13.1 miles done!!

13.1 done!!
Originally uploaded by jckirner

What a great weekend spent running the half marathon in the National Breast Cancer marathon with my sister, her friend and our Dad. Jacksonville Beach, FL is a wonderful place - who knew!!?

Spent 5 hours on Saturday driving north past the loonies at Daytona 500 (5 roadside accidents in that area) to arrive at our quasi-beachside hotel. That pre-race afternoon and evening was spent picking up our race packets (a mystifying 10 miles away from the race start), doing race route reconnaisance, and trying to scurry up an Italian pasta dinner in an area overbooked with marathoners and vacationers.

Race day started not too early - 8:30am race start - later than usual to wait on the tide because a portion of the run was on the sand - and our running crew of 4 scattered amongst the pace groups. There were 7000 runners between the marathon and half marathon raising $800,000 for research and support for Breast Cancer. Both races run at the same time on the same out and back course.
Many, many supporters along the way were great encouragement.

I was thrilled to see Joan Benoit-Samuelson twice. Yes, that Olympic runner from the first womens Olympic marathon 1984!! She blew past me on the way back from the half-marathon as I was coming up on mile 3 - and then again on her cool down run as I was on mile 12! So impressive.

Our entire group finished without injury despite the warmer than expected day and struggled with those "hills" (bridges) over the intracoastal waterway. Dad amazed us with his 5th place age group finish (70+). He only decided to do the race in January - only did 2 long training runs since then - and was fit as a fiddle afterwards. Sheesh!

Now in post-race let down phase - still a bit stiff after sitting still for awhile. And planning for the next event - will it be the 10K in Maryland with Dad or the 5k at Disney with my daughter??? We'll see how the legs recover!!!