Half Marathon 2012

We did it!  And I have a shirt, medal, and sore muscles/joints to prove it.  :)  Brian and I have both decided that this one was a lot harder than the first one we ran two years ago.  Despite my New Year's Resolution to beat my time, we were slower... a lot slower...14 minutes slower to be exact.  Factors that most likely influenced our sluggish time include but are not limited to:
1.  Weight gain.  Brian and I are both significantly heavier than last time around.. Although I'm working on that, which leads to...
2.  My diet.  I started the Paleo Diet and followed it strictly for about a week and 5 days before the race.  While there are a lot of legit runners on the diet, you aren't supposed to do a lot of exercise the first two weeks so that your body can adjust to life with less carbs. You are also supposed to train on the diet (I did our 10.5 mile practice run pre-paleo) before racing on the diet.  Duh!  This is probably the biggest reason I hit such a hard wall just after mile 10.  Good News is that although I may have sacrificed my race time, I am losing weight.
3.  Not enough cross training to strengthen core muscles.  Last time around, Brian and I cross trained with P90X.  This time we only ran according to our running schedule.

Still, I'm grateful that we finished and that we at least met our goal to run it.  Brian is the best husband in the world and most supportive friend and ran with me the entire 13.1 miles.  Our finishing times were exactly the same at 2:37:34. (This was a serious sacrifice of his previous time.)  I love him.  I also I hugely grateful for Travis and Whitney who came to cheer us on near the finish line!

Our times from 2010

Our time from 2012

Here are some random pics from the race thanks to professional photographers.  I had to do some creative cropping in order to cut out the giant "proof" going across each picture. :)