Mom and I drove down to Nashville for a week of fun. We had a great time walking around Downtown, listening to music, riding the trolley, and exploring the parks. We had a great day at the Country Music Museum and Hall of Fame and Ryman Auditorium. We drove up to Mammoth Cave. The highlight was the CMA Country Music Christmas Show.

I had so much fun, I’m signing up for next year’s race on Black Friday!

I was little worried about this race after my disastrous 10K the week before. My quad was mad at me all week and I was taking all measures to get it up to running 13 miles. Ice, Advil and KT tape were my friends leading up to this race.

The start was a bit cold. Eric and I stopped at Walmart the night before to buy some cheap sweatshirts to wear while waiting around to start. I actually kept mine on until I warmed up during the first mile. The race starts by running around blocks by the state capitol. It was mostly downhill and my leg held up pretty well. I don’t remember much about the first 3 miles. I was running with the 2:45 pacer for a while but couldn’t keep up with her. Every time I took a walk break she got further and further away. There was a speed walker who said he was using me as his pacer. I think that is hilarious, I would love to be a pacer but I’m not consistent enough yet. :(

However, this was probably my most consistent race yet. My first mile was kind of fast and mile 9, with the nasty hill, and mile 11, when I walked with Melissa, were slow, but the rest were very close. So 10 miles out of 13 is pretty good.

I saw Mom, Dylan and Melissa at just after mile 6. Dylan and Mom got cold so they ditched Melissa at Mile 11. She had other friends running the race too so she got there in time to see us all. That is part of the reason Mile 11 was slow. I was walking and talking with Melissa for quite a while.

During Mile 8 I ran into a fellow Run the Year person (Facebook group). We ran together some and chatted. She ran ahead of me, I’d run ahead of her. It was like this all the way to the finish. When we got close to the finish, we run in together. She is the other woman in the picture below.

Overall this was a fun course. It was hilly but the up hills had good downhills after them. I’ve learned that hilly courses are best for me. Who would have thought that?

My time of 3:05:10 was faster than I expected! This was my 6th best half marathon out of the 15 that I have ran. Yay! Back-to-back good half marathons!!

New Carpet, a Baptism and Racing

Wow, the time has really sped past since my last post!  It has been over a month and boy, has it been busy with a new carpet install, 5K race, a baptism, 10K race and another half marathon (but I’ll save that for another post.)

The day following my amazing half marathon finish in Mankato, we had our new carpet installed. The installers worked fast and were done in less than 4 hours! Crazy!  We replaced the carpet upstairs and the stair well and man is this new carpet nice and soft. It feels like walking on a cloud and no stains (yet) which is awesome too. It was quite the hassle to get this done. We had rent a storage unit for all our crap. And all our crap is still at the storage unit so the bedrooms are very bare. LOL.

Six days after my amazing half marathon finish in Mankato, I had another incredible run. We ran the Minneapolis Halloween 5K. This marks the first time in over a year that I had a mile under 12 minutes, an overall pace under 12 minutes and finish time in the 37 minute range. Woo Hoo! I feel like I’m starting to get back to my faster paces. I have a long way to go but I’m getting there!

After the race, we traveled down to New Ulm for dinner with my family. My entire family was there for Blake’s Baptism. My sister came up from Texas on the Thursday before. The baptism was at the same church Danielle and Bradley got married. It was a very nice day and it was good to see Bradley’s family again.

14 days after my amazing half marathon finish in Mankato, I had a terrible run. It was the Chocoholic Frolic 10K. I had many issues with this race. One was the temperature and wind. It was very cold! Also, I couldn’t run fast for some reason. At the mile mark, my quad started barking at me and at the 3 mile turnaround, I was in pain and basically walked it in. I had DJ to keep me company. It was just a horrible run. When we were finished and received our “dipping” chocolate it was hard. I ended up scooping it out of the container and just eating it like a chocolate. It was very disappointing when the entire race you were looking forward to warm chocolate to dip your banana but all you got was two stale graham crackers and hard chocolate. They didn’t even have bananas!  I don’t think I’m running this one again. All around disappointing time. But I don’t let bad runs scare me anymore. I know that another good one is around the corner!