Sunday RUNday

This past weekend, I ran my 4th half-marathon. The fun part about this particular race was I got to run with two of my best friends, Mark and Amanda. Mark and I have run a race together before (last year's SCV Half-Marathon), but adding Amanda to our little crew was a treat. This was her first half-marathon, so Mark and I were with her through all her training. For the last few months, we've been running all together as much as possible on the weekends to complete our "long runs."

As we were always training together, I suggested that we wear matching outfits or matching shirts for the day of the race. Mark and Amanda agreed, but we didn't know exactly what to wear. Then, a few weeks ago when I was waking up at 6am on a Sunday to go train with them, I muttered to myself, "So much for Sunday Funday. Today is a Sunday Runday." With that one thought, I knew I had a good enough idea for a T-shirt. My suggestion was met with approval, so the following week, the three of us took a little field trip to Michael's (with a 40% off coupon) where we bought some Day-Glo colored T-shirts and some black puffy paint.

Making the shirts was an interesting process. I wish I had pictures to show you of the shirts in process, but I don't. I started by opening up Word and typing the words "SUN DAY RUN DAY" and blowing them up to a large font (Bauhaus 93, 200pt). Once printed, we arranged them to stack up in 4 lines of text. Using a pen, I traced the font onto the three shirts. Before painting in the words, we put pieces of cardboard inside the shirts to make a smooth surface and to prevent any bleeding through of the paint. I used the puffy paint like a normal paint, and filled in the letters with brush strokes so the paint was "flat" not puffy. Once it dried--it almost looked like a screen transfer--exactly the effect I was looking for. Mark and I also decided to add our Greek numbers (56 for me, 58 for him) and our nicknames to the back (Twinkle for me, Motorboat for him).

It was a fun craft project and the end result was great. Many people complimented us on our shirts before, during, and after the race, and seemed impressed that we had made them ourselves.

Us before the race kicked off

Overall, we had a successful race. Amanda did really well, considering it was her first half-marathon. We had been running a bit slow during training. but I guess the adrenaline of the day and all the other runners around us made us a run a pretty nice pace. Our first 6 miles were steady at about 10:55 per mile. we slowed down a bit at the end, but we beat our goal of finishing is 2:30 or less. Amanda actually beat me by a second because she decided to sprint to the finish line. My final time was 2:29:43. Definitely not my best time, but then again, I wasn't training as hard for this race as for my previous races. My goals with this race were making sure Amanda was in good enough shape to finish and just having fun. Those goals, I definitely reached. Plus, we got a sweet medal at the end.

My bib number and medal

I haven't signed up for another half-marathon yet--but I am contemplating running the SLO Half-Marathon again, and I'm going to try to get into the Nike Women's Half-Marathon again this year. But, I am not quitting running anytime soon. I've already registered for the LA Color Run on February 2. What a fun birthday gift to myself!

~LOVE~