Thanksgiving Point Half

I have run 2 marathons, 3 Ragnars, and now I can add a half marathon to my resume'! I was originally going to sing up with a few ladies, but one by one, something came up and had to back out.  But I still wanted to run the half.  I was doing really good training up until a month ago.  I have been running/working out at least 5 days a week (I am doing a challenge with some friends...I'll explain at the end).  But I haven't found time to do any long runs for the past month.  I was a little worried about my legs not being able to make it, so I decided to just keep it at a good steady pace.  I found a pacer for the race, and kept with her the whole way.  I just looked at the official time, and I finished in 2 hours 19 minutes!!  (about a 10:37 min/mile pace) ....not bad. I was pretty proud of myself!  And to top it off I was greeted by my cute little family at the finish.....Ben got all the girls ready and out the door to cheer me on at the finish! 

I learned a few things while running:
1. I am slow, but I have a pace that I can hold forever. Even without my long run training, I felt like I could have done a full marathon.
2. Even though I am slow, I still like to pick people off. ....as in passing people. 
3. I am not one of those cool young runners anymore.  I am a mom runner....I run with a fanny pack.  It is a small running one, but I run with a fanny pack none the less!
4. And I am a little scared to see what I actually look like running. There was this lady who looked like a really slow runner....but she was a head of me. If she looked like that, then what do I look like?!
5. I hate training, but I love the actual race.

When I first had Charley, I made a goal for myself to run a marathon after every kid I had.  And I hope that by this fall I will have completed that goal! This half was to help me figure out how my body was doing.  Now, I just need to figure out what full  I want to do.

As for my challenge.  There is a group of 6 ladies that live in our neighborhood.  We all have recently had babies, and were looking for some motivation to get our baby weight off.  So we came up with a challenge:  We started March 1, and it will go until June1st.  We have to work out for 5 days a week, for at least a half an hour.  If we don't, we have to put $50 in the pot, and the money will get split between the ladies that make it the full 3 months.  I has been a great motivator to workout, even on those days were it is so easy to talk yourself out of it.  I think we are going to do a different challenge when this one is over. But this was a good one to start with to get us in the habit.