Martinsville Half Marathon 2014

Mr. Marathon, his running buddy Lucas,
and new friend from DC that came in 6th place
right after Mr. Marathon

Yesterday, Mr. Marathon and I participated in the Martinsville Half Marathon.  This year was his 4th year running the half and it was my 2nd year.  Last year, we fell in love with this race (read about it here).  This year was a teeny bit different.  The weather was much better (cloudy and about 50 degrees), but the race was just missing something.  As we started towards the starting line, the whole thing just felt kind of off.  There were limited portapotties and they had some technical issues that threw the race off about 20 minutes or so.  The race seemed to be missing some of the joie de vivre (that's a French phrase often used in English to express a cheerful enjoyment of life) that it had last year.  And we noticed that from the get-go.

Mr. Marathon and his awesome stride to the finish!

Anyway, after we took off running, it seemed like a great day for a race.  For Mr. Marathon, it was.  He set a PR at 1:29:01!  All of his training and dedication really paid off.  Mr. Marathon's running buddy, Lucas, also set a PR of 1:29:26.... not far behind!  Mr. Marathon feels like he could have done better because he feels like he could have pushed himself even more than he did (which I think is CRAZY because he did AWESOME!).  His legs were giving out, but everything else wanted to keep on going!  Let's add more training to the To-Do list before his upcoming marathons!

Mrs. Marathon crossing the finish line,
slowly but surely

 I, on the other hand, must have not trained enough or something.  A recurring breathing problem of mine came back just a few short days ago and affected my final days of training and of course my race, but I was just happy to finish!  It was so weird that for once, my entire body felt fantastic-- my Achilles wasn't bothering me, my knee felt strong, and my feet were ready to run!  All was well except my chest felt tight and I was struggling to catch a good breath.  Obviously that affected my pace significantly and no PR for me this year.

Beautiful medals this year!

Another thing that we feel could have improved our run would be the aforementioned joie de vivre.  Last year's race was overflowing with enthusiasm and excitement, in runners, volunteers, and spectators.  This year, that was not the case.  There really weren't enough volunteers.  Fortunately we knew the course or else we for sure would have gotten lost due to the lack of course attendants.  Water stops were really missing the umph to keep us motivated.  Turn arounds were uneventful and bland.  And there was no music at the end.  Or water (!!!!!).  The end seemed a little blah.  Although we did get nice bling and a comfy blanket!  I guess we just got spoiled to last year's amazing event.

Mr. Marathon is really looking forward to the Blue Ridge experience; however, we don't know if Raleigh is going to knock the Blue Ridge out of the water.  Stay tuned to find out!