1/2 marathon #2

So today I finished my second half marathon!!!! It was a lot different than that last one in Arizona. This one was in Iowa. It started in a small town called Storm lake and ended in a little town, I think the population is about 300, called Marathon. So you run a marathon to Marathon, or in my case a 1/2 marathon! So the race was called Marathon to Marathon!!!

This is Storm Lake. This is where we started and had to pick up our packets. Which you picked up at the local high school, which looks decent size for a small town, until you realize that it's the Community College too! This is also where we had our hotel!
Our hotel was awful!!! It was really dumpy! You don't believe me?!!?

This was our bathroom! Yes, it is green!!! Not only was it green, it was dirty! At least we didn't have to shower in it!

This is our ceiling! I don't know if you can tell, but that is a huge crack that has been repaired! We had these all over! It looked pretty bad on the outside too. We had a refrigerator and a microwave in our room, which neither one of them worked!!! Then when I turned in the key, there was no one there and I had to call someone so then they came out of the office wearing pajamas and got my key!
Well we woke up this morning to a full on thunderstorm!! Lighting, thunder, and pouring buckets of rain. We knew that there were chances of rain, so we brought a light jacket. We head to the high school/ college and find out that the race has been pushed back an hour and maybe more! They would inform us every 15 min or so, if the race was going to start! If they delayed it for 3 hours the race was off and that means all my hard work was for nothing and we don't got our money back for the race. Which means we drove 2 and a 1/2 hours to sleep in an over priced dumpy hotel!
So while it was delayed we realized that chances of getting back to our hotel to check out by 11 was impossible, due to not knowing when the race was going to start and catching a bus back to our car which added about 45 mins! So we headed back to our hotel room, packed up checked out and ran to wal-mart. Which was one of the only stores opened at 6 in the morning! At wal-mart we pick up some ponchos and a visor to help deal with the rain. The race would start when the lightning was done, but not the rain! It looked like it was going to rain all day!
So our raced started at 8 instead of 7! We were excited to get to run the race!!! We head out wearing our ponchos in the rain! They were flapping behind us like capes and we looked pretty silly!

I know this picture is blurry, but her were are in our ponchos waiting to find out if we would get to race and what time we would start! Back to running! I finially ditched my poncho at about 3 miles. It was looking better outside and I still had my jacket if I needed, but also because those ponchos trap all that body heat in and made me really hot! So it stopped raining, mostly, but we had about a 30 mile per hour wind either blowing right at us or from the side! That just made the run more fun ;) Then because it stopped raining we now had awful humidity! now our race consisted of basically running through cornfields. We saw a house about every mile or so! Here is an example of the description of mile marks from the map they gave us before the race --mile 5marker-- 60 ft north or buried cable box in east ditch.
12th mile marker--42 ft west of marker in south ditch
Finish line-- 35 ft west of manhole cover at intersection of Illissus and West Attica Streets by Methodist Church and Community Center.
This is how they all were!!! Crazy!!! At least they had every mile marked with a sign, if not I would be lost!!! They told us the run would be flat, but it was about 50/50. So again that just made the race that much more fun;) I ran with my friend Erica, she did great. She was struggling a lot. She woke us feeling sick that day, you know how you get about once a month. Not fun!  So I had to bully her along, but it slowed down my time. I started having problems with my hip about 6 miles in, every step was painful!! I've been haven't problems with it for a few weeks. I was just glad it held out until almost the half way point! She had to stop and walk a bit, but near the end I couldn't walk without regretting it. It was twice as bad to start up again. I slowed my pace and would yell back at her to get running, her walking time was over! I think I ran it in 2hr 29 mins. a min over my last time. I wasn't very happy, but considering everything I guess it's ok. They didn't have a big timer over the finish line, they just announced it as you cross with your race number and name and where you were from. So I think that's the time they said. I'll check later. As soon as I finished I ran back to Erica and helped her finish! I told myself that I would not let a marathoner (they started before us, up the road 13.1 miles) pass me, but when I had 2 miles left He passed me! That means he ran a little of 2 1/2 hour marathon!!!! Crazy!!!

Yeah!!! We finished the race!!!!

We felt so proud of ourselves for running that race!!! We started walking together a little over a year together and now look how far we have come!!!

Here is my post race picture. We didn't take any pre race pictures because it was raining so bad.

What is the best why to finish up a marathon? Eat a marathon snickers bar!!! Yummy!!!!