Amish Country Half Marathon...

As you know I LOVE to run! This past winter I fell out of love with it because of the cold, and I was a bit depressed/FAT. Then spring rolled around and I signed up for some fun races. I was EXTREMELY slower this year from the year before, which made me more determined to run again. Thankfully I had some REALLY awesome running partners! A friend of mine from Club Mom (Jess Harries) told me about the Lehigh Valley Summer Series. Every first Wednesday of the month there was a free race in the Little Lehigh Parkway which is a fun trail. Codi and I both were serving in the Young Womens so we didn't get to do some of them. Although, we were able to do a couple. There we met a great runner Kristi who we invited to run with us. Brook Ockerman also join us and Jess. Every morning at 5:30am we ran 4-12 miles depending on the day and time. It was so fun to have such great running friends!

I decided I wanted to run a half-marathon (13.1 miles). Most of them over the summer were on Sunday which was a bummer for us faithful LDS people. I found a Saturday race in Amish Country (Lancaster, PA) for Novemeber 5th. I don't know what I was thinking running a half right smack in the middle of Darin's Trauma rotation where I was not able to get up at 5:30am to run. As well as at the end of my BUSY picture season where I would stay up way to late editing pictures. Some how I did get a little training in, but I certainly wasn't where I was at during the summer...BOO! Nash also came down with a really bad cold the week of the race. I picked it up but refused to believe I was sick until after the race. (Thank you Jess for the Sudafed!) My parents were in town so they stayed home to take care of Nash, I was so sad about that as I hoped to have my family there cheering me on. The race was an hour away so we went down Friday night. I had never been away from Nash over night. We both missed each other. He has been a bit clingy ever since.

(L to R: Brook, Jess, Kristi, me)
We all did well...although there is always room for improvement and I think we all wanted better, but were proud of our accomplishment! The route was mentally tough as it was a double loop. The last 3 miles had some pretty crazy up-hills. The mile markers did not match up with our garmins, especially mile 12! On the flip side the down hills were AWESOME!
Our Times:
Kristi 1:55 (this was her 4th half-marathon in 2 months!)
Brook 2:01 (her PR was 2:03!)
Christina 2:05 (I was happy to get under 2:30 haha!)
Jess 2:09 (her PR was 2:14!)

Friday night we picked up our packets and decided to drive the route. We didn't make it all the way around when we blew a tire! I had changed tires before although I always had a man breathing down my neck...so I knew somewhat what to do. We had the car jacked up ready to take the lug-nuts off when a nice dairy-farm boy saved the day! We/I was so grateful for this nice man as who knows what I would have done to Brook's car and spare tire!!! YIKES!After the race we drove around forever trying to find a tire place that was open. We finally found some nice mechanics that called around for us but nobody had the tire we needed. They showed us what was in the tire and said if we went slow we could make it home on the spare. We opted to do that.Sorry Brook that we killed your tire! Thank you for driving. It was such a fun experience. I loved running around all the Amish farms and seeing all the Amish children running to the road to watch. I even was passed by a Mennonite girl who was running the race. She smiled at me and said "You are doing a wonderful job!"
I think we did too!