Training Runs

Here are some pictures from my training so far...

I'm one of the few without reflecting running clothes.

We were having a moment of silence for one of our honorees who just passed away the night before.

Doing some pre-run stretching at the harbor in Richmond.

Left: One of our after-run potlucks. We usually do something after our Saturday morning runs.

Right: My new friend, Stacey, and me battling the hills at Redwoods Regional Park in Oakland.

Last night we had our Christmas Lights run where we ran to this house totally decked out for the holidays.

As you can see, I showed my spirit of the season. I borrowed the antlers from work.

Team In Training (TNT)

Every once in a while, I get these flyers in the mail advertising Team in Training, showing pictures of people in purple shirts smiling and running. I would always take a quick look and them toss it. But when I received the latest one back in October, I gave it a second look. Running a marathon is something I've been wanting to work towards for a while now. I've done a few 10k's and a couple 12k's since moving to the bay area, but my speed and athleticism have declined a bit since I graduated college. When I was doing track and cross country, I had people to push me and to work together with, and I really miss that. So I decided to go to the informational meeting they were having. It took only 10 minutes in the meeting to convince me. Not only would I be able to train with a team again and feel that sense of accomplishment of finishing my marathon, but I would be helping save lives along the way.

See, Team in Training is an organization that raises money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS). It provides support for research and treatments, helping people with blood cancers such as Leukemia, Myeloma and Hodgkins disease. We call these people our honorees, and we even have a few who have recovered and are now training with us as a way of showing their appreciation.

Here's how it works: You first sign up for a team. There is a running team, run/walk team, ski team, triathlon team, and a cycling team. (I signed up with the run team). There is an initial cost to join, but then you raise the rest of the money through fundraising and there is a minimum amount you need to raise to do your event. My event is the Oakland Marathon on March 27th and my minimum to raise is $2,000. They encourage you to shoot higher than the minimum, so I put $3,000 as my goal. That seems like a lot of money, though, so I'll be happy with $2,000.

I sent a letter out to probably all of you who are reading this, and if you have any fundraising ideas for me, please let me know. Also, I would love it if you would spread the word around to anyone you know. I've been trainging very hard, so far, and I'm having a blast and already making new friends. If you are unable to donate, please don't feel obligated. I appreciate your warm words and thoughts. But please tell your friends!

For donations, go to my fundraising page http://pages.teamintraining.org/sf/Oakland10/rmarshajsr

Also, you can help by purchasing Mary Kay products. All of my profits from now until March 27th will go towards TNT. To order online, go to my personal MK page
http://marykay.com/bjmarshall

Both of these links are on my blog page as well.

Christmas Mall Displays

While in Central America, I was kind of missing the beginning of the Christmas season, so I got excited when I saw any trace of Christmas. Marisol laughed at me because I'd squeal every time I saw a Christmas tree. We ended up going to a mall in each of the big cities we were in, and I just had to take a picture of the Christmas displays.
The first one was in Panama City. I thought I took a better picture of the Christmas displays here, but I lost some of my pictures from Panama, so this is the best I have.
These next two are from different malls in San Jose, Costa Rica.

The final one is from the mall in San Salvador.

El Salvador

Ok, it's a little late, but here's my blog on my last destination on my vacation to Central America. Our reason for going to El Salvador was because Marisol's mom's side of the family is from there. Her mom was actually born there, and Marisol has always wanted to visit. One of her Aunts owns a house in San Salvador, and Marisol's grandma was there when we were, visiting from her home in L.A., so we stayed with her. It was nice having a free place to stay, but I really would've been okay with staying there only a few days rather than 6 days as we did. San Salvador isn't really a tourist spot, so there wasn't a lot to do while we were there. It wasn't really safe to walk around, so there was a locked gate in front of the house. There was no cable or DVD player in the house. There was no hot water in the house, and after a certain time in the day, no water at all. Marisol's grandma doesn't drive, and taxi's weren't really driving by every minute, so we had to plan our outings strategically. Also, Marisol's grandma doesn't speak any English, but she does talk a lot, so I was often left out of the conversation and barely talked to anyone while we were there. Having said all that, I was happy that Marisol was finally able to visit the country where her roots stem from, and her grandma was very sweet and hospitable.

We did meet a family who were related to Marisol through a distant cousin of Marisol's mom, and they were nice enough to drive us to a small town up in the mountains where we saw some very traditional El Salvadorians (I think that's how you say that). By the way, this family also did not speak English, except the father, who knew a few English words and phrases.

We also visited this little shop where thay created fabrics using old-fashioned machinery.

On another day we decided to stay one night at this all-inclusive resort. We took advantage of the AC, hot showers, and free food and drinks.

Our last day there was Thanksgiving. Marisol and I ended up going to the mall there, since we didn't really have anything else to do. We spent most of the day there, watching a movie, getting lunch, and getting our hair done. We hadn't done our hair at all on the trip, and we had barely even washed our hair since arriving in El Salvador because of the shower conditions. We saw a salon that offered to straighten your hair for $6. Thinking that we could get our hair washed as well, we decided to do it, and boy did it feel good to have our hair washed and straightened! While we were there, we also opted to get $10 manicures...we just couldn't beat these prices!

Oh, and one more thing! We experienced an earthquake while we were there. We were sitting in the movie theater in the mall when we started to feel shaking. I turned to Marisol and exclaimed, "Is this an earthquake?!"

"Yes!" she confirmed. "Should we leave?" I asked. We were on the 3rd floor of this mall...not really the best place to be in the middle of an earthquake. We waited it out and ended up staying, but later found out that it was either a 5.6 or 6.0 earthquake thats epicenter was in Panama. All I can say is, I'm glad we weren't in Panama anymore!

Montezuma, Costa Rica

The next country we visited (also my favorite) was Costa Rica! We flew into San Jose first, before continuing to our destination of Montezuma on the Nicoya Peninsula. Everyone had told us beforehand to stay away from San Jose, that it was horrible. I really didn't see what was so bad about it. It's not a city you'd want to travel all the way to Central America to see, but if you're going to Costa Rica, you'll end up flying in or out of San Jose, and it's just fine to spend one day in. It seemed just like any city to me. We walked around the downtown plaza area and it was farely pleasant. I did get quite a few stares, though. I had been warned that I might. For one: I'm white, and two: I'm very tall compared to most people there. Mari said they're really not shy about staring...I noticed. Anyway, here is a picture of the plaza. There were a ton of people out. Getting to Montezuma was a little adventure. There wasn't an airport in Montezuma, so we flew into Tambor (about 20 miles from Montezuma). The flight itself was actually very short, only 25 minutes! The plane was very small, though, and the airport (shown below) even smaller. Then we took a taxi the rest of the way on a very bumpy dirt road.

But once we got to Montezuma, it was well worth it. It was gorgeous and such a cute little town!

I had really hoped to spend more days in Costa Rica, but things didn't work out like I hoped and we only had 4 days. So we packed a bunch of activities in while we were there. In one day we did a horseback riding trip to some waterfalls in the morning...

...then we did a canopy tour in the afternoon. There were 11 zip lines total in the tour! It was so much fun!

The views were unbeatable!
Then part-way through the tour, we stopped at this waterfall that had a large swimming pool. I wasn't as brave as some people who jumped off the waterfall, but I did swing from the rope swing.

Oh, and I saw monkeys here too!
On another day, I took surf lessons. I've wanted to try surfing for a long time now, and I'm so glad I did. It was so much fun!
The instructor had us practice on the sand first. I was a little worried about being able to get up...I've never been good at push-ups...

But I was actually able to do it. Maybe someday I'll try a little bit bigger waves. :)

This was our view walking back from the beach after I surfed all afternoon.

This was our hotel, "La Cascada."

Bocas Del Toro, Panama

I'm back home now. I got back Friday night, but I wanted to share about the other places I visited in Central America.

After Panama City, we flew to Bocas Del Toro, which is on an island in the northwestern part of Panama. The town was very small, but there were always people walking around everywhere and they loved to play loud music from their homes. (We especially noticed that when we were trying to go to bed and it sounded like there was a nightclub right outside our window. Fortunately, that only happened the first night). We found out once we got there, that it was "Bocas Day," so they were having a big parade and a huge all day celebration downtown.

We stayed at a little place called Cocomo on the Sea. There were only four rooms and the owners and other guests were very friendly. The guy running the hotel even met us at the small airport and walked us to the hotel, which was only four blocks away. I felt like we were at a private cabin on the carribean with friends. I spent a lot of time laying in the hammocks reading and also took out one of the kayaks that was included with the room.

We stayed there a total of three nights. The day we left, it was pouring rain, and we flew out in this very small plane. Little did we know, this would not be the smallest plane we'd ride on this trip...

Videos from Panama

This one is for you Eli! I wish you could've seen the monkeys!

This one is kinda long. You might want to fast forward through the middle, but it's pretty neat. It shows a very long ship going through the Panama Canal.

Last day in Panama City

It's a little after 12pm here in Panama City, and I'm sitting at the computer in the common area of our hotel. We've already checked out, and we're waiting for our 3:30 flight to Bocas Del Toro. Here is what we did yesterday:


Our hotel is up on a hill in Panama City, so yesterday morning, Mari and I jogged/walked up to the top where there was a 360 view of Panama City. Below is the view looking toward the canal, and if you look close, you can see Miraflores Locks, where we went the day before.
Here is a view of Casco Viejo, which we also visited on Friday:


A view of the metropolitan area of Panama City:

The ships lined up outside the canal waiting to go through:

Then we went to Panama Viejo, the original Panama City founded in 1519. This was the starting point for Spanish expeditions to the rest of the continent, but was attacked in 1671 and then abandoned.
This is inside the top of the 15 meter high cathedral tower:

Some Panamanian boys walking ahead of us in Panama Viejo:

The Cathedral Tower:

A lot of Panama City looks like this. It is a big city, but not very clean or modern:

Then there are parts that don't look all the different from the US, like this huge mall. The only difference I could see was the people walking around in it, although many of them dressed very similar to what we see in the US.

We've been lucky to have computer access here, and I can even get wi-fi on my phone, but I don't know what it will be like at the next place we go to. I'll just tell you that today we're heading to Bocas Del Toro, Panama, and Wednesday we head north on the Costa Rica! I'll post more pictures when I can! Adios!