On Sunday Colleen ran in the Run Raleigh Half Marathon, it was the innagural year for it. It was purposely limited to a relatively small 1500 racer limit because 5 miles of it were on the Raleigh Greenway Trail system. It started at Cameron Village in Raleigh and we had to get up early to get there in time. Here we are ready to leave the house at 5:30am, Colleen was ready
And so was Avery
It was a comfortablly cool morning when we showed up at Cameron Village
One last bit of support from Avery:
Jim and Avery went and set up on the course with a sign:
Jim was Colleen's "course support" by taking her jacket at mile 2.5, providing a new hand-held water bottle for mile 5 (that way Colleen wouldn't have to slow down at all the water stations), and of course having Avery ring a cow bell and yell "GO GO MOMMA!!" at four different spots on the course.
It was a tough hilly course and even though the net elevation gain was zero (since it started at the same location where it ended), the total elevation gain along the course was about 2,000! There was also a huge steep hill at the beginning of the final mile where almost eveyone was walking, except for Colleen, she called it "Heartbreak Hill" after the tough hill at the Boston Marathon near the end. The best part was the downhill stretch to the finish where Colleen was in a full sprint to the finish line in sight!
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| Spectator giving her a high five! |
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| Both feet off the ground in full sprint down the hill towards the finish! |
Her finish time on the clock was 1:58:33, a new PR by 17 minutes! However she really ran it faster because the race timeing company said due to "human error" the start line didn't pick up the chips so nobody got a chip time. Considering that she started in the very back of the pack (due to long port-a-potty lines) she finished at least 30-60 seconds faster than that but we'll never know the real time.
Afterwards Colleen enjoyed a beer at the finish area
And showed off her medal:
Once we left the race area we went to Goodberry's to enjoy some yummy frozen custard, Avery loved it too!
Then we went to the playground that she loves the most, in Morrisville:
And finally we filled up the little pool in our front yard and Avery loved lounging in it with her sippy and splashing around
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| Lounging with her cold beverage |
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| SPLASH! Action Shot! |
Also one more note, with Colleen's time she is now FIRST in her age group for the spring race series we are running!
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Jim didn't run this one (Since he was babysitting Avery and cheering on) so he dropped in the standings, but it looks like he will also be a top 3 finisher once he runs two more races in May (They take the top 6 race scores out of 10 so it is ok to miss a few races). We can't wait for the award dinner in July when we both might get awards!!
