Extra Jam Please: Another weekend, another race!

Here's a picture play-by-play of race weekend.

Packed for a 24-hr trip to Newport, RI - I may have overpacked slightly.

Carbed up and ready to go (Warning: consuming 1/2 a large pizza the night before a race does not do good things to one's digestion on race day. Lesson learned).

Race Time:

So this weekend Drew and I's training plan called for 20 miles of long, slow, distance. However, we had signed up for the Unitedhealthcare Triple Crown (3 half marathons in 3 different Rhode Island cities in May, July and October), and the third leg happened to fall on the same day as our scheduled 20 mile training run. So we got a little creative to make sure we hit our mileage for the day.

Here's how it went down:

2 mile warm-up from shuttle parking lot to start of the race.

13. 1 miles of half marathon-ing.

5 (ish) miles of recovery/extended/marathon-ing?

The half marathon was actually a great course, and on any other day it might even be a great course to try for a PR on! It may be a result of my pure exhausted state right now, but I am having quite a lot of trouble remembering specific miles, times, or anything other fine detail of this race, so here is a list of what I do remember!

- Big hill right off the bat.

- Lots of scenic neighborhoods for the first three miles.

-Themed water stations (Rock & Roll, London 2012 Olympic Games, Rio 2016 Olympic Games, etc.)

-Rolling dips along the bluffs of Ocean Drive (I also recognized two outcrops I have previously visited on geology field trips - yeah rocks!)

-Running INTO the wind for quite some time.

-Scenic tour of Salve Regina in the last three miles.

After Drew and I crossed the finish line together around 2:07, we grabbed our finisher's medals, downed a Gu packet and hopped back in with the full marathoners who were continuing on. We trudged on until Mile 15 where we headed down a side street to hit 2.5 miles of extra mileage. We turned around, and headed back towards the start. The funny thing here is that we were heading back along the same route the marathon finished on, however only a few marathoners were speedy enough to have made it this far yet (~2:30). No women had finished yet, so many of the marathoners we passed in the opposite direction confused us with the first woman who was going to finish. We decided the best response to some of these cheers was "we're not in the race!" Luckily it didn't seem to phase most people and we were able to duck out of the race route just before the finishing area, after reaching our 20 mile quota for the day!

Post race celebration:

For succesfully finishing all three legs of the Triple Crown we got a second medal (and quite a big one) as well as another tech tee!