This past weekend was the Rock 'N Roll St. Louis Half Marathon! I ran the whole thing with my brother's girlfriend Erin and it was her first half marathon ever and I'm sure she wants to keep doing more and more. Look how happy she was:
I didn't get to St. Louis until late Saturday night, but the Cardinals World Series game was still on, so Erin had made some pasta for me and we watched the game. Unfortunately, it looked like the game was going to go into extra innings and we needed to be up super early, so we turned it off in the 9th. Apparently the game ended (with a Cardinals win!) shortly after we hit the hay.
So, race morning. We woke up and got ready to run! We had bought matching Lululemon tank tops, but it was a bit too chilly for that. I advised Erin to eat a bagel and some GU Chomps energy bites and I did the same. When we got to the start line, I needed to grab my bib and t-shirt since I didn't make it to St. Louis in time to go to the expo. But that was surprisingly quick and then we jumped in the corral and it was time to go within a few minutes.
The first few miles of the race were through downtown St. Louis, which was cool because it was sunrise and we ran towards the Arch and then around Busch Stadium. We were each wearing coats over our running clothes because it was so cold at the start, but took them off around mile 2-3. Luckily, we knew we'd see Katie around mile 5 because the course went right by her SLU apartment. We ran to her, gave her a quick hug and our coats and continued on.
The race really wasn't that eventful. Erin had hoped to maintain at 10 minute mile, but we were going much faster staying right around a 9 minute mile. One of the later miles was even 8:40 and I think she was shocked at how fast she was able to go considering she hadn't trained this pace! We were even chatting and having fun taking some pictures and videos. And I will have those videos for you in my next post hopefully...they were taken on my iPod that I was running with, which I left at home today. Anyways, there were some pretty killer hills, but we maintained a solid pace and finished in 1:56:45!! Woohoo congrats Erin!! Erin's mom also ran her first half marathon and finished faster than the first place marathoner! (That was the goal.)
The pace was fairly comfortable for me, but having run only 2 3-miles runs in the past 2 weeks since the Chicago Marathon, diving right into 13 with those hills did my knees some damage. They are fine now, but they sure hurt for the whole day.
I didn't get to St. Louis until late Saturday night, but the Cardinals World Series game was still on, so Erin had made some pasta for me and we watched the game. Unfortunately, it looked like the game was going to go into extra innings and we needed to be up super early, so we turned it off in the 9th. Apparently the game ended (with a Cardinals win!) shortly after we hit the hay.
So, race morning. We woke up and got ready to run! We had bought matching Lululemon tank tops, but it was a bit too chilly for that. I advised Erin to eat a bagel and some GU Chomps energy bites and I did the same. When we got to the start line, I needed to grab my bib and t-shirt since I didn't make it to St. Louis in time to go to the expo. But that was surprisingly quick and then we jumped in the corral and it was time to go within a few minutes.
The first few miles of the race were through downtown St. Louis, which was cool because it was sunrise and we ran towards the Arch and then around Busch Stadium. We were each wearing coats over our running clothes because it was so cold at the start, but took them off around mile 2-3. Luckily, we knew we'd see Katie around mile 5 because the course went right by her SLU apartment. We ran to her, gave her a quick hug and our coats and continued on.
I was very colorful...and cold.
The race really wasn't that eventful. Erin had hoped to maintain at 10 minute mile, but we were going much faster staying right around a 9 minute mile. One of the later miles was even 8:40 and I think she was shocked at how fast she was able to go considering she hadn't trained this pace! We were even chatting and having fun taking some pictures and videos. And I will have those videos for you in my next post hopefully...they were taken on my iPod that I was running with, which I left at home today. Anyways, there were some pretty killer hills, but we maintained a solid pace and finished in 1:56:45!! Woohoo congrats Erin!! Erin's mom also ran her first half marathon and finished faster than the first place marathoner! (That was the goal.)
The pace was fairly comfortable for me, but having run only 2 3-miles runs in the past 2 weeks since the Chicago Marathon, diving right into 13 with those hills did my knees some damage. They are fine now, but they sure hurt for the whole day.
That's kind of how I feel about blogging. I feel like a failure if I don't have photo proof of everything I did to show here. But I can promise I really did go out to dinner with Angela and Liz on Sunday night in St. Louis. And we were so deep in conversation and sat at the restaurant for so long after paying, that the obvious choice was to move our party over to the nearby fro yo place.
We had such a great time catching up with each other and talking about running and dorm food...and how we ran so much that we could eat so much dorm food. And then we started reminiscing about the good ole days at UD.
I wasn't driving back to Chicago until Monday, so in the morning I went to breakfast at Einsten brothers with my 2 Billiken cousins, Katie and Kevin. We had a great time catching up and talking about the upcoming holidays and of course, the event of the summer that we CANNOT wait for - the first Smith cousin wedding.
How was your weekend?
Do you like to take pictures documenting everything you do?
How was your weekend?
Do you like to take pictures documenting everything you do?
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