Ok, so it's very possible I was sick.

My nose is running all over the place, and I'm sneezing about 3 times a minute.

I'm now remembering that on Friday my throat hurt, but I attributed it to California dry air. And then on race day, I felt really lightheaded and dizzy, but I thought that was because I was nervous about the race. And then the day after, my chest hurt a lot - my description was 'I feel like someone bounced a basketball on my chest' - but I thought that was because I had just done a really hard Half IronMan. And then last night on the plane, my nose started to run and my ears were popping in that really painful way that makes you think you've punctured your eardrum, and I was actually still in denial - I thought it was just because planes are gross and I always feel sick on them.

But now? I definitely have a head cold. So, it's possible that my horrendous race performance was partially because of the oncoming sickness. It's also possible that I was fine beforehand and I stressed my body out so much during the trip that I got a cold.

I guess it doesn't matter either way, and perhaps all this is a thinly veiled manner of complaining about my cold. Regardless, my run was a 3+ hour death march which I will never repeat.

The good news? It's SUMMER!! I finished my paper today, sent it on its electronic journey, and I'm officially done. I have a couple more flute lessons, but that's not school. I do have one optional paper (my grade will be a B if I don't do it, and an A if I do), and since it's only a 5 page paper, I should probably suck it up and pound out another paper. I have a few more days though, so I'm not going to worry about it as of yet. For now, I'm going to enjoy the fact that all of my official non-negotiable obligations are done and I'm free.

Here are the pictures I took over the weekend in slide-show format. I'll post some of them individually with explanations over the next few days, but I thought the bunch of them together tell the whole story better than the few lone ones would. I also included the pictures Rainmaker took on the course and was nice enough to send my way. He caught me at the end of the run after the final uphill - I had one mile of downhill left, so when I saw him I started to actually run/jog/not trudge. Don't pay attention to the finishing time on those pictures. I was really slow, but the clock is race time, not my wave time. I know it doesn't matter, but the little Scorpio competitive streak in me is kind of embarrassed.

And yeah, there's chocolate ice cream all over my face and shirt in the post race picture. Typical.