Gulf Coast Half Marathon

This weekend Calee and I went to Mandeville, LA for the Gulf Coast Half Marathon and we had a blast!  Mandeville was a beautiful little town on the coast about 30 minutes away from New Orleans.  The scenery was absolutely amazing.  The water was beautiful with tons of sail boats and there were huge trees with Spanish moss like this everywhere.

Our day began at 5 am.  We had our coffee, oatmeal, and a banana and headed out to Fontainebleau State Park.  We arrived at 6:15 and start time was 7:00.  Calee and I decided to run together with a goal to get her a half PR.  When we started the temperature was only about 60 degrees and warmed up to about 75 by the time we finished.  We kept a good pace and everything was going great until about mile 8.  Calee had a little stumble and scraped her knee and hands. 

After that she just needed a little encouragement to keep motivation.  I knew she had it in her physically but needed to fight those bad thoughts and get back in the groove!  We ended up meeting our goal and she beat her PR by 9 minutes!  We finished in about 2:18.  This is our first photo post race and  I think it says a lot!  We were happy :)

 

These are our bottle opener medals.

And here are a few post race photos of me and Calee.

 Isn't the water beautiful?

We had so much fun and I'm so glad we ran together.  I've never ran a half or marathon with anyone before and it was really fun to have someone with me the whole time!  10/10/10 turned out to be a fantastic day.  Yay for training, races, and beautiful places!

I haven't been to the gym in weeks because the weather has been a lot cooler and I've been doing my runs outside.  Today I ran an easy 5.5 on the treadmill and took advantage of the gym and did some weights.  I feel great!  Tomorrow will be a much needed rest day.  This week's long run is another 12 miler.  I hope to get to run with the Phat Girlz again this weekend for part of the long run.

How is your training going?
Leah B.