Carrie, Kelly, and I spent months prepping for our booth at the Long Beach Marathon expo. The weekend came and we had a blast building our team with runners who wanted to sparkle during their run.
But after spending a weekend talking about racing in sparkle skirts, we just couldn't not race. Kelly and I signed up to run the 1/2 marathon at the last minute. Although Carrie really wanted to run, her 8-month pregnant body said otherwise.
Skyler also didn't race, as he is still in full-training mode for Ironman Arizona. He was the official photographer for the day. My neighbor, Apryl, and her mom drove with us to the race.
Skyler did a great job getting photos of all of the women in Team Sparkle skirts. Every time I saw him on the course I would get a little emotional.
For almost half of the race, I ran with a 62-year old man named Edward. We talked...a lot. Looking back, I probably shouldn't have been wasting my energy talking so much, but it just made the race so enjoyable. Funny thing: we figured out that we also ran (and talked) with each other at the only other 1/2 marathon I've done -- the Disneyland 1/2 Marathon in 2009. Crazy!
I felt pretty good during most of the race, but for the last two miles I started to feel pain. I could feel the blisters on my toes open (those shoes are now retired) and I felt short of breath. I wanted to finish the race in under 1:45, but it just wasn't going to happen. When I saw Skyler cheering me on from the sidelines of the finish line, nothing really mattered.
My final time was 1:46:06. I finished 28th out of 983 in my age group (F 25-29), 159th out of 5913 women, and 601 out of 9802 overall. Even though I didn't reach my goal, I still finished five minutes faster than my only other 1/2 marathon (1:51:08). I'm happy with that.
So we finished the race, drank our chocolate milk, and waited in line to have our picture taken in front of the sand sculpture. I don't know why this is a big deal, but we did it anyway. Kelly also PRed in this race, breaking the 2:00 mark by a few minutes. Congrats!
We saw so many Team Sparkle skirts during the race. Between Skyler taking pictures, Carrie taking video, and Carrie's daughter taking pictures, we captured most of them in this video. Check out the pictures and video of Team Sparkle at the Long Beach Marathon and Half Marathon here.
I was so happy to have Skyler there cheering me on. It's pretty rare that I'm racing and he's not. I'm so grateful that I have such a supportive husband.
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