Half marathon number three!

Route 66 half marathon, November 2014

This was half number 3 for me...and honestly the best one yet! Yes, I know I am a trillion years behind updating the blog, but these pictures have been sitting on my desktop for 6 months and I figured it was time to just put them in a post.

Incidentally, I was 8 weeks pregnant during the race. Yes, I knew I was pregnant and so did my running partner.  In fact, I had to tell her the last month of training because I was worried that if I ended up with complications that she would have to tell the people on the course haha!  Fortunately, Jennifer kept it a secret for nearly 3 months!!

So Jennifer and I started training in the spring of 2014 and our goal was to run 3 times a week. We met at 4:45 am during the workweek to get our miles in..and met a couple other runners about 5am to do a park loop. We built our mileage slow and steady to avoid injury.  Both of us are competitive and numbers types, so speed was important to us....our ultimate goal was under 2:30.

One of our last training runs

I found out about a month before the race that we were expecting.  And I probably should have known sooner because I was more 'winded' on our longer weekend runs. Jennifer was good to make sure I didn't push too hard, but we reaaaaally wanted that PR.

Packets picked up, we got moved to a faster corral because we are speed demons....

Race Morning:

of COURSE my nails matched my running shoes...#girlygirl

 It was perfect running weather, a bit cold at the start but we knew it would feel great by the end.  We knew what we needed our splits to be and tried to hold back a bit the first 8 miles.

In the corral! Jennifer's FIRST half!

Finally got to the start line (we were corral C)

 Even with a couple of walk breaks, we knew timing-wise we are on mark to PR.  I snapped this funny pic around mile 6.  Do people seriously take jello shots while marathoning? And there was probably 5 or 6 of these along the course!! CRAZY!!

We were total goof-balls for the camera. Ok, well I was a total ham-it-up and told Jennifer to play along.  Gotta get good race shots, right?

Official Time

Jennifer sprinted the last bit and totally beat me ;-) but we did run the entire race together, just like in our training runs.

We both PRed!!!

Weather was great, course was fun and entertaining, and my running partner was awesome.  I will be doing this race again, without a time goal, for 2015.  It will be a fun goal to reach postpartum and Baby #2 will be at the finish line in.  This time, however, Jennifer will be pushing and coaching me to run a better race!