Hey everyone!

Yesterday, my friends and I completed the Illinois Half-Marathon!  It was scheduled to be below 40 degrees, windy, thunderstorm, and downright miserable.  Thankfully, only the 40-degree-temperature-part came true! 🙂  It was a beautifully overcast and cool day AKA perfect running weather!

Elise and I after the half- we did it!

Many of my my friends PR-ed…but that was also because it was their first race 😉  Either way, it counts!  I also PR-ed yesterday, and am extremely excited about it.  My 2011 score was 2:06:01, and this year it was 1:44:53!  I am ecstatic.  My dream goal was to run at 8:12 pace (which I had thought was probably unattainable for the full 13.1 miles), and I ended up going around 8:00 min pace!

I’d like to give a special shout-out to Mother Nature (for cooperating), John Mayer (for singing to me the whole race), and Uncle Jim & my mom (for texting me) 🙂

It was such a great day and I cannot wait to run it again next year.  I learned some valuable tips post-race, too, that’d I’d like to share:

1) Although you burned a lot of calories, don’t stuff yourself.  Case in point: I ate a couple of bananas and two slices of pizza post-race.  I was feeling good for a few hours until I was starving.  What’s best for a hungry stomach?  Well, Chipotle sounded good.  Huge and delicious servings?  I’m in.  However, eating an entire burrito bol with some chips was not the best idea.  I had asked for 1/2 chicken and 1/2 steak, but ended up getting almost 3/4 serving chicken and 3/4 serving steak.  Although I got way more than my money’s worth, I went from full to uncomfortable throughout the evening.  Definitely try to avoid this for yourself by eating smaller meals.  This doesn’t mean to eat one small meal and call it quits; rather it means to eat a few small meals throughout the night.

2) Learn from #1.  I decided to cross-train during my usual lunchtime, so I was starvingggg post-workout.  We have a million Subways on campus, so it seemed like a perfect quick-and-healthy meal.  After eating that (+2 cookies 😉 ) extremely quickly, the stomach ache settled in.  Will I ever learn? Haha 🙂

Even with the crazy weather forecasts and tummy aches, this was one of the best weekends of the year!  Time with friends (and a new PR) always outweighs any negatives 🙂

Hopefully the next post will come with a delicious recipe- I’m experimenting tonight!  Cross your fingers for me 😉