While we had been training for that, we had run a few times with Anna Hamlin (another friend who works with me and April) who was training to do the full 1/2 marathon. After the 4 Bridges, Anna suggested that we run the CIM (California International Marathon) together as a relay. We entered as the "Hot Mamas" team. :)
We had tons of fun with this!!!! On Saturday morning we did the packet pickup and expo at the Sac Convention Center. We also hit Michael's for shirt decorating stuff. Saturday evening we got together with all the families and had a carb loading pasta bar party. Slightly insane with eight adults and eight kids 4 and under. We also decorated our shirts - lots of bling involved of course!
Sunday was the race. It started in Folsom and ended at the Capital building in downtown Sacramento. We had a few points of drama - I managed to leave the chip at home and forget the gate remote so I couldn't get back in to get it at 5:30am. Luckily I've done enough races to know they'd have spares at the start. The other girls got to deal with major traffic issues getting to the starts of their legs. It was also very cold - 32 degrees when I started. Luckily the snow held off until the next day - or it would have been miserable (see below for a picture of the snow that fell at our house on Monday).
I was very happy with how my leg went (I was the first leg). I did 6 miles and my goal was just to run the entire thing without stopping - regardless of time. In training I'd been averaging super-slow 13 to 14 minute miles. So I was thrilled to average an 11 minute mile! (Yes it's mostly down hill.) I did the full 6 miles in 1 hour 6 minutes and didn't stop once! Yay me!!! The other girls did awesome as well. Once you take out the 15 minutes it took me to work up to the starting line and some timing issues exchanging the chip, we all averaged about an 11 minute mile and no injuries!!We all had such a great time, we've decided to try running a full 1/2 marathon together in March. Wish us luck!
Below is a picture of the snow we got the very next day - 5 inches at our house. It would have been miserable to race in.
