This was a short weekend away, and a very quick trip, but such a fun weekend! We left home around 2 on Friday afternoon. Dropped off the monkeys and continued on our way. After a couple stops along the way (and one missed turn) we made it safely to our destination. Saturday we got up and had breakfast at our condo and then headed off to the Diva expo (called the Health and Fitness Boutique). It was a fairly small expo, we got our race numbers, shirts and bags and then looked around a little. I even ran into Amy from Pumpkin to Princess while we were there and we chatted for a few minutes. We made a few purchases and then left right as it was getting a little crowded.
After some outlet shopping, we went to pick up our celebratory after race cupcakes from a shop that we had seen when we were driving to the expo. Yummy!
We relaxed for a little while and then headed out for our other tradition- pre-race fajitas. That is a tradition that started at Disney when we did the Princess Half marathon. We considered changing our pre-race meal to this:
Just kidding- but it did make us laugh to find these chips at a Wal-Mart in North Carolina. We headed back to the condo to make sure we had everything ready for the race the next morning and get to bed early. 4:30 am comes early....
Everyone was up and we left the condo at 5 am as planned. We got to the race site easily and had a great parking spot right by the porta potties and the start corrals. We were able to stay warm in the car while we waited for time to go to the corral. This was a smaller race- about 3600 runners, and no assigned corrals, so we were able to go right into a spot near the pace sign that we chose. Here is the before the race photo
This was a pretty nice course, lots of shade and the weather was beautiful. There was the possibility of rain, but we were very lucky to get to enjoy a great morning for our run. The first half was really good for me. I was happy to discover that I was on target to complete this half at about 3 hours at halfway. But then it went downhill (at least a little!) It was about mile 8 where I started to struggle mentally (seems to be when that happens). I was taking a walk break when I came across a friend that had come close to passing out and her sister was there with her so I stopped to see if there was anything I could do. After staying for a few minutes I went on, but still had trouble getting back into a good running pace. I switched to a run/walk and that seemed to help. I finished with 3:12:38 unofficially (3:15:38 was the official clock time). Either way, it is a new PR for me, so I'll take it!
Finished!
Finishing again with Katie :)
Heather (my brother in law's girlfriend) also ran this race and she found me at the finish.
My two traveling partners and now official Divas :)
Mileage breakdown- you can really see the slowdown after mile 8....
| 1 | 12:50 | 12'50"/mi |
| 2 | 26:41 | 13'51"/mi |
| 3 | 41:01 | 14'20"/mi |
| 4 | 55:07 | 14'06"/mi |
| 5 | 1:09:15 | 14'08"/mi |
| 6 | 1:23:32 | 14'17"/mi |
| 7 | 1:37:50 | 14'18"/mi |
| 8 | 1:52:21 | 14'31"/mi |
| 9 | 2:07:57 | 15'36"/mi |
| 10 | 2:23:54 | 15'57"/mi |
| 11 | 2:40:08 | 16'14"/mi |
| 12 | 2:55:46 | 15'38"/mi |
| 13 | 3:11:21 | 15'35"/mi |
Next up....lots of speed work and more JMBR!
