How to cure a cold...

..how about having bugger all sleep and running 13.1 miles? Actually, it worked out pretty well for me. I think I'm mostly ill because I'm run down and stressed about my thesis, so getting to forget about it for a whole weekend was great.

I ran the Georgetown to Idaho Springs half marathon with Andy. We drove a senic route there past Lookout mountain, giving me the opportunity to shout 'lookout! mountain!'.. I do this everytime we pass and will continue until either Andy laughs or hell freezes over.

I had one of those rare pleasures: a perfect race. Everything came together for me on the day, I ate right and ran strong. I thought I was on for a mild case of the Paulas, but everything settled down ok :). The course was undulating, but generaly undulated in a downward direction, so it was great. Our pace varied between a crazy 9.30 per mile (very fast for me, slow for normal people!) and just over 10 min miles. We ran the first half in 1:04. I was thinking about slowing down anyway when Andy started to feel ill. So, not only did I run a PB by about 7 minutes, but I also proved to myself that I'm not a horribly over competative selfish runner by walking with Andy when he needed it. I reasoned that I'd have other half marathons but only one fiance. I did leave him in the last half mile and, as advocated by some crazy shouty spectators, 'ran my buns off'. There were a lot of friendly spectators, and we were wearing our patriotic tops, which allowed all the Colorado brits to locate us. The atmosphere was great. Now if I can just shave about 40 mins off my time I might start winning :).

We went back to the motel and replaced the smell of damp dog that seemed to be eminating from the bedding with a smell of strong muscle rub. The hotel was a bit skanky, but at least the power was back on- the night before there had been an outage and the woman on the desk was working by torchlight. She wasn't too pleased that we couldn't pay our bill in advance, 'the boss normally likes payment in advance','yes but you have no power so can't process credit cards, 'yes, but he normally likes payment in advance'... jeez.

We discovered the motel jacuzii, and 15 minutes of having my swimming costume inflated by the air jets and my legs soothed was almost enough to make me forgive the damp dog smell. We did get shouted at as we left the spa because it was 'by appointment only'..maybe if they put up some signs to that effect or told people on check in it would help.

Sunday we had a gold panning lesson, which was a lot of fun. We now have 6 gold flakes between us, so paying for the wedding should be a breeze. We came back via Fort Collins to get measured for wetsuits and to pick up a photoframe. Andy also dragged me kicking and screaming into some clothes shops since we have a wedding to go to in a few weeks. God, I hate shopping with a passion: the continual looking at my bad hair and wobbly bits in the mirror; failing to fit into anything because I'm not 6 foot tall with a 20 inch waist. In the first shop I was helped by a very perky shop assistant. I found some clothes that were actually nice and cheap and went to try them on. After a few minutes a voice outside asked 'is everything ok?' I replied in tight angry voice, that yes, everything was fine, but what I actually ment was 'I'm stuck by the boobs in one of your stupidly complicated many strapped double layered tops and the panic is making me expand and get more stuck. Please f*ck off while I try and rip my way out.' The next item was a dress with crossover straps, that I had no clue how to get into. Andy came and helped me and together we managed to garotte me. I tried one nice funky dress on (Andy said he could see Jacqui wearing it, which I thought was a good sign) but it made me look like a hairy hippo so I left sad and humiliated. After a few more 'I look like the side of a house, waahh!' moments I finally managed to get a fairly nice halter neck dress and heeled shoes. It's a catholic wedding and I'm going in a 'bad munroe' style dress and heels I can't walk in. Lord help me.