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Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Sandie Spirit

I found that I am on a two week lapse of happenings, so two weekends ago was the Hampton's Half Marathon. My good friends, Susanna & Jay, from high school cross country, and I decided to have a little reunion! It had been 9 years since we all ran together at Amarillo High School, home of the Sandies. (Yes, that is a frightening tornado of sand above, very intimidating figure.) So we ventured out on the Long Island highway on Friday evening. After a few hours of stand still traffic and catching up, we arrived in Riverhead. The next day, we awoke to the soothing sounds of Jay's alarm at 5:45 am! We put on our matching outfits and ventured through East Hampton to our race location.

"We're running together, we declared." "Just think of it as a long fun run," Susanna said. The gun went off and the "fun run" began. Let me confess that I had only run 10 miles at the peak of my training, which had pretty much ended two weeks before the race because school was back in again. So...off we went to try to run 9 minute mile pace and beat two hours. "Ha, a lofty goal, I will be running by myself by mile six," I thought. And when mile six came, I was feeling the 8:45 min/mile pace. Susanna & Jay were the most encouraging race partners one could ever ask for! Susie even ran ahead EVERY mile to take a picture of Jay and I. It's interesting to watch the progression of those pictures, a little more tired each time.

I hit the wall several times, and thankfully, to my partners, kept running. They never left me, even after many encouragements from me to run on ahead so I could lay down and play dead. Such sweet friends! We all finished under 2 hours! My time was 1 hour, 59 min, 57 sec. On the dot!

We headed back to the city to celebrate our run with naps, cuban food, and an early bedtime. Susanna literally laid her head down at the bar, so we called it a night! What a sweet weekend with friends that I couldn't hold any more dear! So thankful for running memories past and present with them!

mile 1, feeling good!

mile 9, not so peppy anymore

finishers!

all cleaned up after the race