Sunday, May 16, 2010

Historic Half Marathon and Relay for Life

Well, we finished. Travis and I ran our first half marathon and survived. :) The Historic Half Marathon in Fredericksburg, VA is part of the Marine Corps Marathon series.

It all started yesterday when we went to get our t-shirts and bib/time chips. There was a running expo at the Fredericksburg Expo Center. We called some friends that we have known since before Anisa was born, in fact, they were some of our first visitors when we had Anisa and we had her babyshower at their house. :) Kevin and Christine. We've lived here for a year now and haven't gotten to see them, so this was the perfect opportunity. **Real quick, the reason we haven't seen them in all this time is because they live an hour south and we don't get down there often. Ok, so, we had a fantastic lunch with them yesterday, then headed home to go to bed early.

Turned out that Anisa, our darling daughter who we love so much, had other plans. She was spending the night at a friend's house. She had taken the metro to her friend's house so she had to come home on the metro, pick up the car, and bring it home. THEN I had to take them both back to the metro so they could go BACK to her friend's house. ugh....confused, yet?? :) Anyway, we didn't get to bed until 10 pm. That's all fine and dandy if you can get up in the morning at a decent hour, but not if you have to get up before the birdies. We had to get up at 3:45 to start getting ready and have a yummy delicious cup of coffee before we left.

We left the house at about 5:00 a.m. Got a great parking spot at Walfart, and headed toward the starting line. Got in line for the potty, then went to the staging area. Decided last minute we better make ONE MORE potty run. :) Then, we were off. The course is hilly, but not extreme. We run hills here, but not for 13.1 miles. There were lots and lots of people standing on the sides of the streets yelling for the runners to "keep up the good work, you can do it, you're almost done". It was cool. Mile 11 started us up a 2 mile hill. It was not as horrible as we thought it was going to be, but it actually did me in. I had to walk about 50 feet at the top (which irritates the poo out of me, I didn't want to walk AT ALL). We started running again and into mile 12 Travis felt good enough to leave me (not alone...I was surrounded by lots of new friends). :) I turned the corner and saw the finish line and got my second wind. I cranked it out at the end and we both finished strong. We got our beautiful "finisher medals", water, bananas, oranges and pretzels and went somewhere to stretch a little. Then got our belongings from the Marines who were watching over our valuables, and headed to the van. I had brought celebratory beers, but we wanted to get home, so we kept them in their little ice cooler and headed the hour north. We got home, threw in a pizza, headed up to shower then when we were all clean and not stinky any more enjoyed our pizza and beers. Now, I need a nap and a massage would be nice, too. We're both a little sore, but not as bad as we thought we would be. We'll see how we feel tomorrow! :)

Our results are in.....Travis finished at 2:16:49. I was about a minute behind him at 2:17:38. The men's divisions are harder (I think), more competition. There were 5419 finishers. There were 2737 men and Travis finished 1836. In his division (Men 40-44), he came in 329 out of 480. There were 2682 women and I finished 1118. In my division (Women 40-44) I came in 161 out of 400. The average time for finishers in the Men's division was 2:08:51, and in Women's 2:27:25, so we were both pretty close to average. In fact, Travis was 46.6 % and I was 51.2% in our age grade ranking. We are very happy that we finished and our times aren't too bad. :) Oh, by the way, the first place man came in at 1:14:40. Yes, that's ONE HOUR and 14 minutes to run 13.1 miles. The first place woman came in at 1:26:26.

So, if you read the title of this post, you might be thinking, ok, what about the Relay for Life? Well, Sara did that. It is a fund raiser for the American Cancer Society and it's a 12 hour walk all night. It started Friday night at 7 p.m. and ended at 7 a.m. Saturday. I volunteered to be a chaperone until 11, but ended up staying until 1 (which is why I'm totally exhausted now, I'm running on very little sleep for the last couple of nights). We all got there about 6 o'clock to set up our tent and seating area. About 5 minutes into setting up they announced that a severe thunder storm was on it's way and we had to evacuate the field immediately. Everyone headed into the school (it was held at Sara's school). There were a bunch of sweaty, hot people in the gym and auditorium. I hadn't eaten dinner, so as soon as the rain stopped for a minute, I walked to McDonalds to get something to eat. I had to make a quick stop at the bank, then CVS, and I started walking across the street to McD's and it started sprinkling. I was lucky. I walked into McD's and from the time I walked in the door to the counter the sky opened up and it POURED and blew! I ate my burgers, and during a rain break I headed back to the school and they were just letting us back out onto the field. The girls had fun, they walked, they talked, they slept, then came home and slept more. :)

Here are pictures of both events...

Before the race













After the race













Us at the finish line with our medals. :)














Sara and the gang...
Aren't they cute?? This is only some of the team.












The chicks playing Twister. Crazy girls. :)

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