Half Marathon

 We did it!  We ran the whole way!  Jared, Mara, our friend Wes, Brendan, and I ran the whole dang thing.  Paul ran 10 miles then walked 3, but he did it with pretty much no training so we hate him.  Here is us pre-race.  See how happy we are, and how we're not sweaty yet?

Pearl and Sherry walked the 5K while the rest of us ran the half marathon.  My favorite part (besides the finish line) was when the half marathoners caught up to the slowest 5Kers (of which Pearl and Sherry were a part) and I got to wave at her as she made her first turn.  Sherry says she did not want to leave the finish line because she didn't want to miss me coming in:)  So glad she could be a part of it!

The race was super well organized, water and bathrooms every two miles, so that broke things up nicely.  We got glowsticks at mile 8, and it was just getting dusky and super fun to watch a sea of bobbing glowsticks ahead of you.

Including all my bathroom breaks, I ran the 13.1 miles in 2 hours and 40 minutes, which put me at an average pace of 12:23.  I was thinking it would take me 2 hours and 30 minutes, so that was pretty close.  If only I hadn't needed every single pit stop!

Jared was a trooper and powered through even though he had pulled a calf muscle in the last few weeks of training.  Which means he won't be running for a while, but now he knows he can:)

Here we are at the end.  I must say, it did feel like a major accomplishment.  By the end, my body was just hurting so bad, I'm fairly certian I have no need to do a full marathon to prove anything to anybody.  But I would run a half again.  I enjoyed training, and since I followed my training religiously, my recovery was pretty good.  I was able to run all my days this week, even from Los Angeles (we left for LA less than 12 hours after we finished our run:)  And five miles still doesn't seem like such a big deal:)