Hobbler Half

I woke up at 3:15 on Saturday and ate my oatmeal. Mom, dad, and Joy were coming to pick me up so we could head down to Springville for the Hobbler Half marathon. Mom and I were going to do the relay and Joy was going to run the full thing. My plan was to run the first half with Joy and then at the meet up with my mom, I'd walk/run the rest of the way with her. 

 Dad's such a good sport, getting up super early and driving us down there. He shakes his head at our crazy running adventures, but he's proud of us. He wears his "Wow! My wife and Daughters run marathons!" shirt every time. We need to add an S to that shirt. When we had the shirt made it was just me and ma who ran, but now my sister is in on it! 

We picked up our packets and numbers before catching the bus. Joy and I were on one of the first buses and mom and dad drove up to the meet up point for the relay. There were a good amount of people at the start and it was a little chilly, not too bad actually. It felt really good. I went to use the honey buckets before the race and boy did I get the wrong one... I've changed a TON of poopy diapers in my life, but this porta potty was smelling HORRIBLE! I almost threw up. 

Joy and I got lined up and ready to run. We were between the 2:10 and 2:20 pacers. By the time we crossed the start line we were more in line with the 2:20 pacer and stuck with them for the first mile before we warmed up and ditched them. We were running really good at about a 9:45 pace for the first 5 miles. The relay point was about .75 miles early, so from mile 5.5ish-12.95 I ran/walked with my momma. I kept going back and forth on going ahead with Joy (I could have PR'd again), but I felt like I needed to stick with my mom. Plus I'll be running Timp this coming Saturday and that's the one I'm going to PR on. I kept thinking of this one as a training run. While running with my mom I discovered it's MUCH easier to run fast than it is to run slow for a long time. Sure, it takes a lot of effort to run fast, but to run slow you have to endure for a long time. 

Momma did great! We finished in 2.46! Go ma!!

It was great to run with my mom and sister! I'd love to be able to do it again one day. :)

I felt amazingly strong this half. I've been doing one of those 30 day challenges for abs and I've been killing the sit ups. I REALLY think it helped a TON in this half. I could really feel my posture straighten out and my core stay strong while I ran. I felt like I was running with my legs vs my whole body, if that makes sense. I'll have to make sure to keep it up even after the challenge is over. Today I did 120 sit ups and 190 crunches and a 2 minute plank! I was amazed. :)