another half marathon

On Saturday Rachel and I ran our own half marathon together!  It was something we wanted to do before the end of the year and feels good to have made it happen.  Summer 2020 we had record heat in July and August so we ran less and did more strength and yoga.  It's not fun running in 90 + degree weather at 5:30 in the morning.  Then in September Rachel and I got into hiking to prepare for hiking the Grand Canyon rim to rim.  So amazing!  And also different from running.

After the Grand Canyon our Saturday runs got long.  The Saturday after the Grand Canyon we ran 6 miles, and 6 the next, then 8, then 8, then 10.  By that 10 miles Saturday Rachel's knee was bothering her.  We upped our miles a little too fast so we baked off for a couple weeks.  We ran our 10k Turkey Trot and another 6 miles the next weekend before jumping up to 10 miles a week ago, and then 13.1 last Saturday!

We slowed down the last few miles for Rachel's knee, but still beat her PR (personal record) by a few minutes and kept the overall time 5 miles under an hour and a half.  I would have liked to be under an 11:00 minute per mile pace but feel good.  Still had some juice at the end, it would have been nice to be faster those last miles.

Andrew surprised us by coming on his bike the last half mile to cheer us on!  It was the sweetest thing.  We did our traditional #1 photo after.

It's amazing to be here after having done another half marathon.  Counting them up I did my first one with my cousin Elizabeth Curtis in 2011.  Then in 2016, two babies later, I ran my second half marathon with Dan McKay.  I never blogged about it (I did post on instagram here) but the next year in 2017 I ran my first marathon after training with a bunch of friends.  Training for that I ran many runs a half marathon distance and longer (probably around 5).  That was the year I was the team captain of a ragnar team (best ragnar ever!) and ran a half marathon during one of my ragnar legs and got an extra medal I didn't know about until after the race.  Then a year ago my running buddy, Rachel Willis, signed up for the Gilbert half marathon so I trained with her and did my own half marathon after a long run with Rachel.  

Thanks for walking down memory lane with me.  All in all I've run around 10 half marathon or longer distances.  So proud of myself and look forward to many more similar runs and hikes.