The Woodlands Marathon

Last weekend we took a trip up to The Woodlands so that I could run the marathon. It was the perfect little road trip because it felt like we were getting away but it's only about an hour and a half away from us- which is great if you are traveling with a very needy infant. The Woodlands is a really pretty place, very woodsy believe it or not. You would never guess that you were in the middle of Texas.

We stopped at Target on the way out of town and look what we found on the shelves- and for only 29.99! Too cute to pass up but no instruction manual???

After arriving in the Woodlands and picking up my packet at the expo, we drove past a nice surprise... Sweet Tomatoes! We were really excited about this because Sweet Tomatoes is one of our favorite places to eat and we thought it was only in Utah. It is also the PERFECT place to carb load as you can see from my plate below. What I love most about this picture is the mountain of breads I have piled onto their teenie tiny plates. Blake enjoyed dinner too and had his first and most definitely favorable encounter with pizza.

He has this new closed mouthed smile that really shows off his chubby cheeks- it's adorable!

Sometimes he gets very excited and the smile changes from sweet to somewhat scary.

So grown up. Blake actually has a very mature look for his age.

Anyways, after dinner I dropped the boys off at the hotel and set out to do some shopping at Woodlands Mall. Unfortunately, my trip had to be cut short because we had forgotten to take Blake's mattress out of the trunk and he needed it. Boo. I did manage to find some cute new crops at least.

So on to the main event. I was very nervous for the marathon because I've been having some injury issues (what else is new?) but I didn't have any problems with them during the marathon and I was thrilled about that. Of course I had some aches and pains throughout the race but nothing that would force me to stop running. The best part might have been when I reached mile 20. I still felt really great and I knew that I would definitely finish the race. I must have paced myself really well because with two miles to go I switched my audio from The Time Travelers Wife to my Boot Camp mix and picked up the pace. Audiobooks are amazing for long-distance running by the way. It's easy to just listen to the story and forget that you're running. My finishing time was 4:11. I'm obviously no professional but I was happy with the results and as one of my favorite marathon signs pointed out, "Chuck Norris never ran a marathon".

The worst part of races for me is usually about an hour after the race ends when I get hit with terrible abdominal cramping. For some reason I am VERY susceptible to GI distress after intense exercise. If anyone has any good tips for this please pass them my way. My gem of a husband had to watch Blake for me the rest of the day. 

Would I do it again? Absolutely:)