Phoenix Half Marathon

This weekend one of my old high school best friends, Laura, came into town to run a race with me.  Unfortunately her and her husband didn’t get in till 11pm, so we chatted a bit then headed to bed.  The next morning I was up at 3:45am making bran muffins for breakfast for the race.  My other friend, Kara, Laura, and I headed to our race at 4:30 to be bused to the start line.  There we were at 5:30am FREEZING before we race.  We had 2 choices.  1. Stand by the fire and get smoked out 2. FREEZE by standing out in the cold wind.  I didn’t like either, so we found a group of runners on the side of the building with a gas heater… MUCH better!  That is where we waited for the race to start.

Kara, Me, Lara in our "warm" gear before we took off to the race

 At 6:30 we had to take off our warm clothes to drop them off before the race started, then all 1000 of us ½ marathoners were escorted to the start line with 2 motorcycle cops accompanied by people playing the bag pipes.  I wish I had a picture!  I think they were colder than us! The race was much colder than expected, but it was a GREAT run!

We started off with a nice downhill, then went through some neighborhoods which were pretty flat, and then a gradual uphill of about 3 miles (I think that is what made me so sore this race).  Next we had a nice long downhill followed by 2 more short up and down hills and then the end!  After the race there was tons of free stuff!  They even had Jamba Juice!  Defiantly worth the extra money I didn’t want to pay for the race. 

I beat my race time!  I completed it in 2hrs 7min 56 sec, averaging out to a grand total of 9min 46sec miles!  I love it!  I think my favorite part of the race had to be that we were consistently passing other runners along the way.  After the first 4 miles, nobody passed us, and we were passing others.  It was so cool!

Me, Laura, Kara all nice and sweaty after the race.  We are even still alive!

After the race...

Will and I took Laura and Pablo out shooting in the desert.  They had such a good time, so did we trying out our new .22, and the weather couldn't have been better.  The best part was watching Laura and I walk around goofy the whole time.  We were so sore!