Summer

I can't believe it has almost been a month since I last posted. I don't even know where to begin. It has been a really hot summer, in the high 80's, low 90's for the past couple of months. I know, it is not as hot as some places, but it is very unusual for Latvia. The only problem is that we can't find any relief from the heat. We do not have air conditioners, so it gets so hot in our apartment, especially in the afternoon, the sun just shines in all our windows facing the street. So, I feel like I am melting a lot of the time. Today it was a beautiful day, in the 70's! We are finally getting some relief. I am not complaining of course because we have had plenty of fun beach days because of the heat.

I can't believe it is already August! The time is just flying by. We have been just hanging out, going to the beach, going to the really cool kids Science museum with the Embassy, going do a cool tobagen place with the Embassy, playing at the park, eating ice cream, and

Training for a Half Marathon. One of my goals after gaining a billions pounds while pregnant, is to run a half marathon afterwards. So I have been training with a dear friend of mine, Alyona, she is Estonian, and she doesn't know English, so it is great practice for my Russian to always have to speak in English with her. We have been running together at night, it is so nice to have someone to run with. Our husbands were getting pretty tired of all the time we spent together at night and were counting down the days till the Half Marathon. It was finally on August 7th, sadly she could not run it with me, maybe next time. It was in a a town called Kuldiga, about 2 hours away. A friend from the Embassy, Mischa, drove down with us and ran it. She is faster than me, but it was fun to start with her at least. The race didn't start till 1pm, who starts a half marathon at the hottest time of the day? I guess it is usually not so hot, but the 7th of August this year was 90 degrees and humid!!! Perfect weather to run in! We ran 4 laps around the town. It wasn't so bad to run laps, especially because you knew what you were to expect after the first lap. It was also cool to have the fastest runner pass you 3 times!!! It was so hot and they only had 2 water tables, which we passed 4 times, but I think they needed one more. The loop took you out of the town a little and the nice Latvians who lived in the houses along the route sprayed us with water and handed out more water and one lady was handing out apples from her tree. Very nice. I couldn't believe they stayed there the whole time spraying us with water. It helped so much! They also had a shower thing set up in town that you could run through, so I was sopping wet the whole race, but it felt so good. My time was about what I expected, not very fast, but I'm glad I finished it. I would like to run the Riga half next May and have Kelly run it with my, hopfully with more training, I can knock 30 mins off my time. I was pretty slow this time, 2 hours 33 mins. my first half marathon I ran in 2 hours, so I would like to be able to do that again. Now I need to get into running again, I took a break and so now I need to start up again.

Here are some pics of the race...