I haven't blogged about this too much, but We Are Marshall has been in training for my first half marathon and Justin's first full marathon for the last few months. Justin has done countless 4am wake up calls, and I've run just about any time I can fit it in (treadmill at gym, with single or double jogger, early morning weekends) to train for the big event. We figured if we were going to do it, we'd better do it right and try to be competitive. I followed Hal Higdon's Beginner Half training program, and Justin followed the full training program plus some additional cross training.
We traveled to Savannah, along with the Foxworthy family, Ashley and Mike, and my mom and stayed in an awesome beach house on Tybee Island. The Shaws (Justin's boss) and the Chalmers also went along and stayed down the road. Our entire group has been bitten by the running bug over the last few years, and all of us trained pretty darn hard for this race. Justin, Adam, and John ran the full, and the rest of us ran the half.
I'm not going to bore y'all with every single detail, but this entire weekend took a ton of planning (let's just say nursing a baby and being gone for 8+ hrs to run 13.1 miles is not exactly something I'd recommend for comfort), but we pulled it off perfectly. Everyone was SUPER happy with their run. Based on my training, I knew I could probably break 1:55, but I felt awesome during the race and went 1:49. Justin, who had many of his long training runs in this Florida heat go horribly, surprised even himself and went 3:51. Adam pulled a 3:12 (that's like 7 min miles PEOPLE!) out of his butt and almost qualified for Boston.
Justin says he's officially DONE with Marathons (it's really the training that sucks the most), but we both agree that half marathons are something that we'll keep on the calendar a few times a year. I think we both have a lot to live up to compared to the first time euphoria, but we'll see how it goes!
Here are some pics from that weekend. After all was said and done, I realized Justin and I didn't even get a picture together. I'll blame it on him...he was way to nervous pre-race, and way to sweaty post-race...
Ashely and me about an hour before the race (it was FREEZING!!!!)
Ashley and I post race (she went a PR 1:58!!)
Reagan was 6 months old that day!
Sitting like a big girl (and yes I forgot the seat cover...)
Attempt at a family picture on the porch of our beach house...
