Here we are two weeks from race day. You could say that last night was a sleepless night, but you would be making a HUGE understatement. Poor Jolee is cutting teeth. After being up the great majority of the night, she now has 7 teeth. I got about 2 hours of sleep in half hour spurts and Randy got maybe 3 hours. So with this in mind, the alarm goes off at 3 am. We drag our exhausted bodies out of bed and get dressed to run. With Jolee now happily asleep (of course), we pull her out of bed and get her into the jogging stroller. Thank goodness that she sleeps very well in the stroller. By 3:38 am we arrive at the starting line for our morning run. It is still dark, so I carried a flashlight and Randy wore his super cool light hat. We start our run fairly well. Not to fast, but not too slow. Our goal is to finish our half marathon in 3 hours, so an overall average of 15 minute miles including stopping for water and the occasionally walking rest. Compared to our Monday run (all my muscles were cramping and I had to walk after about 3 miles because of a bruised foot), this was an awesome run. I ran nearly all 13 miles straight. The only times I stopped were to fill up my water bottle which I empty at a remarkably quick rate, for red lights (at least there won't be any of these race day), to down a GU gel, and to wait for Randy near the end. I was a machine today! I just ran and ran and ran without getting too tired. It was very enjoyable. We were about 8-9 miles into our run before the sun came up so I didn't have to deal with overheating. Randy kept up with me almost the entire run. His usually technique is to run and pass me, stop and walk and wait for me to pass him, then run again. He has a difficult time running at my slow 12-13 minute mile pace. This works well for him as long as I don't get too far ahead of him, as was the case today. He stopped to fix his shoe and usually he is so fast that he easily catches up to me (he runs a 8-10 minute mile pace), but today I got too far ahead and he lost some motivation, so I had to stop and wait for him (actually I walked backwards while yelling motivation for Randy). Me stopping for him is not a norm! But anyways, we decided to try some GU gel at mile 7.5 to prepare for the race. There is a GU gel station at 7.5 miles into the race. We bought these last Saturday and we tried one to see how it tastes. I almost gagged. It is like trying to swallow funky tasting glue. Thick and sticky and weird. Well, we learned that the stuff is actually not difficult to get down at all if you have a mouthful of water and squirt it into the water and swallow quickly. I was actually kinda surprised at how much easier it was to swallow. Well, the GU gel actually worked pretty well at giving me a burst of energy to help me get to the finish. We ran 13 miles in 2 hours and 57 minutes. I am sure that Seattle's hills will present a challenge, but I am still fairly confident that within 3 hours we will be crossing that finish line. I can't believe it is only two weeks away. We are now entering the rest and recovery time to prep for the big day. We are so excited! Still plenty of time to donate! Thanks for all of the support.
-Sarah
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