Derby Festival Mini-Marathon: My Race Review

Hello Everybody! Justin and I went to Louisville over the weekend and ran the Kentucky Derby Festival “Mini” Marathon. I put it in quotations because there is nothing mini about it! It is an honest, to goodness, half-marathon. Calling things mini, make it cute and enticing doesn’t it?

Overall, I would have to say it was a good race for my first half marathon. Here are some of the pluses:

• Relatively flat course (some small hills but that’s about it)
• You got a tech shirt and medal for finishing (As a running newbie, you gotta get give me a good incentive, other than the standard cotton tee, to run my butt off, lol…).
• Good support from the crowds all along the course
• The free snacks afterwards. It was a literally smorgasbord with bananas, waters, bagels, South Beach Diet bars, Fig Newtons, and wait for it—chocolate milk! I was wandering around the post-race area looking for my sis-in-law and Justin with my arms full of snacks.

And of course there are the minuses: 

• PowerAde wasn’t being distributed until the later part of the race. It was a pretty hot day and I wish it had been provided earlier on.
• Port-o-potties were few and far between (I saw runners going into gas stations and fast food joints in order to use the facilities)
• Some parts of the race were not so scenic…let’s just say that I got to see the nice and the not-so-nice neighborhoods of Louisville.

Included in these minuses would be my race time. After the Cherry Blossom 10-Miler we had run earlier in April, my training schedule had become quite lax to say the least. Plus, I think my running shoes were so worn out from the last race they gave in during the mini causing my feet to hurt really bad! I came in at a little over three hours and Justin came in at about 2 ½ hours (but I definitely know I can do better!).

Anyway, next up on my race schedule (whoa, never thought I’d be saying that!) is a 5K with my good friend, N. Funny how, I’m running a 5K as my third race as when most people do it as their first. I’ve always been a little backward. Stay tuned, because I have more racing news on the horizon!

**Sorry I don’t have any pics with this post. We tried to get some guy to take a picture of us, but he quite technologically challenged. I’ll wait until I can “borrow” the proofs from the race day photographers and add them on later.**

Country Roads Take Me Home

Sorry, I’ve been slacking a bit this week as far as blog entries.  We’ve been very busy this week (as some of you may know) and I’ll surely be blogging about it later this week.

This past weekend was our first attempt at driving to Kentucky together.  Being a holiday weekend, airfare for Thanksgiving was through the roof and we thought we’d save some cash by driving.

The trip down was pretty easy, taking us from interstate to interstate.  We even took a couple of toll roads (which we didn’t mind), and we made it to Louisville in a little under the anticipated nine hours.  Despite our late departure (because of me) and the smidgen of traffic we hit as we left D.C, the drive there wasn’t all that bad, even though Justin did do all of the driving.  The drive back was a different story.

Driving back to DC wasn’t nearly as efficient.  Like sheep, we “blindly” followed our GPS, which unfortunately lead us over the river and through the woods…literally.  As soon as we entered West Virginia we thought we were in the clear when the GPS told us to exit the highway and take the local road.  The local road then led to back roads, and then twisty-turny steep roads with signs like this:



Steep grade on a 9 hour drive = no fun (Photo Courtesy of johnsantic)



 and this:



This is one I’ve never seen before (Photo Courtesy of Pbase)



Although this shortcut may have been more beneficial to take during the day, Justin was none to happy to be taking this impromptu driving skills course (he officially hates the state of West Virginia for other reasons besides the UK-WVU game last March).  Oh well (easy for me to say since I didn’t drive, LOL!).   The lesson to take away from our mishap: make sure to at least preview your route before you take off on a road trip.  The shortest route isn’t always the fastest.

Despite our little adventure, our trip to Louisville was great as usual.  It was nice seeing family and friends, most of which we haven’t seen since our wedding in July.  We did a lot of eating (of course) and a lot of much needed relaxing.  Although we wish we had a little more vacation time, now we’re back to the usual DC grind…At least we finally closed on the house! J