Eric and I ran the half marathon and had a great time. I was afraid that my prodding Eric to run 13.1 miles was going to turn him off to yet another one of my interests. Some of you may recall that I took Eric to hike a fourteener while we were dating-the first time- because I am very passionate about hiking and wanted to share that with him. After we hiked Mt. Belford (aka "Holy Helford")we only lasted another 7 days. Just check out his face...
Ah, 2005...He has yet to do another fourteener with me.
Back in September, when running 13.1 miles was inspiring and far enough away to seem like a great idea, we signed up to run the race under 2 hours. Training didn't go quite as planned, with life getting in the way and two weeks prior to the race I was pretty sick. You start the race according to predicted finish time, so we were in wave 8 out of 33...yikes! Race morning was rather warm and sunny. We were advised by the race coordinators not to push for personal best times and to be sure to drink enough fluids. I had already run the race two years ago so opted to run with a good friend who had a plan to run/walk the course and joined her back in wave 25. Eric still wanted to try to finish in under 2 hours and as he took off all I could think of was his bad experience with fourteeners and that we'd never do this again. I had a blast running with my friend and chatting for the first 10 miles but in the back of my mind I was hoping Eric was also enjoying the bands each mile and the feeling of running with 30,000 other people. I felt great and my friend encouraged me to go ahead for the last 3 miles so I took off for the finish and came in strong. I knew Eric finished way before me, having started about 40 minutes before my wave, and as I walked to find him I saw people fainting, staggering to the medical tents, and being carted off on stretchers. It was sobering. We found out later that a 26 year old guy died after finishing the half marathon in 2:15. I was thankful I felt so great and worried Eric had pushed himself too hard...but when I found him he was smiling and told me he had run the course in 2:06. Not great but respectable considering the heat and hills. Even better was that he asked me if we were going to do it again next year!
We were pitiful that evening but managed to spend time with family. Eric's family came for the event(they live in Huntsville and North Georgia) and we were staying with my family. My nieces love it when we are there and we watched Sam run the kids marathon the night before. Here are some great shots of her.
At the starting line
Good start
Strong finish
Alyssa loves Uncle Eric!
We also watched Sam play volleyball. We were about 6 hours post race and Eric's face says it all.
We had a great time and I think we'll end up going to Nashville again next April. Here's to blogging again.
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