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September 21, 2006

ACL 5.0

Last week I ran ten miles. That's a little under half of my regular weekly 22 or so. I skipped my long run on Sunday because I had run and walked the 2 or so miles between my parents' house and the Austin City Limits Music Festival five times already by Saturday night. And the last time I'd covered the distance I *had* to walk some because my shorts were wet from swimming in Barton Springs and I developed some seroius chafing in a very unfortunate area. Ay yay yay. I doubt I would have let myself skip the Sunday run because of tired legs only, but the chafing really just sealed the deal.

I have recovered physically from the rigors of my weekend of festivaling and am now reveling in thinking back on it all. Sometimes things like that are just too much when you're in the middle of it and hard to appreciate as they're happening. Kind of a sensory overload. This year was even more of a sensory overload since it involved trying to schedule feeding and spending time with MG at different times during the day. I really didn't get to hear a whole lot of music considering the amount of time I devoted to the whole endeavor, but I'm still so glad I participated. Here's the rundown:

Friday
Stars
Wolf Parade
Gnarls Barkley (fun fun)
Gomez
Thievery Corporation

Saturday
Eli Young Band
Ben Kweller (just in time to see him quit b/c of a massive nosebleed.)
***walk back to mom's house in wet shorts****
WILLIE! (oh this was so good. The sound in the back of the crowd was crappy so we moved way way up, slowly but surely. I resisted Willie for a long time, but I have certainly come around and was so happy to see him live - again.)

Sunday
*I can't believe I missed Kathleen Edwards. I busted my ass to get out to see her last year as one of the first shows on Sunday and she cancelled (transportation problems due to Hurricane Rita, I think.)
KT Tunstall
...
and then I camped at one stage to get a good seat for Tom Petty and saw:
Matisyahu
The Flaming Lips
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

KT Tunstall was definitely a highlight for me. You can imagine how a song with these lyrics might appeal to the mother of a beautiful girl of a beautiful girl:

Her face is a map of the world
Is a map of the world
You can see she's a beautiful girl
She's a beautiful girl
Everything around her is a silver pool of light
People who surround her feel the benefit of it
It makes you calm
She holds you captivated in her palm

Suddenly I see
This is what I wanna be
Suddenly I see
Why the hell it means so much to me

*sigh*

And then there was Tom Petty. Tom and I go way back. Well, pretty far back, anyway. Pack Up the Plantation. By 1986 when I bought the cassette my parents had gotten used to my obsessive ways with music. In the mid-seventies, for example, I played Barry Manilow albums any time I was allowed to choose. Way too much Barry Manilow. In the early eighties it was Billy Joel, and during the summer of 1983 my mother took the tapes away from me for a week because she'd had enough. By the time my Tom Petty phase rolled around they'd developed a serious amount of patience. I liked to play it so loud that I could hear it in any room of the house. (I'm still like that and it drives Andy crazy.) The songs have stood the test of time (not all of my favorite albums have) and can now be found on my iPod. I can always rely on them when I want to rock out in the car. Or in the living room. Or wherever.

So after my frustrating experience at REM two years ago, when we were near the back of the crowd and I spent the whole time wanting the music to be louder and more ecompassing, I decided to camp out and be near the front for the Heartbreakers. I was probably still about 25 yards back, but I could see everything pretty well, and the sound was nearly as loud as I played it back in ninth grade. And they rocked. It wasn't as good as it could have been - it started to rain about a half hour into the show, and I couldn't shake this worry that they would quit and it would all be over after my sitting there for hours. And there was a rain delay of about a half hour while we all stood there. And then when he came back he played It's Good to be King, which is kind of a slow depressing song to start back with after a rain delay. But the Refugee and American Girl sing alongs that followed definitely brought me back into "rock" mode.

And so we survived another year. The reminiscing we do the week after can be nearly as good as the shows themselves, since we're not covered in hours' worth of sweat and grime and inhaling smoke of all varieties and wondering how we're going to get home and our feet don't hurt anymore from all the walking.

What's next? Racing season begins! Our years have become so predictable (and I like it.)

Posted by jenandmats at 8:17 PM | Comments (3)

September 9, 2006

Hola!

Ok, so where was I? Oh that’s right. On vacation in MEXICO. Muy bien. Muy muy MUY bien.

On the Friday night before we left I participated in the 4th annual Zilker Relays. To summarize a very fun evening, we should have gotten third in the open women’s division but my chip didn’t work, and I was pretty happy with the way I ran. I managed a 6:21 pace for 2.44 miles on a hot night after standing in the starting chute for about 15 minutes longer than we were supposed to (like the casual excuse toss-out?) Two years ago, in the middle of my foray into the realm of high mileage I was able to run 6:15 pace for 2.5 miles on a flatter course. So the pace was good. Getting beat by less than ten seconds by two other women that I’d been ahead of at one point … not good. Don’tcha hate coming back after the summer break and finding that someone in your age group had a serious breakthrough while you were takin’ it easy?

Over the past week I ate a lot of stuff that could not possibly have been good for me, and only managed to run 3 miles (but I did strides at the end!) I did do yoga each morning, which was really nice. But I feel a little grody. I feel like I need to get my a** in shape!

Posted by jenandmats at 9:13 PM | Comments (2)