Capital City Half Marathon

On May 5th I completed my 2nd half marathon. At this point I had known for about a week that I was pregnant, but I had been training for a while and there was no reason for me not to do the race(even though I had thrown up multiple times a day in the week that had passed). Shay and I drove down to Columbus on Friday afternoon (the day before the race). It's about a 2 hour drive and it was fun having it be just the two of us to talk and pass the time. 

As soon as we got there we headed straight for the pre-race convention. It was pretty fun. They had several speakers telling you the best ways to hydrate, eat, run, rest, etc etc, so that was good to hear. They also had tons of booths with running gear. we got our race packets and decided we should head out and get some dinner so we could get to bed fairly early. 

Here we are at the convention the night before the race. Getting pumped!

We decided that we should take our "carbo loading" seriously (; so we found this awesome italian restaurant downtown. Shay and I both had the spaghetti and meatball. It was delicious!

I forgot to take any more pictures before the race, but basically we went home, watched some Shark Tank and went to bed. The next morning, we woke up at 6, got dressed, pinned our numbers on, ate a piece of toast and some orange juice(you'll need to remember this later), and headed back downtown. 

The race was going ok for the 1st couple of miles until I randomly HAD to go to the bathroom, what?!?! I usually run our 10 mile runs without EVER having to go and I had to stop after just 2 miles?!? crazy. Anyway, I told Shay to go on without me while I stopped. Of course there was a huge line to the port-a-potties(I was pregnant, but what was everyone else's excuse??), so I knew it would take me forever to catch back up with her, if I even could. We ran the next 6 or 7 miles by ourselves and they were HARD. There were hills galore and when you are used to training on the flat roads of Cleveland, that is a problem. I also was regretting eating anything(although I don't think it would have made a difference). Around mile 5, I had to run off the course a little bit to some grass where I promptly threw up-yeah, fun. It was totally because of the pregnancy. I have never felt nauseous while running before, so it caught me pretty off guard. I think it was around mile 9 or 10 that I found Shay and we were both so happy to be running together again. We finished off the rest of the race together and were very proud of ourselves for finishing our 2nd half marathon. Although it was definitely tough and not as good of time as our first, we were both super happy, and I think you can tell by the smiles on our faces in the pictures. 

We got these super huge and heavy medals

Our cheering section! I owe Cameron a lot for making the 2 hour drive down to watch us finish. It was super sad though, he got there literally 2 minutes after we crossed the finish line because once he got to Columbus, they had almost all of the streets closed and the ones that were open were completely packed and impossible to get through. Plus, Grant wasn't happy to still be in the car, so it was not a fun ride. I was still so happy to see them and super grateful that they were willing to make the drive to come support me. 

Here we are just after I finished/Cameron got there. 

Shay and I ran back to the hotel to shower and change. While we did this, Cameron and Grant stayed at the race and did a few fun things, like ride the carrousel. The picture is kind of blurry, but Grant didn't really enjoy the ride. 

back at the hotel with my medal. Basically thinking "I am exhausted and SO happy to be done with that!"

After we got changed and ate some lunch, we decided to just hang out for a bit and let Grant run around. We didn't want to just jump right back in the car since he probably wouldn't have been too happy with that. 

Here is Grant(and Cameron) going down the slide. 

super happy on the playground! Oh, and you can't really see it, but his shirt says "run mommy run!" He wore it to my first half and somehow it still barely fit to wear again. I love it.