I signed up for my 8th half-marathon!!
On November 3rd I'll be running the Raleigh City of Oaks Half-Marathon with my BRFF (best running friend forever) Meg. Remember her? This girl. It's going to be epic.
Raleigh will be our fourth half together, and I couldn't be more excited (in case you couldn't tell). Our goal is simple: break 2 hours. Why? Because that's always been the goal.
Our first race together was the first 13.1 either of us ever ran. We'd trained with Team in Training and had high hopes. It was Chicago in August. It was hot. Being newbies, we didn't have experience dealing with adverse race conditions, and tried to push through. We turned in a 2:12 and I threw up about 6 times (lovely, right?) (non-graphic recap here).
Our second race was the Indy half in October 2008, when my older son was not quite 5 months old. I think the reason we didn't sub-2 that day is fairly obvious.
That's me in the blue shirt about to cross the blue mat. Meg is next to me.
Our third race was the Illinois half in May of 2010, just after we'd both graduated (recap here). That day was about so much more than running--or rather, running was about so much more than running. But, it wasn't our day on the course. We posted a new PR for Meg, but a slower time than we'd hoped for.
Running in our hoods one Saturday that spring--running together
was about so much more than running
Soon after that race, she moved really really far west and I moved to STL. Then she moved again. Then I had another baby. Meanwhile we both had(have) demanding jobs. Then I moved again. And finally we found an opening to get together for a race.
So, Raleigh. November. That's the goal: sub-2 our half. We can do this!! We're training "together" from a distance (we're 2000+ miles apart) using the Runner's World 2-hour half training plan, which I've used before and really like. The course is flat and the weather should be favorable. And coming from UT, running at sea level will feel amazing. SO EXCITED!!
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