Get Lucky Half Marathon Race Recap

Another chilly race is in the books! On Saturday I completed half marathon number four. Spoiler alert: I missed a PR by 36 seconds with my finish time of 2:30:02. Despite the cold and windy conditions and missing my PR, it was still a fun race!

On Friday night we continued our pre-race ritual of dinner at Pazzaluna in St. Paul. I had the chicken piccata with risotto, and it was so delicious.

My mom was in town for a visit, and we both got our hair done on Friday :) We stayed at the Doubletree the night before the race with Tasha and Anna; we appreciated the free warm cookies on demand!

Saturday morning we were up at 7 to get ready! Tasha made our awesome tutus for the race. 

My first time dressing up for a race, it was fun except our tutus kept getting stuck to each other!

We were glad to walk from our hotel to the start line a few blocks away just minutes before the 8:30 start. It was around 18 degrees when we started out, and windy! The wind was actually at our backs until the turnaround at mile 7, after that it was a brutally cold headwind the whole way! I was proud of myself for running the whole way, other than slowing briefly for water/powerade 3 times. I didn't even have to walk up the big hill at mile

10 (where I had to walk during both Women Rock and Monster Dash).

Our finish (Tasha finished about 10-11 minutes before us).

Two cold races so far this year! I stole this cute picture from Anna's Facebook :)

Two days later, my right knee is still hurting. I hope I recover quickly so I can jump into training for my next race, the Lonestar Half Marathon in Luckenbach, TX! At least I can count on that one to be warm!

Update: here are the splits from my Garmin, just for fun and because I finally uploaded my activities to Garmin Connect:

Split	Time	Distance	Avg Pace
Summary	2:30:05.5	13.60	11:02
1	10:55.8	1.00	10:56
2	10:46.5	1.00	10:47
3	10:53.2	1.00	10:53
4	10:53.4	1.00	10:53
5	10:50.3	1.00	10:50
6	11:01.9	1.00	11:02
7	10:54.1	1.00	10:54
8	11:03.5	1.00	11:04
9	11:05.6	1.00	11:06
10	11:02.0	1.00	11:02
11	11:21.4	1.00	11:21
12	11:43.0	1.00	11:43
13	11:16.6	1.00	11:17
14	6:18.2	0.60	10:29

Indoor Tri!

Yesterday I completed a race that I never thought I would do: a triathlon! Over the past two years I have discovered my love for running, but I have never really done a

whole lot of biking or swimming. However, I am always up for a challenge! My coworker Carl (who recently had two hip replacements!) challenged me to sign up for the tri with him, so how could I say no? My very spontaneous friend Rachel also joined in the fun; she was a swimmer in high school so I knew she would be up for it.

The indoor tri consisted of a 10 minute swim, 30 minute bike, and 20 minute run.    It was fun to do this race with my friends, without having to maintain the same pace throughout. Rachel was the fastest swimmer, Carl kicked our butts on the bike ride, and my best part was obviously the 20 minute run.  It was a fun experience and a good Sunday workout!

That's me swimming!

After our swim :)

My first time on a spin bike. My butt was not a fan of this type of workout. I spent 30 minutes wishing I had some padded bike shorts. Somehow I didn't get any pictures from the treadmill. My "scores" were: 18 lengths in the pool, 6.5 miles on the bike, and 2.1 miles on the 'mill. Although I hated the spin bike, I really enjoyed the swimming. Maybe I will have to put my new goggles and swim cap to good use and hit up the pool once in a while this summer. 

Dome Running

When you are living in the midst of a polar vortex, sometimes you have to get creative...today I ran 10 miles inside the Maple Grove Sports Dome! It was 20 degrees below zero outside, but a perfect 55 degrees inside the dome:

There were a handful of runners there this morning, and some soccer games going on, which kept me distracted enough for 48 laps. My pace was decent for a long run; maybe all my speed work on the treadmill has been paying off? This was also the first time using my Garmin foot pod so it hasn't been calibrated. However, it matched up pretty close with my Nike plus app so I think the 10:41 pace is fairly accurate!

The running surface was a soft grassy turf that was awesome to run on. It was a welcome change from the treadmill at least!  My next half marathon is in two weeks, I'm hoping for both good weather and a PR!