Our little family traveled to Dallas, Texas the weekend of December 4th so Eduardo and I could run a half marathon. We had been training for it and heard that it was a fun course to run with bands and lots of spectators. The weather is supposedly always good too but not this year!
We arrived on Saturday afternoon, checked into the brand new Omni hotel and then boarded the shuttle bus for the fitness expo. There was so much to do at the expo that we stayed for a long time. We let the kids play in the Cliff Bar kids area and we got 100 or more samples!! We picked up our official bibs and t-shirts and were ready to run!
Sunday morning we left the hotel at 5:30am to be sure we had enough time to get to the start line with all the shuttle buses we knew we had to take. Plus we were staying at the marthon's offical hotel and there were over 25,000 runners!!
Our college friend, Rebecca came to stay with the girls while Eduardo and I ran the race. We got to the marthon in plenty time to eat breakfast, go to the bathroom 20 times because of nerves, stretch and watch all the excitmement and other runners!
It was finaly time to go outside and get ready to run. It was cold though (40') and very rainy. We had come to Dallas to run so nothing was going to hold us back!!
The race started and Eduardo and I were in different corrals. It didn't take him long to get to the start line but it took me 28 minutes! That's a long time standing in anticipation in the cold and rain.
The course was really nice but so many more people than I expected. My time could have been a lot faster if I hadn't started so far back and didn't have to pass so many people. It was raining so hard and every street corner you had to jump through a huge puddle. By the first mile I was soaked! Luckily, I had gloves on though but my shoe came untied at mile 4 and I had to take them off to tie my shoe. I couldn't get them back on because they were too soaking wet. My feet and hands were frozen when I got to mile 13.1!!
That's okay though because I enjoyed every minute of the race. If I could run a half marathon in 2 hours flat under those conditions, than I can do anything!! And next time I'll be even faster I hope on a nice sunny, dry day!!
My goal was 2 hours and I did it!! I was very proud of myself and Eduardo did it in 1 hour 53 minutes which is incredible also!
After the race we wanted to get out of there as fast as we could because we were so cold and wet with no change of clothes. We boarded the shuttle bus and were back at the hotel within 30 minutes of finishing! We took warm showers, ate lunch, took naps and then drove 5 hours back to Fayetteville with our sweet girls.
It was a really fun experince which I can't wait to do again. I injured my left foot a little bit so I'm not running at the moment but as soon as I am fixed, I will be outside!!
Enjoy some pictures from our weekend :)
