Big Climb(ed)!

Done!

Race and post-race brunch are officially over. We all finished strong, and while I didn't break the 11 minute mark that I was hoping to hit -- I shaved about a minute and a half off my time and finished in 11:16.70! I'm 15th among the women so far (people are racing through the day, so results can change)!

This made me really happy until I just saw that I missed the top ten women finishers by like TWO SECONDS. TWO SECONDS! The stairway is narrow and had I been more aggressive passing folks (damn kids!), things could have been different. Here are the results if you're interested. It's all fun and games until you miss top ten by two seconds.

The famous Henry Wigglesworth, who is always top five and runs it multiple times, was running it seven times this year. Barefoot. With rubber gloves for improved railing grip. We saw him after his third and fifth, and he was fine--and his times were between 8 and ten minutes or so.

In all honestly, I am pretty psyched. We all did great -- Madelyn and Brenda in the 13 range, and Court at 19. All really impressive. It looks like our team is at about 50th place--but they don't differentiate between women and men's teams, and very few teams are all women. So it isn't really a great measure.

They--plus Brenda's husband John, who was our pit crew--just left after a nice brunch, so I'm on a sugar/coffee/mimosa high and my narrow brush with top 10-ness can't bring me down. I am having another mimosa just to make sure.

Brunch was the vegetable casserole last made at Laura's baby shower that is always a hit, and my first stab at sticky cinnamon buns care of Alton Brown.

When I was in DC, my Aunt Sally reminded me that she sent me the Congressional Club Cookbook from 1961, which included recipes from legislator's wives ... my grandfather on my mom's side was a congressman from Cook County, Illinois, and my grandmother Katherine (or "Mrs. Edward R. Finnegan, Wife of Representative" according to the book) submitted some recipes -- including a "dessert pancake" that I was hoping to try out today. It will have to wait for next time, but looks great. She was into sweets, if the cookbook is any indication: S'mores and an ice cream sundae and the dessert pancake were her contributions to the book.

Anyway -- good times. I'm going to go have another mimosa and strategize stairwell passing techniques for '10. XO