I survived!

I ran the super scary Cloud Snapple Half Marathon this morning through the snow, ice, and fallen trees, and lived to tell about it! Thanks for all the words of encouragement!

The race wasn't until 9, but it was in DC (over an hour away) so I was up at 5:50 to get ready, throw back some coffee & grub, and head over to my friend Mike's house to carpool to the race (good thing because he got the LAST parking spot!). 

We picked up our bibs, pinned them on in the car, cried and moaned about how our toes felt like blocks of ice, used the portapottie (only like a 2 minute wait - apparently running in sub freezing temps has a perk!) and headed to the start.

Here's me, Lily, Mike and Conor, freezing our behinds off and ready to start running/shuffling!

A picture is worth a thousand words, so just check out what we were running on! 13.1 miles of pure white.  And this is the packed down stuff at the start - way easier than what we encountered later on!

 Here's the gorgeous view. Too bad if you took your eyes off your feet for a millisecond to enjoy it you risked falling in.

 So running on all those bumps and pits required a ton of ankle strength which I don't really have, plus probably a lot of other muscles I don't even know about. It's a good thing I left the Ipod touch at home because all my mental energy was going towards where to put my feet and trying not to either slip and fall, or lose my balance when my foot hit a deep pit.

 They weren't kidding about the downed trees!

So the finish line wasn't exactly similar to a big race, with the balloons, announcer, music, etc. You basically run over a giant blue mat in the snow and you're done.

 But we did it!!!!

 So, I ran/shuffled/slid for 13.1 miles. I also tripped over a tree branch and bit it hard, but snow is soft so my biggest concern was that Mike brushed the snow off my leg before I could get a picture. I would say that other than the full marathon, this is by far the most challenging race I have ever ran. It was like running on sand that's covering a mine field, not that I would know. But I did the whole thing for some Bruegger's bagels. So you can imagine my shock and horror when, after I jumped for joy and Mike stuck an entire bag of bagels under his fleece for me, I saw this hidden away

 Einsteins Bagels is a (local?) chain that has a location 2 miles from where I live and I can basically have any time I want (but I don't, because it's not Brueggers). LAME. Also there were only plain left and no cream cheese. I tried to wait until I got home to get some cream cheese to eat it with, but I was starving and shoved half of it down my gullet before we even got back to Mike's house.

I've gone to Panera after running my two other half marathons as well as the full marathon so apparently I'm just trained like Pavlov's dogs that when I'm wearing a medal I must have black bean soup and greek salad. So I did. Even though I was exhausted and nauseous and literally couldn't stop shivering, and it was totally worth it.

Now I feel really wiped and sore like I ran a full, instead of a half. (Um, didn't I just run 17 miles last weekend?). I'm also eating like I ran a whole marathon, I can't seem to get full, which is unfortunate, because I'm pretty sure I only burned the calories for a half. Although, I realized around mile 8 that I never put the ice cream maker in the freezer, so that's out. Sad.

I'll spare you the picture of my blister, but just know that its intense!

I forgot to stop my garmin right away and I can't find the times online but it said 2:35 when I did remember to stop it. Even though that's more than a half hour slower than my slowest half mary time, I still feel pretty good about it!

Pretty sure this recap is far from my best work but I am having a real problem with thinking...like when I had a whole "conversation" with Lily after the finish, except it was actually some girl who looked nothing like her trying to ignore the crazy lady talking to her....or when I had to call my husband to ask which exit to get off at to go to the Panera 3 miles from our apartment that I've been to about 900 times.

This thinking problem needs to end or I am totally going to bomb at game night tonight. I'd really love to zone out to some TV but Eric is sleeping with the xbox controller in hand and swearing he's playing every time I try to change it.

What was your biggest fitness challenge?