RnR Country Music Half Marathon

Coming back from my Valentine's Day surgery has been great, much to my surprise.  By Week 4 I was running the PR Marathon with hubby, by Week 7, I had done 16 miles of a LR.  Overall, the comeback has been great and I am back at 50-60mpw range without pain (which was the point of the whole surgery, yo).

Therefore, when my husband embarked into this madness that I don't know where he got it from , of doing a HM per month to earn more moons on the Half Fanatics, I thought it would be a great change for me to have fun and build my base until my first post-surgery marathon in July (San Francisco).

Then, I accidentally contacted the RD of my May HM and asked to be switched to the full, so I have a marathon in three weeks. 

Going back to this race, I decided to run it with hubby and even put my goal time as 2:30 to be in the same corral as him.  OK, every say awwwww.  Being that this race is on Saturday, da fuck?, we had to fly out of Miami on Thursday and be ready to race on Saturday.  We shall not be doing Saturday races after June, trust me.  It just wrecks our schedules too much.

Anyway, I woke up in Nashville at 6am and went out to run.  We stayed in the West End area and I asked the concierge for a nice route to run (thinking I would just go up and down the hill for 6-7 miles if there was not).  The guy told me Centennial Park was across the street.  Hmmm, I have heard that name before, I wonder what's in it.  So, off I went to Centennial park and during my first mile I notice this wonderful building that looked just like the only place we had a must see during our trip, the Parthenon.  Hmmm, it was the Parthenon.  I am so smart!   I ran the one mile loop at that park for 6 miles in nice weather (cold for me) 60s and no humidity whatsoever.  I went back to the hotel, got ready and we went out for breakfast and then the expo.

The expo was great.  Very organized, got out of my bib pickup in 5 minutes and went shopping.  I got 9 headbands on my trip and my husband miraculously did not come out with Hokas.  After lunch, we went to see the Parthenon right across the street from our hotel.   Some pics:

After resting a bit, we went out to dinner at a nice local Italian restaurant.  It was delicious.  Everything about Nashville was great.  We had no complaints.  We bought the shuttle tickets at the expo, so we were set for race day and went to bed at 11pm.

I woke up before 5am and got ready, woke up husband and he got ready.  The shuttle left from the Marriott, a 0.10 walk from out hotel, by 5:30am.  We barely made it.  Why did I marry someone who is always late, even made me late for our own wedding? 

We were at the start by 5:45am, hit the potties and met the Half Fanatics for a group picture.  Maniacs were nowhere to be found so I got my picture taken with my Fanatics and we headed to our corral.  Pics from the corral (it was still 47F):

We ditched the gloves and arm warmers just before the start and we started at around 7:32am, which I think was too late for the weather that came on after 8am.

The race is hilly.  Not as hilly as I thought (think San Francisco and Puerto Rico), but hilly nonetheless, so my job was to keep hubby going without going out too fast.  Unfortunately, we both had to hit the potties at mile 2 and spent 3 minutes there which cost him a PR but he was not looking for a PR and he was OK with that.  We had lots of uphills, some downhills but not enough of them, going back to Vanderbilt University and back into downtown, whereby we ran close to the Capitol, split with the marathoners at Mile 11ish and headed back to finish.  Hubby struggled during the last mile, especially since it was all uphill but still he came in 3 minutes off his PR.  That he will PR on his next race, I have no doubt.  But I will be busy trying to run a marathon while he is done in half the time. 

So, on to our next trip in 3 weeks!  Thanks for reading.