Other Happenings

EZ's parents came down to visit for the weekend and of course the girls had fun with them! We stayed busy and went up to Pilot Mountain one day and to the zoo the other. This was our first visit to the zoo and the girls loved seeing all the animals. It was a long day though, as our zoo is rather large and very spread out!

We've also been swinging and enjoyed the bounce house!

Mayberry Half Marathon Race Report

So a month or so ago, I kind of decided I would run a half marathon. I haven't run one since summer of 2011, and I felt like I had been training relatively well recently. So I semi trained on a modified Hanson half marathon plan, kind of did my own thing, ran with Jenny some and would just see how it went. We signed up for a race in Mt. Airy (home to Andy Griffith) and the website was a bit lacking in information about the course. It did say there were a couple hills, and luckily I did find a mapmyrun version of the course two days before the race. And well, yes, there were hills as evidence on the race shirt:

Jenny and I knew it would be mainly uphill the first 2 1/2 miles and then mainly flat and then there was a good uphill at the end. But you really don't know how hard the hills are until you run them. It. Was. Tough.

I had set out some goals with my A-goal of breaking 1:40, B-goal of breaking 1:42 and C-goal of breaking 1:45. Jenny and ran together and got through the first set of hills no problem and through the straight part, but I was hurting. We were both on track to break 1:40, and around mile 9 1/2 I told her to just go ahead, I didn't think I could keep up at that pace anymore. I ended up pretty dehydrated which was totally my fault, but I just kind of fell apart the last few miles.  Here is a breakdown of the course profile-and some of the hills were at 10% grade, and then my splits.

Ended up running 1:42:08 which was good enough for 3rd place overall, and Jenny smashed her goal and ended up running 1:39. I'm so lucky to have such an awesome training partner, we are so evenly matched with our paces. Although, I assume not for long, as she is just going to blow by me soon!