I ran a marathon!

Except I did it the smart way. Apparently some silly people run the entire thing in ONE DAY. Can you imagine? Ridiculous. So I decided to break it up into 2 parts, I ran the first half last summer, and the second half last Saturday. Way smarter, am I right?

It was the Hobble Creek half, and it was pretty great. And by pretty great I mean that for the last 4 or 5 miles I thought things like, "They are liars on the website. They said it's mostly downhill," and "This is the stupidest thing I have ever done. I am NEVER running another race," and "I know if I run faster I can lay down on the grass and have some water, but I don't think I can make my legs do that." You know, encouraging stuff like that. There are some kind of end of race demons that invade your mind at mile 9, I think.

But, like having a baby (at least I think so), when it was all over I was proud and tired and I felt like I got beat up but I started saying things like, "That was good," and "I'll probably do that again." It's a mystery how that all works.

My time was 2 hours and 21 minutes, which I was super pumped about, because at my other half I ran 2:56. So, turns out losing 25-30ish pounds (depending on the day, you know), and training better gives you real results! Who knew? 35 minutes less? Who knows what I could do if I lose 30 more pounds! (That's a jk. I use this website called myfitnesspal.com, dumb name, but it's one of those websites that you can enter in your food and exercise and it gives you a little report for the day and how fast you would lose weight if you did that every day. On Saturday after the race I put in the race, and put in what I had eaten so far that day, which was a piece of toast, a banana, a handful of pretzels, and 2 popsicles. Then I updated it and it said, "If every day were like today, in 5 weeks you would weigh 99 pounds." Then underneath there's a little note that said something about consuming too few calories or something, I don't know, it didn't seem important.)

Char and Blair ran too, and Shelly and her mom and sister. So it was a whole big event. My mom was going to run it too, but her ankle is injured. Do you want to know the biggest difference between me and my mom? She told me her ankle was hurt, so instead of running the race, she would just run back and find me and run the last few miles with me. And I was like, "Well, why don't you just run the whole race, but take it easy?" And she was like, "Oh, I can't do that." And I said, "Your ankle can't do that, or YOU can't do that?" And she said, "I can't do it. That would drive me crazy to run a race but not actually RACE." And she thinks I'm nuts for thinking she should just run slow, and I think she's nuts for not just running the race. Anyway, it was very funny.

And, of course Christopherson and my papa came to watch us finish. It was so great to see them at what I THOUGHT was the Finish line. They had a very deceptive finish, I kept thinking it was like 50 feet away, but then you had to wind around this building, and run through a park. But yeah, they were great. They didn't bring a camera, which was too bad, but maybe I should have told Chris to bring one, and then he would have remembered. So we share the blame on that one. It is too bad though, because I was excited to compare pics from my one last year and laugh about how fat I was in that one. But whatevs.

The point is--running is good. And we went to Cafe Rio for lunch, so we all win.

Also, don't look up Cafe Rio's nutrition info. Just let it be delicious and don't worry. For realsies, you will regret it.