Helllllooooo! Well, I am excited to say that on Sunday morning, I completed my third half marathon. If you missed my other two you can read about my first one here and my second one here. It appears third time is the charm because I also ran my fastes thalf yet this past Sunday by 5 minutes and 21 seconds!!! Yes, ladies and gentleman, I set out to PR by an time possible and I delivered! The girl is back!

I actually had a feeling a PR was in my future the whole day before. I just had a super good feeling about this race. As a result, I had that little kid on Christmas Eve thing going on and think I slept about maybe 3 hours max. When the 6 am alarm when off, I surprising ready to go, go, go! I wanted to get on the course asap.

Breakfast was a whole wheat bagel with peanut butter. I forced myself to eat the whole thing, it was hard but I managed. It is hard for me to eat a lot before a race, but after not eating enough the day before I knew I had to force myself. I also had a few sips of coffee to speed up my um…pre-race trip to the bathroom if you know what I mean?!

Once I was clothed, fed, had my Sweaty Band in tact and was Body Glided we were out the door and on our way to the race. It was the first time of the season that I would we running in the humidity and heat so I made sure I was body glided up to the high heavens. I am not kidding, I seriously could have done a slip and slide down the sidewalk , that is how slick I was. I met up with a group of cuties at the start line!!! What an awesome group of friends to run with!

Here is the beautiful Lisa and I at the start line ready to rock!!!!

We wanted to line up with the 10 minute milers, but it was way to packed. I think there was upwards of 8,800 runners! I believe we were right in with the 10:30 min/milers. Once the gun went off, I could feel the butterflies in my stomach and I knew it was going to be awesome. The first few miles everything was so tight that I felt like I was in slow motion, it was hard to weave in and out of the people you needed to get by. Adam, Dan and I made a pact to stay together, but at times it was hard because the crowd was so massive.

Once we got onto Memorial Drive things opened up a little and we could move around more. The humidity was OUT OF CONTROL. I was dripping sweat before my Garmin even told me I had run a mile. It was gross. But I felt surprising great for that much humidity. We just kept right on trucking and the miles flew by. Around mile 5 I sucked back a Vanilla Bean Gu and felt that sugar rush through my body almost instantly. I didn’t really notice, but Dan and Adam were laughing because they could see my speed pick up A LOT once the GU kicked in. At one point I had to squeeze through a group of guys that were in front of me and I guess were running slower that I wanted to be going. I said, “Excuse me fellas, I have somewhere to be.” Dan laughed so hard I thought he was going to have to stop running. He looked over at me and said, “Ali, that was awesome!” Running with Adam and Dan definitely provided some comic relief.

We were keeping a nice pace and setting ourselves up for some negative splits on that back end to make for a super strong finish. Around mile 8, I looked over at Adam and knew something was wrong. He was pale and super winded. I asked if he was okay and he told me he wasn’t feeling well. The next 5 miles were so hard on him. I could see it in every step he took that he was having a hard time. He kept telling Dan and I to just go and leave him behind. I would have, ever have done that in a million years. Not after all the races he ran next to me for and and pep talked me to the finish. We kept a close watch on him and tried to help with some encouraging words. Adam was such a rockstar. He pushed through the pain and the sick feeling and we got across the finish line with a personal best of 2:16:13!!!! By the way, for anyone who ran that race it was 13.5 miles, not 13.1- they were a little off!

Lisa and I post race!

I felt great that whole half marathon! It was unbelievable, I felt like I could have kept going, like I could run forever!!!!!! After the race, we went home and showered and celebrated. There were certainly victory beers had I also refueled with a chicken sausage, some salad, pasta salad and potato salad at our cookout.

I didn’t take many photos on Sunday because I was busy celebrating and being a hostess, but here are a few shots from the cookout!

Have you had any good runs or workouts lately that made you feel invincible?