This past weekend I ran the Akron half marathon with my brother in law Tim. Do you guys remember Tim? He lost a tremendous amount of weight and started running about 2 years ago. Last Sept was his first half marathon at Akron and he did so awesome. He loved it so much that he then signed up for Columbus and went and ran that course 10 mins faster. So, this year he wanted o revisit the course and we were met with wonderful weather. I love the Akron marathon. They do such a great job. Great course, an amazing amount of spectators, great gear, great food/medal at the end; the whole event is top notch. My only complaint is it starts at 7am, ugh. So, we had to get up at 4:30!

Driving down to the race my stomach was starting to feel kind of icky. This is always my issue and it did bother me throughout the run that day. However, I have certainly battled worse stomach issues and after a potty stop around mile 6, I was fine the rest of the race. Maybe I’ll gloss over the fact that that stop wasn’t in an official porta potty, it may have been behind an abandoned building with a guard dog barking at! LOL. Going into the race, I had thought maybe we could break 2 hours, but I forgot how dang hilly the course was. I knew there was a major hill at mile 11, but there are several good rollers throughout the course. This is not a PR course by any means. I tried to use the Garmin and really keep our pace steady. I knew that I wanted us to stay under 9:30 and we did. We averaged between 9:12 and 9:30 the whole day, except for slowing down on that last mile 11 hill to more like a 10min mile crawl. It is a hell of a hill. We finished in 2:03. Which is a course PR for me, as the faster I ever ran there before was 2:04. I had a lot of fun running with Tim and playing coach. Several times throughout the morning I was able to think strategically and tell him we needed to pick up the pace or slow down a bit b/c we were going too fast. It was nice to think about something besides just finishing. I was really excited to see him get a PR and am so proud of howww far he has come.

The next day I went out for an 8 miler and my body would NOT cooperate. I ended up only running 4. My legs felt like tree trunks and I could not get my breath. What the heck is up with that? We had such a nice weekend overall though. On Sat. we met my in-laws to go apple picking. Harper had some much fun running up and down the orchard and chowing down on some fresh golden delicious apples. Gary even made a wonderful pie for us! I am not usually one for fruit pies, but with a little tofutti ice cream on top it was pretty darn good! Sunday I took Harper to the Lake Park Farm. They were having an antique tractor show and fall festival. She got to pet animals at the barn yard, play on a swing set, run around a hay bale maze, and play in some leaves. It was an amazing mommy/Harper day. The photos from this weekend are in the post and one of me and Harper from a recent birthday party that I really like.