Lake Lowell Half Marathon

Saturday, April 11, 2015

Nate and I ran our first half marathon last Saturday! I wasn't as prepared as I would have liked, with moving and school and working a few days a week. But we both did better than we'd anticipated and it was actually fun!
It was a little chilly, but we managed.
At the starting line they announced that they only had 140 medals show up so if you weren't one of the first 140 people you would have to get yours the next week.
As we were getting close to the halfway/turnaround point, I started counting the people coming back toward us to figure out how close we would be to getting a medal. Well we were right about 145ish so Nate said if he left me and ran ahead he could get a medal. I told him to go for it!
He took off at that point and after about a quarter mile he was out of my sight!
I kept my slow and steady pace and actually passed about 5 people.
At the second to last aid station I was still running which I didn't think I'd be doing! Right before the last 2 miles, we turned a corner and were running a different direction which was right into the wind and of course it started raining!
It made for a very slow finish (as it was also uphill!) but I kept running! I also started to feel a pain in my toe and was pretty sure I was bleeding but I was so close to being done that I just finished it out! I beat my estimated time (2:30) just barely but I was still happy with it!
I ended up 154 out of 240 with a time of 2:29:01. 16th in my age group out of 26.
Nate was 199 and his time was 2:15:33. 7th in his age group out of 11.
Overall, it was a fun race and I'm glad to be able to mark that off my list.
Nate thinks he wants to start training for a marathon now, someday I think that would be neat to do, but I think I want to do some more halves first:)

P.s. this is only the first picture we've seen from the "official race pictures" so I'm sure I'll add more once they post them.

Spencer in 2015

     Spencer has already changed so much this year. He is running and starting to talk. My favorites are when he says "please!" and "thank you". He is turning into such a little boy and is no longer a baby! We've started taking him into nursery on Sunday's and he loves it! He puts up with all the bigger kids beatin' up on him and just does his own thing. Too bad he still has 2 months until we can leave him in there!
     We bought him a little big wheel that he really loves too. He's not quite big enough to touch the pedals but he loves to just sit on it. He also has a sandbox the loves to play in and with all the warm weather we've been having he's spent a lot of time out there digging and playing. It sits right against our fence and on the other side our neighbors have 3 dogs and he loves to peek through the fence at them and say "hi!" over and over. It's pretty cute and they seem to be very friendly and attention starved dogs.
     He is still our little climber and we finally had to move all our chairs away from the table because he kept climbing on top and standing on the table while he throws everything off and I got tired of that real quick! He had his first bloody nose/bloody mouth about 2 weeks ago. He had climbed up on a chair (that wasn't at the table so luckily he wasn't higher than he could have been) and out of the corner of my eye I saw him just dive face first out of the chair onto the kitchen linoleum. There was a lot of blood out both nostrils and mouth and I was sure he did some serious damage to his mouth and teeth but after the blood stopped everything looked ok and he really didn't cry for too long. We also reaffirmed that I do not do well with other people's blood. After he was ok I felt very sick and light headed and had to lay down :)
     The kid FINALLY had a molar break through, he hadn't had a tooth in almost 8 months but that didn't stop him from eating anything he wanted. The kid eats all day long and will eat anything! He sure is fun and keeps us very busy! We are so glad to have our own space that he can tornado through! We are looking forward to having a whole backyard for him to enjoy this summer!
the first time he saw his "bike". He saw it out the window 
and wasn't about to put clothes on first.