Half Marathon

Well, I can check that off my bucket list.  The funny thing is it hasn’t actually ever been on my bucket list, and I’ve never really wanted to run one.  I mean, don’t get me wrong - If you know me you know I love to workout, but I’m more into the group fitness thing and not so much the running thing.  But then a couple months ago some of my girlfriends invited me to run this race with them and I thought, what the heck.  I’m not pregnant and have time to train and I have awesome girls to train with.  Thus, this is how I spent my morning.

     It was GREAT!  I was actually really surprised by how much I enjoyed it.  The weather was Perfection, the course was awesome, (down hill at the beginning and then mostly flat the rest of the way) and I had fabulous friends with me.  My only regret is that I wish I would have pushed myself a little harder the last 3 miles.  I really wanted to finish in under 2 hours and so when I had run 10 miles in 1 hour and 28 minutes I thought, “I have 32 minutes to run three miles” and so I slowed down a ton.  Stupid – I know.  According to my watch I finished at 1 hour 56 minutes and 30 something seconds.  I’m still waiting for my official chip time.  Here’s a wonderful picture of the girl who finished about 2 seconds before me.    Poor Ryan, he felt so bad he didn’t get me…I don’t really care.

They both started screaming there brains out when they saw me run through the finish.  They would only stop when I was holding them.  This is Jessica C, or as my sisters and mom know her, “Jessica Twins”.  I use that name to differentiate my two Jessica friends to them because no big deal this girl had twins not even a year ago.  She was my training partner and I had so much fun training with her and going on long runs and chatting the whole time.  I could NOT have done it without her.  We ended up not staying together during the race but we should have because our times only ended up being about 3 or 4 minutes apart.  I love her.  She started crying she was so happy to finish under two hours. Here’s the rest of the group.  Jessica, Amanda, Jessica, me.  I’m so proud of us.  The biggest bummer about the whole thing is that poor Amanda pulled her groin muscle half way through the race and was in tons of pain and had to walk a bunch – but amazingly she still managed to finish with a respectable time.Apparently I didn’t get the memo that we were all wearing our just past the knee workout pants.Ryan was super supportive every time I went on long runs and was a good motivator.  He was always giving me goals and tips.  Sometimes it was annoying but he’d just say, “I just want you to be all you can be”.  Why do I get the feeling he’s going to push our boys a lot physically.  Good thing I can be there to balance him out and remind them it’s just for fun and we’re proud of them no matter what.  Anyway, Ryan said he’d clean the whole house by himself multiple times if I finished in under two hours.  I don’t think he thought I could do it.  Looks like I have a break from house cleaning for a while!One other downfall…my second toes took a beating.  That’s not purple nail polish.But the rest of me feels great!  Had to take some muscle pics after feeling so invincible :)