Half #2

This weekend was my second Half Marathon. The Louisiana Marathon is a pretty big race. It's only in it's third year but was voted one of Runner's World magazine's best "new" races.
Saturday morning there was a 5K & a kids fun run.  I went out to watch my friend Allison  & her son Cael.
Cael had so much fun!
Allison did great too.
Allison's hubs made me laugh when he said "apparently, I'm part of a family of runners".

Me, Cael & Allison. It was cold!!!

In keeping with Half Marathon Eve tradition Dean & I went & got cake balls for dessert Saturday night.
King cake & wedding cake. OMG!! FABULOUS!! The King Cake ones taste better than any king cake I've ever eaten. So so so good.
They deserve another picture. The purple, green & gold are King Cake in case you're not familiar with Mardi Gras.

We had dinner at Portobello's so I could get some carbs & it was delish!

Sunday morning on the way to the race which is approx. 10 mins. from my house I thought I was going to have an anxiety attack. I don't know why but I felt like I was going to throw up & burst into tears at the same time. I didn't have that feeling before the first one. I sucked it up & found Scott & Lydia.

Not the greatest picture but the sun wasn't up yet. This is the starting line.

Me & Lydia. Excuse how I look. When there's any wind I have to cover my ears & the headband doesn't work too well with the hat but since it was going to be sunny I needed the hat.  This was the first time I ran with compression sleeves. LOVED THEM! I took them off & threw them at my friend Cindy on the course when I saw her because I'd gotten hot but they're great when you're cold & don't want to wear a jacket.
We finished! Me, my brother Scott & my sis in law Lydia. Scott & I both PR'd! I was soooo excited! 2:19:24. Scott aka the Kenyan Wannabe was 1:35. That's just craziness. Lydia had knee issues & this was one of her worst races. She finished in 2:40. I still think that's an awesome time.

This race had a slightly different route than my other half & I liked it a lot with the exception of the overpass. Same overpass as the first half but this half we went across it twice. UGH! It was at mile 2ish & mile 11.5. The second time was really rough & the majority of people were walking but I KNEW if I walked I wouldn't be able to start running so I powered through. UGH!

I felt really good throughout the race. It was so fun because it's a big race & there are tons of spectators. There were people with DJ equipment, guitars & there was even a gong! The route is through a lot of residential areas near LSU which have beautiful multi-million dollar homes so I enjoyed that. A couple of places had bars set up & were offering runners shots & drinks. The thought of that made me nauseous..... When I got around mile 9 I looked at my watch & was in the low 10 min. mi. pace. I knew I would be close to my previous time. Once I hit mile 10 the distance between miles slowed down. Earlier in the race it seemed like the miles were flying by. I knew that stupid overpass was coming & I thought that it was really close to the end of the race. Not so much. It was at mile 11.5. Well, I just thought mile 10-11 was long. 12-13.1 was the longest mile ever!!!!! I saw my friend that I work with about 100 yards from the finish so that was good. At that point I knew I was really close on the time. As you rounded the corner to the finish they were playing the LSU fight song. I saw the time on the clock & it was past my time. I thought I'd started my watch pretty close to when my chip time started so I was a little bummed. Then I saw Allison, Dean & Scott cheering for me & that made me happy. I got water & my medal & went to meet up with them. That's when Allison showed me the text message. Her & Dean were tracking me & got text updates. Final time: 2:19:24. I was so so excited. We waited for Lydia & during that time the guy that won the full marathon finished - 2:38. That's so unbelievable to me!

My medal & time ticket!

Normally, my watch is off like 1/10 of a mile compared to my phone & it's always behind my phone. I did not expect to see 13.24.

There was a nice Finish Festival with food, drinks & live music. We stuck around for awhile & then I was getting cold so we headed home. After some stretching & foam rolling I was going to take a nice long, hot bath. I discovered this.
What is that you ask? Well, that would be blood. Both shoes looked like this. Around mile 8 or 9 I felt like I might be getting blisters on my pinky toes. Very odd because I don't have a problem with blisters.  I was a little scared to take my shoes off. Once I did I was happy to see that there were no blisters, just a very small cut on the top of each of my pinky toes. So weird right? After feeling around the inside of my shoe the only thing I could find was a stitch that felt funny. It's definitely time for new shoes. I'd been on the fence about whether to buy new shoes before the first Half but I decided that I didn't want to take any chances & I just stayed with what I trained in. With Christmas & everything I kinda forgot about shoes. Well, except for when I put them on to run. Needless to say I decided to just stick with the same ones. I told Dean looking at my shoes reminded me of when Curt Schilling was pitching in the World Series & he had a horrible bloody ankle & his sock was soaked but he just kept pitching. Dean looked at my shoes & wasn't reminded of that at all. Apparently, I'm not as hard core as I thought. But, hey I ran with bloody toes!!!

Toodles!