gran canaria: taurito

Like I said before, there are worse places to be in the middle of winter than at a beach resort where it's 20 degrees Celsius.

gran canaria: the interior

As built-up as Gran Canaria's coast is, the interior is still rough and beautiful. We drove up from Maspalomas (which reminded me of Florida, not in a good way), admired Tejeda, where it was frigid!, and had fantastic tapas in the late afternoon in Mogán before making our way back down to the coast at Taurito, where we discovered that we'd booked ourselves into an all-inclusive resort. Gran Canaria vacation: nothing if not surprising.

playa del ingles

  
Not pictured: the vast majority of la Playa del Ingles, which was one of my least favorite beach towns in recent memory. Having said that, I have certainly got no complaints about palm trees and 20 degrees Celsius in January.

skydive gran canaria

The same day Stephen and I ran our first half marathon, we also went skydiving, with Skydive Gran Canaria. Because you know, one big new life experience wasn't enough for one day. It was gut-droppingly terrifying to dangle out the side of a plane, regardless of how many hundreds of times the instructor (to whom I was quite securely strapped) had done so before, but ultimately so, so cool. And discovering from the pictures afterwards that Stephen's upper lip had acted as a parachute of its very own made the whole thing that much better.

happy hot pot

When Amanda does a food party at her house, she does it up right. <3 you, hot pot party.

fly-by nyc

  
I passed through NYC briefly (so briefly!) at the start and the end of my trip to the US for Christmas, to see my friend and former roommate Diana get married to her longtime boyfriend Vilas. So fun! I also got to hang out with Amanda, spend a little while shopping in SoHo, grab lunch with Heather, and have a hot-pot night in Brooklyn. So marvelous.

virginia beach

  
A few shots from Virginia Beach and of my family, from when I was home at Christmas.

gran canaria half marathon

Just over a week ago I ran the Gran Canaria half marathon, and I have never been so glad to be done with 13.1 miles in my life.

Some lessons learned:

+ Just because your hotel tells you over the phone that they are the hotel right next to the starting line for the island's only marathon does not meant they actually are said hotel. "Oh, no, that's our sister hotel!"

+ You might assume that water and a PowerBar or a banana would be relatively easy to come by at the start of a multi-thousand-strong race. You would be incorrect.

+ You would also be incorrect to assume that it would be possible to pick up your race numbers on the day of the race. Everyone knew that it was necessary to pick up the race packets the day before and that they would totally not be available after that point; why didn't we?

Ultimately we were allowed to run the race (thanks ever so kindly, race volunteers!), but I started out about a full minute per mile faster than my goal pace and the first refreshments stop was 5K into the race, so I spent that first 5K feeling miserable because I was dehydrated and starving, the second 5K feeling miserable because I horfed down too much banana and water, and the last 11K walk/jogging with Stephen, whose left leg has been hurty for a couple of months and decided to give out on him. So basically overall, nobody's greatest race ever.

Having said that, my offical time was 2:29:33, which is pretty good for a first half marathon! It's also about 20 minutes slower than my goal pace, so in spite of the fact that I finished the Gran Canaria half cursing everything about running, I am glad to have a chance to try again in the Lufthansa half on March 10th -- you know, just over six weeks away. (Ahh!)