We went out to the Outer Banks for Colleen's first ever half marathon. We stayed 3 nights at a great 2 bedroom dog-friendly beach cottage just 100 feet from the sand in Nags Head, with our own hot tub on the deck! And the owner/care-taker of the 8 units lives in one of the units with his two dogs, and was very friendly. His two dogs played with Kylie on the beach. The place is called
My Lagoon, and we recommend it for anyone staying in or near Nags Head, especially if you are looking for a dog friendly place!
The day before and after the race we ate at the
Outer Banks Brewing Station, a wind-powered brewery with great beers, great food, and a huge "back yard" with picnic tables, a huge kids play area including a pirate ship playground:
Also, the day before and after the race we all went out to the beach, including Kylie!
There was almost nobody around and the weather was great, highs in the 70s. Kylie would take a break from chasing tennis balls by chasing birds up and down the beach. It was nice having nobody around for us to do that.
The day before the race there is a 5k and 8k event with a bunch of activities for all of us to do. Avery like putting the bean bags into the holes, they were a bit too far for here to thrown them!
She liked walking the plank
And going down a huge blow-up slide with momma
We also all got our faces painted with pirate skull and crossbones!
The event was held on the infield of a high school track, and the 5k and 8k races started as a lap on the track. We watched those races start so Avery could practice saying "Go Go Go!" to the runners.
That night Colleen made sure she was all set with her race gear, and we went to bed nice and early.
As for the race, it went great and Colleen really enjoyed it! Jim and Avery set up at 3 different locations (Mile 1, 3, and 6) by driving up the course after Colleen passed.
The runners were actually cheering for Jim and Avery, they kept telling him they were amazed to see them so many times over and over again.
Colleen looked happy each time she passed
The race was a point-to-point race from Kitty Hawk to Manteo, mostly into the wind the whole way. (A Kenyan team was attempting to break the half-marathon world record in this race but because of the wind "only" ran it at a 4:52 pace per mile for a time of 1:03, a full 4 or 5 minutes off the world record pace). Even with the wind, Colleen beat her goal time of 2 hours 20 minutes and came in at 2 hours and 15 minutes!
We enjoyed the beer garden after the race
The race ending in
downtown Manteo was a great place to finish. Manteo is on Roanoke Island, halfway across the sound between the mainland and the Outer Banks (the runners had to cross a high bridge on the route), where the first English colony was settled called Roanoke Colony--sometimes called the Lost Colony because the fate of all the people is unknown after they disappeared.. The town itself has a very quaint downtown right on the water with sailboats, etc.
And the
NC Aquarium has one of its 3 sites there. We ate a great little place called
Full Moon Cafe and Grille
It had a good beer selection on tap, and had a great dog-friendly patio out front.
Another good place we found was called
Wave Riders Cafe, a non-descript place in Nags Head that had some of the best breakfast bagel sandwiches we'd ever had. They pressed them like a panini and somehow they were so tasty that we went twice while we were there. What's neat was that they had leather couches and they put on PBS Kids so Avery would be entertained while we ate!
Before we headed out we stopped by the
Fort Raleigh national historic site, where the Lost Colony was located.
A really neat part of the site was a theater there right on the water
It
shows a play each night during the summer called Lost Colony, next time we are there during the play's season we are definitely going!
During the race expo we signed up for the Flying Pirate Half Marathon, which runs on a course just north of this half-marathon course in April, we can't wait!
