Well we did it! We did the second leg of the Pittsburgh Marathon Relay this morning! It was so much fun!

I was wide awake at 4:45 this morning (30 minutes before my alarm). I got out of bed and played around on the internet while drinking coffee. I finally got dressed and gathered all my junk (including pre-made and food processed oats) and was out the door around 6:20.

All of this went into the food processor for breakfast:

• 1/2 cup oats microwaved for 1 minute with 1 cup water
• 1 tsp peanut butter
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 Weetabix biscuit
• 1 T all-purpose flour
• 1 frozen banana

Adding flour makes all the difference! It tastes more like cake batter this way especially when food processed into baby food like this. Try it!

I navigated the five million closed streets and got to Aaron’s house around 6:40. He was eating cereal and laughing at me for being extremely giddy.

We practiced running:

This is the worst fake running ever:

Annnd took another picture:

And another:

Then left and made our way down to the North Side. Aaron wore my spibelt and carried my camera so we got to take MORE pictures!

Pilgrimage to Relay Station #1:

We made it to our corral with lots of time to spare. The actual marathon hadn’t even started. I hit up the porta potty twice while we waited and waited and waited. About an hour into the wait, it started to rain. Lame. Luckily a Fedex truck parked behind us just happened to have a mad supply of giant garbage bags. Yes! We stood around in the rain inside garbage bags and watched the freakishly fast elite runners pass by. They were running just over FIVE MINUTE MILES. Craziness!! Can you imagine doing that for 26 miles? I couldn’t even run one 5 minute mile … or one 6 minute mile, possibly one 7 minute mile, but just one.

Anyway, relay people started coming in about an hour into the race (the first leg was 7 miles) and finally our relay numbers were called! Aaron and I were on different teams but the first two people in both of our teams ran together so we got to run together too!

We took off with the 10 min/mile pacers (which is what our relay team ran for the first leg) and weaved our way through people the whole way. We kept a pretty steady pace the whole time and then started all out running for the last quarter of a mile. We were supposed to run 4.4 miles but my Garmin recorded 4.15 so I’ll just show you the 4 mile splits.

• Mile 1 – 8:51
• Mile 2 – 8:57
• Mile 3 – 9:06
• Mile 4 – 9:02

We were both pleased!

And completely soaked:

We ended in the South Side and our car was in the North Side so rather than wait forever for the shuttle, we decided to walk/jog our way the mile to the finish line. We got to the finish line, got mylar blankets and fluorescent yellow Gatorade that was GROSS and walked back to the car.

It was a GREAT race and I think Aaron is hooked now! He said something along the lines of, “when’s the next one?” We’re going to do the half next year I think!!!!

Congratulations to all the other runners!