After our traditional pre-race dinner of grilled chicken Caesar salad we got our gear ready, tucked the kids in, and headed to catch some zzzz's. We fell right asleep, but of course it only felt like 5 minutes of sleep. Up and at 'em and ready to get moving! A small simple breakfast, fill up the water bottles (I despise water stations) and we left to go find our way to the Tennessee Titans stadium where the race finish and parking was. Again, super early arrival and unexpected cold left us sitting in the car staying warm. Lesson learned again but with a longer race and no one to ditch outer layers with we dug through the car and came up with emergency rain ponchos. They made for the perfect tossable pre-race keep warm thing (it was spring so the weather was due to warm up as the sun came up). They kept us nice and toasty on the walk over from the Titan's stadium to downtown where the start was.
Rockin' our pre-race ponchos!
We found some port-a-potties (a race essential!) and made a pit stop before finding our corral. Again I stupidly put in a slower time and regretted it...we waited for what seemed like forever. I think we snuck off to the porta-a-potties about 6 times while we were waiting...we found a sneaky out of the way set with pretty much no line....it was amazing (and we directed fellow racers there too).
Our pre-race pic
Finally up to the start it was like wading through a sea of people....annoying walkers who wouldn't stay to one side, people clearly in a lower number corral when they shouldn't have been, and just general chaos. We got up to pace and it felt so much better but there were people to dodge EVERYWHERE. Ok here comes a rant: if you are going to walk, get to ONE SIDE and stay there....preferably the right. I get it, not everyone can (or wants to) run a half marathon, you are out there, you are doing better than sitting on the couch but get to one side and stay out of the way of those of us that can and want to run. Alright, rant over (maybe not...there were more walkers later).
There were some less than memorable "country" music bands and singers along the way, I could have done without them honestly, they kind of sucked. I wasn't exactly expecting big names but they could have at least played upbeat music instead of love ballads....not motivating at mile 8.7 of 13.1.
Once we got through the historic neighborhoods of Nashville we were in a little more suburban neighborhood and the street was narrower. I swear at one point there were 6 people across and they were all walking. Big Daddy had stopped at a port-a-potty early so I was on my own (knowing he can move a little faster and easily catch up to me) and I had to dodge these morons. STAY TO ONE SIDE WALKERS....next time I might not be nice and I might go all crazy race lady on you....this time you escaped with just my evil eye roll and passive aggressive huffing as I scooted by you.
Mile after mile after mile and we were finally getting closer to the finish line and damn...this was the part that was going to suck....the Nashville hills. Damn evil course designers....hills at the finish again. I had been having some issues with my right hip and I did stop momentarily up one of the hills. It was probably for about 5 seconds but it felt like a failure, I know it wasn't, but I felt less than awesome about it.
About two miles from the finish line my phone rang. I have a rule, I only answer the phone for family when I am running. It was Gamma's number and she had the tiny princesses so of course I answered it....turns out it was Princess #1 asking if we were done yet....yeah no kiddo, I hung up.
My goal is always to cross the finish line up right, I did it!! Haha!!!! I wasn't last either!! YAY!!! What was kind of rad was as we came toward the finish the whole crowd started cheering, we thought that was pretty awesome and made us feel special....turns out we were finishing our half marathon while the first female full marathon finisher was coming across the finish line...talk about feeling awesome (insert sarcasm here). Our race time (official) was 2:14:32...but my Garmin showed several extra miles from dodging slow pokes. Gotta get that under 2 hour half in soon!
After we got our medals we filed through the exit lines and collected what felt like a buffet of snacks and drinks. Bottles of water, chocolate milk, bananas, cookies, granola bars, protein bars, and more....we really needed a bag to carry all of that mess...but it was delicious. Best. Chocolate. Milk. Ever.
Country Music Half Marathon Medals!
We had quite a distance to walk to get back to the car and I was SO stiff. We headed back to Gamma's and warned her that as soon as we got back we were ditching our shoes and diving (clothes and all) in to the hot tub. I never felt so good after a race....the hot tub post race recovery method was a hit. After that we hit the showers, got packed up and headed for home. On the way home we did see a Krispy Kreme and that looked like a pretty damn good post-race recovery food so we stopped and I inhaled 2 original donuts immediately. Yummmmmmmmmm.
I ran 13.1 miles...I earned this donut.
It was a good race and I would certainly do a Rock N Roll series race again!! Nashville is crazy hilly and the biggest hills are at the end, you have been warned.
Race Date: April 25, 2015
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