Well the adventure toward my 2nd half marathon started on Friday when I headed to my Mom and Dad's to spend the night with them. They weren't home when I got there and so my sister and I had a great spaghetti dinner. After chatting for a while with the family we headed to bed.

Up at 5:45 Sat morning to make the trip to Ashland. It was going to be an hour drive and my sister was going to make the trip with me as my cheering section. The wind had died down quite a bit from Friday but you never know what's it's going to be like once you make it up by Lake Superior. The road on the way up were slippery in spots which lead to an interesting adventure about 15 miles out of Ashland when there was a dead deer lying in my lane and due to the slippery conditions I wasn't able to swerve around it. Good thing was it only bumped along the bottom of my car and there was no damage. Got to Ashland picked up my race packet, put my warm clothes over my running stuff, and caught the bus to head to the start line. Jessica was excited I was getting on the bus because then she could go and get breakfast finally (oh the priorities of a pregnant woman).

At the start we picked up our timing chips and then just stood around. If you could find a place to stay out of the wind it wasn't TOO bad but it was still cold. Temp I think at the start was around 30 degrees. Finally we started moving to the start line to line up. There were a few final announcements that I didn't hear and then we were off. Mile 1&2 were on pavement that was wet with some slippery spots that you had to watch out for. Then after that we turn and were on the Tri-County Corridor which is a packed gravel trail that was covered in a light layer of snow. The only place that made me really nervous was when we would cross over the old train tressel bridges and they were really slippery. Miles 3-8 went by with little to mention except for the sun started to come out and warm things up just a little bit. Then Mile 8-9 I ran with a woman and it was great to have the company. At mile 10 the bikers came through and said we had to move to the left at the first marathoners were going to start coming through. It was fun to be running with the first marathoners if only of a brief second as they blew by.

Mile 12 for some odd reason became a struggle and had to do a little walking. Hit mile 13 and I put in some speed thinking the end was near. Didn't quite like the headwind coming off the lake but thank goodness it was only a mile to the finish. Once again it was a great feeling to cross the finish line.

What an awesome race!! In regular weather conditions I can see were it would be one of my favorite courses to run.

Final info

Chip Time 2:54.43 (a 5min10sec PR for my half time!! WOHOO!!)

Can't wait to take on the course again next year