Another 13.1 In the Books!

Last Saturday was the PERFECT running weather.  It was, by far, the most fun run I've ever done and I owe most of that to the lovely cool weather and my running buddy Laura.  When I ran this same course two years ago I was all by myself...literally there was hardly ever any other runners around me.  It was much smaller that year and it was very lonely.  In addition, they had billed the course as "flat"...and it has a few monster hills...after the turnaround (so...nice downhill going out...not so nice uphill coming back).
This year I was prepared (as I could be) for the hills, plus I had Laura along with me to randomly chat with (neither of us was up for chatting the whole 13.1 miles, but it was nice to have some conversation every now and then).  Laura also helped me mentally and physically not let myself slow down towards the end.  When I'm by myself I have a tendency to start to "lag", but with Laura along side me it kept me going at a good pace.  This all meant we had a great race and finished 10 minutes faster than I did 2 years ago (I'm still amazed by that!). 
While I've been a little sore the last couple of days, I think overall I've recovered quite well.  I'm not planning another 1/2 marathon any time soon, it is just too time consuming with a toddler around to do all the long training runs.  But, in a town like Austin you can find a 5K or 10K almost every weekend, so I'll be trying to run some shorter races, which are much more manageable :).

Saturday afternoon we got to attend Brie's first fall fest at her daycare.  She did great and loved running around in her monkey costume.  I'm quite sad that I have to leave town on Wednesday and will miss her first trick-or-treating experience.  She LOVES carrying around her purple pumpkin bucket and even says "Ti-Ti" (trick-or-treat).  It will be up to my awesome friends and Justin to take some good pictures for me :).  Unfortunately on Saturday I left my camera in the car, so I didn't get any pictures at the fall fest.  Bummer.  So, you're just stuck with my two race pictures :).

 

Before the race...we look kind of crazy-eyed...I think it was the crazy iPhone flash

Erin, Rebecca, Me, Stevi and Laura

Yay!  13.1 Done!