Animal Liberation

It was a big weekend, loyal readers!!!

Marathon. Chris ran the SBS Christchurch marathon in 3:43, thereby completing his first sub-4 hour race AND smashing his previous best time by 20 minutes. Furthermore, he wasn't at all limpy when it was over. Not too shabby.

I am a terrible wife who didn't get any finish line pictures of Chris, mostly because I didn't expect him to finish so quickly and didn't seriously start looking for him until he had already crossed the line. Then it turned out the camera batteries were dead. Yes, I know. Terrible wife. So you'll have to use your vivid imaginations, loyal readers, to envision him looking sweaty and victorious. Chariots of Fire, kind of thing. (Addendum: go to this link, click on SBS Christchurch marathon, and type in our last name to see Chris's race photos. Apparently the 10k crowd didn't warrant any photos, or maybe it was just me. Hmph.)

I was considerably lamer but had fun in my 10k. Had previously planned to run the half marathon but back trouble and laziness got me off the training schedule a while back so I decided to keep things simple. (Here's to regrouping for the Dunedin half marathon in September ... ) We went to Christchurch with Chris's boss and his wife. Chris's boss is a running coach for a local track club so it was more than a little humbling meeting some of his runners and acquaintances who actually run these races to win. Way beyond my comprehension.

Dogs. The second objective for our Christchurch trip was to spring our furry freaks from quarantine. As you may know, loyal readers, I am not big on the whole "mushiness" thing, but this was truly a warm and fuzzy experience. They were just beaming joy the whole car ride home. You could tell they were both exhausted but Owen would NOT close his eyes ... he just stared at us the entire time.

Once we got home they sniffed out the house and enjoyed the backyard. I tried to get a picture of both of them but Owen still has this bizarre, crippling fear of cameras and ended up hiding under a bush until we managed to coax him out with some snacks. (I think we are resigned to taking the one decent photo we have of him [see "In Retrospect, Pet Fish Would Have Been a Good Idea"] and photoshopping it into all of our future family photos.)

Now I'm covered in dog hair and they've splashed drinking water all over the kitchen floor and all is right with the world. At times this has been an unbearably frazzling process, but the payoff today was huge.