 4th wave, he had to run 2 miles in less than 13:56. So he set the treadmil to do that. He said it seemed really slow to him, so after the first mile, he set it to go faster. The 3rd wave had to have 2 miles in less than 13:32. He was doing really good, but I could tell he still wasn't pushing himself, so I made him speed up even more. I was getting nervous that he wasn't going to make it when he had .2 miles left to go, so I turned it up even faster. I'm a great coach. The second heat had to run 2 miles in less than 13:01, and he did it in 12:43. So he will be in the 2nd wave, and he only wanted the 4th. There are 76 waves by the way! There are going to be about 90,000 people running/walking in the race, which makes it the largest road race in North America.

After that we went to the Boulder Running Company so he could get some new shoes. The ones he has been running in are about 5 years old. He picked out the same pair, and they made him run on a treadmill and they videotaped his feet to see if the shoes were good for how he ran. They weren't! His left foot was doing something funky (I don't remember what it was called, but they said it all technical). So they picked out a different pair, and he rain again, and it was perfect! I thought it was really cool how they could do that, and I think all runners should have that done. It was pretty amazing. We will have to see how he feels after he runs in them a few times.

Now it is time to make some candles!

~*~ Ashley ~*~

Not much happening

Hello everyone. I thought I would give a little update, but there is not much going on around here. Our days are made up of working and coming home to make candles! It is going good so far, and is a lot of fun. If I ever get the garage organized, I will take a picture to show you all our little workshop. Right now it looks like a tornado went through there! I am doing a fundraiser on June 30th for the church to raise money for the mission trip to Mexico. I am already busy making a lot of candles to take there. Hopefully it will be a big seller since part of the profits will go to the mission trip.

We got a call and email from a women's show in Denver in the middle of August. Thousands of people go through a day, so we would get a lot of coverage. We were really excited about it, then we saw the registration price. A little under $800 for the smallest booth they had. We definitely won't be doing that! That price alone isn't TOO bad, but we would also have to spend $1000 or more just to get enough glass and stuff to make a zillion candles to take with us. It sure would be a great opportunity though!

I am now an official member of the Association for Genetic Technologists. That makes me excited, haha. It's all official sounding. In August I will be able to take my certification test. Then you can call me Ashley M. Hall, CLSp(CG). Won't that be exciting!

~*~ Ashley ~*~