zooma, we are never ever getting back together

Dear Zooma,

I should spare your feelings and say it's not you, it's me but that's a lie. Zooma you are an awful race, a hard race, a race that I can't seem to crack and I'm done with you. 

I should have known from the beginning that we were not meant to be. You gave me a crappy bib number. Odd numbers! How can I possibly perform well with only one even number on my bib! So inconsiderate of you Zooma. 

Can we talk for a second about your need for me to wake up at 4am? Because 4am is hella early. My timeline for race morning was:

• 4am wakeup
• 4:30am leave house
• 5am arrive at parking lot/catch shuttle to resort
• 5:40am arrive at resort, pick prime spot on lobby floor and camp out for 2 hours until race start.

Two hours Zooma. I sat on a hotel lobby floor for two hours reading a book and trying not to pass out using my gear check bag as a pillow. I also got to eat a baggie of boiled eggs that I peeled in a hotel bathroom because at 4am I wasn't thinking clearly enough to peel them before leaving the house. 

Bathroom eggs Zooma. You made me eat bathroom eggs.

You're hilly Zooma. So hilly that you make the Austin half marathon look flat. That's quite an achievement and you should be proud of it. But damn if that doesn't pose a problem for anyone in a relationship with you. Hills are exhausting. Hills are hard. Hills can break a girl. 

I mean really, a big hill at mile 10.5? That's not good for our relationship. 

Zooma, I admit that for the first five miles I thought we were going strong. You had me convinced you were one thing but then something changed and your true self came through. I'm sorry, but I didn't like who you became. In fact, at mile 12 I absolutely hated you.

Hey mile 12 sign! Screw you. I almost ran over and knocked you down. I totally would have done it if running to you wouldn't have meant I had to take ten extra steps. 

I know when you're ending a relationship it's good to get right to the point and not prattle on like I'm doing but dammit Zooma, I thought we had a good thing. You were my March half and I was so ready for you. I wanted to do well. I wanted to PR. I wanted to continue our relationship next year. But it's not meant to be. We are never ever getting back together. 

Embarrassing. But at least my March half is in the books. Onward to April and a new relationship with a half in NYC. 

coupled

As much as I like to pretend I lead a glamourous life, the truth is that since re-committing myself to working out I live in workout clothes, tee shirts, and pony tails. I often don't bother with makeup because I'm just going to sweat it off while running. 

Here's me on basically every day of my life. I love a giant purse and have carried this love over to under eye bags. The bigger the better, yes?

I like to think I clean up well though so last year when we took family pictures I started thinking about how jparks and I aren't getting any younger and how we have only a handful of pictures of just us. We eloped and there's only a few pictures from that event and definitely no engagement session. Our kids are runners so if we ever dared to try to a take picture of just us out somewhere we would totally lose them both. The only thing to do was book a session with Michele for just jparks and I, ditch the kids, and get gussied up. 

Goal: achieved!

This one, which I love, makes me feel like I should be eating a salad in it. (I know the meme is eating salad alone but whatever)

This session was hard for jparks. He didn't realize the pictures would be posed and he was utterly embarrassed by everything we did. We were far from alone on the streets and people kept walking passed us saying "engagement session!" It really took a lot of of him to not be a smart ass the whole time. In this picture he was told to touch me and he would like you to know that this is technically touching. 

Purple hair!

Michele asked jparks if he could jump and jump he did. This was his warm up one:

And here's his best Jackie Chan impression:

Y'all. I'm so glad we did this session. I love all the pictures and can't accurately describe how awesome Michele is. I'm always amazed when we get our pictures from her and eager to book another session. She's the best ever. Seriously.