It’s been three months today since we ran this half. Ha! Talk about being behind BIG time!  The only reason we even found out about this race was because of our fellow NTX Runner, Brian, who’d notified the internets that – Hey! This half is only $25 for a limited time! Get your registration on! We are pretty sure those were his exact words.

We figured $25?!  In Houston and it’s over six months away we got time to figure this out!  One of us (take your guess who) immediately began to peer pressure Beth’s cousin Chase into also registering.  Upon the completion of his registration we then called dibs on the couch and floor space in his apartment so that we might have a place to stay that weekend. 🙂 Thanks again for that, Chase!

Honestly, the Friday night portion of this weekend has been blocked out in the past three months. 🙂  Saturday morning we got up to go to packet pickup and then secure some warm clothes to wear pre-race and ditch once the race started.  One of us had the brilliant idea of getting robes!  Turns out this was genius as they cover an even greater portion of your body with just one piece and with just a strap keeping it closed super easy to ditch while running.

Pretty much the rest of Saturday was spent doing really random things or eating. 🙂  We hit up the near by Bed Bath & Beyond for some shopping.  We met Brian, his wife and sweet daughter for dinner.  We  in detail reviewed the hand drawn course map and longest list of course rules any of us had ever seen! We were pleased to discover there was a loop set up that each runner would cover twice and make up the majority of the course, so we would all be able to see each other!

Neither one of us had been keeping up with our running very much after Louisiana Marathon, so the main goal for the day was to finish!  One of Beth & Brent’s friends, Taylor, who is from the Houston area who also got in on the sweet $25 registration price and was out there for the race. We found him before the start and got to catch up before we went out to face the cold.

Ultimately, we accomplished our only goal for the day – survive!  Teal & Chase ran the whole half together, but like we said all early we ended up getting to see each other out on the course several times even speedy Brian.  One of Teal’s favorite volunteers was a high school kid out on the loop standing by one of the mile markers and see since it was the loop portion of the course sometimes you’d see a mile marker that you weren’t really at yet because you’d only just begun loop 1, so this kid used a sheet of notebook paper to cover up the 7 on the mile marker sign since it was also mile 3.5ish.  In place of the number 7 was in the kid’s handwriting “3.5ish”. So funny and so sweet to look out for the runners and not discourage them early on in the race!

Another successful half marathon completed for LiAR, and put us at half marathon no. 17!!