Hello Elroy

Look how pumped Anna was for her first half-marathon.

This was the morning of the race. I don't think my eyes were open in this picture, and Anna is going to kill me for posting the above picture, but I think it's cute. When the alarm went off in our nice little hotel room I said, "Let's not do the race and just go home." But we really ran it.

Elroy and the surrounding towns? villages? are gorgeous. The morning of the race was absolutely beautiful, and you can kind of see in the pictures that there was mist all over the fields.

















Deserted corn fields with mist are a lot nicer in the daylight than they are at night, as Anna and I found out when our mapquest directions got us lost the night before. City girls that we are, we were envisioning overall-clad hicks with pitchforks and axes coming after us and loudly screaming in the car as I said in my best trucker voice, "Candycane" (anyone see that amazing/creepy movie Joyride??).
















































We met up with Team McAllister, who were all gussied up in their matching Under Armour gear (they must protect their house!). I have to say that Team McAllister really kept me going for the first four miles or so, when I was hitting a wall and before I had hit my caffeine-loaded shot blocks (weird gummy energy carb things). They kept a nice one-sided conversation going, as I lost my ability to speak and breathe at the same time after mile 1. And believe it or not they pushed their baby Benson in the jogging stroller for 13.1 miles. They were the race celebrities and everyone wanted to take their picture. Way to go team McAllister!


















Here's the group before the race. This was a fairly small race, with about 65 runners, but no one told us that we would be the only non-elite runners NOT using this race as a training day for the Chicago Marathon. I'm pretty sure everyone was faster than us, except for the speed walkers. They came in about 20 minutes after we were done. Oh and a 70-something woman passed me around mile 10 or 11 (hard to tell, caffeine- and pain- induced delirium at that point), which was incredibly demoralizing. But really this was my favorite half-marathon that I've done, because it was beautiful, I only had to go to the bathroom once, and I didn't have to walk too often. I'll definitely do this race again, and highly recommend it to anyone who feels like going to the middle of nowhere Wisconsin.


















This was us after the race, and before Anna got really sick. You never really know how Gu will affect your tummy until you run 13.1 miles on it. She did so awesome, though!


















Best part of the race was eating this apple dumpling afterwards. I then proceeded to the "chicken dinner" that was offered. Mmmm...

















Thanks to Anna and the McAllister's for such a fun time. Also thanks to Anna and Karisa for getting my butt out of bed so many Saturday mornings for our long runs.