Santa Hustle Smokies 1/2 Marathon Review

How much of a dork do I look like?

This past weekend I completed my second half marathon of the year--and the second one in the past month! After my first half last month, I immediately came home ready and pumped to find another one to run in. Running is like my crack, I just can't quit it! It just so happens that the inaugural Santa Hustle Smokies Half Marathon was taking place on 12/11/11 in Sevierville, TN which is a couple hours away from me. I got in touch with my running buddies and we all decided to make it a girls weekend and head down. We got into town on Saturday afternoon and headed straight to the packet pickup which was at Wilderness of the Smokies where the race would be the next day. It's a huge indoor water park, and if we had been smart enough, we all would have brought our bathing suits. The expo was teeny tiny, just a few booths and this man who talked our heads off about the healing power of his water that was going to be used during the race. In our packets, we got our Dri-fit Santa Shirt, hat and beard which we were all to wear during the race. I was totally fine wearing the Santa gear minus the beard because it was very itchy. All of our packets were filled with GU's, Peanut Butter packets and Olive Oil?? How random is that to have Olive Oil in your race packet. We were all trying to figure out the significance of that one--still am! We did a little bit of outlet shopping that day, carbo loaded at the Olive Garden for dinner and called it a night by 9:00 pm.

Here we all are pictured above pre-race in our Santa gear: Bobbie, Sheri, Carmen and I. Kudos to Bobbie's mom Ruby for being our official race photographer. I would like to point out how great Sheri looks in red--she almost didn't wear her Santa gear and it took being shamed at Olive Garden by another running friend from Danville and our waitress for her to wise up. Shortly after that picture was taken we hopped a shuttle from the hotel down to the start line. Going into this race, I really wanted to beat my time from the last half that I ran so I came up with this whole strategy of starting out slow and finishing strong. Well that didn't last long. Of course I took off like a bat out of hell! The first few miles I was at about a 9:30 pace which is my normal pace but nothing that I could sustain for 13.1 miles so I slowed back down. I was also having this tension built up in my chest and it was making me very uncomfortable, so I kept stopping to walk and shake it off. I didn't really find my stride until about mile 5 and I felt good from there on out. I finished the first 6.55 miles in 1:07:18 which is a 10:18 pace. I had hoped to be around 1:03 then, but it was still pretty decent. At that pace I felt like I could beat my last half's time of 2:16. Since the course was out and back, I was thinking that there would be more downhill time on the way back and that I could make up for my walking in the first half. I was wrong about that as well. Seems like the hills were longer on the way back and there were about 4 good ones.
I ran pretty strong until mile 11 and that is when the mental fatigue set in. My legs weren't that tired, I was just mentally ready for it to be over. This is something that I really need to work on. I kept telling myself to keep going and to keep pushing but I ended up walking a lot the last couple miles. I met up with a girl who was running her 3rd half marathon and we agreed to run with each other till the end. Once I saw the finish line within reach, I full on sprinted to the end. My Nike+GPS said it was 13.33 miles and I finished in 2:21:28 405/634 total and 37/74 in my age group. I'm not completely happy with my results because I felt like I could have pushed harder and finished under 2:10 had I not walked so much. This whole half marathon thing is new to me, so I'm constantly learning!In the end, I still ran a half marathon, which is more than most people could say! I also got a pretty cool medal for doing so, and with us runners, it's all about the medals. The thing I was most surprised about was the lack of soreness. After my first half, I could barely walk for three days--in fact, after this race I felt like I could probably go out that night and run again, although I didn't. I guess my body is getting used to distance running, which it better because I plan on running another half next month and my first Marathon in April!

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?

The Berry Family at Thanksgiving
Did you miss me? As you can tell, over the past few months I have been blog-lazy. A lot has gone on in the life of the Berry family, so I will try to catch up over the next few posts. In short, I have been running (literally) like crazy, competing in my first half marathon in November with my second to follow next weekend. Cliff's basketball season will officially start this weekend, so we are looking forward to watching him be the awesome Coach that he is! The only downside of the basketball season is that he's constantly gone, but it's his passion and I will always fully support it. Aiden just turned 2, and he just gets more precious and smart each day. I'm amazed at how much this child knows and he's only 2! In the sad news of the past few months, my favorite person in the whole world, my Grandma passed away of complications from Cancer which I will explain more later. Life is too short and precious people, we need to remember that.

This post sponsored by Kroger

Aiden's first ride in the cart out of his car seat

Aiden's first ride in the car cart at Kroger

Ok, it's not really sponsored by Kroger, but it should be seeing that I spend 95% of my free time there. The main reason is because it's one of Aiden's favorite places. We'll just be sitting around the house and he'll grab me by the pants leg and say "we go Kroger?". Then he gets my keys off the table, puts on my sunglasses and opens the front door, "come on Mommy!". How can you say no to that? It's so darn cute! When we get to Kroger, we have to get in the carts that have the children's cars attached to them--he gets so excited about that! His favorite thing to get into at the grocery are strawberries. He has some sort of strawberry radar. I try hiding them in the cart but he figures it out every time and asks for one. "Mommy, stawbee?". The first time he did that I panicked. The strawberry's aren't washed, he's going to get some terrible disease! He might choke on the stem! Now I'm over that. If it keeps him happy and quiet while I shop, then it's ok by me. I really only have a window of about 30 minutes to spend at Kroger before he attempts to escape from the car cart. Then it's usually me chasing him down the aisle with him laughing. Plan B is to stick him in the bed of my cart with all the groceries. He seems to quiet down this way! His second favorite thing to do at the grocery is flirt with the cashiers. I swear, he's already a ladies man. Too bad his cuteness can't get us free groceries!

Sidenote: I thought he was a genius at 15 months when I was reading the Kroger advertisement in the newspaper and Aiden pointed to their logo and said "Kroger!". It took me a minute to absorb that and I frantically called my mother to tell her about my little genius. She then consulted my baby book (which is like 500 pages because she recorded EVERYTHING) to tell me that I recognized the Kroger logo at 14 months. Like mother like son I suppose! The branding guru that created the Kroger logo deserves a medal!

A Blog--Finally!

It has taken me almost two years to get our little family blog up and running and that's simply because I have had a case of the lazy's. I'm one of those procrastinator types--as judging by all the photo albums, baby books and thank you notes that lay incomplete. But this year I turned 30, and I vowed to do more adult things and be all "responsible". So this is my attempt at chronicling our family life before I start to lose my memory--you know, with being 30 and all it will come sooner than later!