We got there Saturday afternoon and headed to the race expo to pick up our race numbers and to check out the vendors. This was by far the biggest race I've ever participated in, so the expo was quite impressive. Then we headed to dinner. We opted out of the pre-race pasta dinner for some local seafood. Our innkeeper suggested Basnight's Lone Cedar Cafe (although, my sister-in-law heard her suggestion as Bass Mike's Lone Feeder Cafe, which had us really confused for a while, but then provided for many laughs later in the night) and it certainly did not disappoint. All locally caught seafood- so if you're ever in the Nags Head area, I really recommend good ole Bass Mike's.
We headed to the starting line in Nags Head around 6am Sunday morning. They had a wave start, based on your estimated finish time, so Scott, Will and I started in the 3rd group. There were over 3700 people participating in the 1/2 marathon, so it was an insane mass of humanity at the starting line. We got started and even though Will, Scott and I started together, we quickly got separated. For the first 8 miles I had no idea if I was in front of them or behind. Around mile 8, and just before the 82' high Washington-Baum bridge at mile 9, Will caught up with me. We ran together across the bridge, but at the bottom, Will left me. I didn't have enough left in the tank to keep up. So, the last 3 miles or so, I was back on my own.
I had trained hard to finish under 2 hours, and knew what pace I had to maintain to do that. I kept around a 9:00/mile pace or less the whole race, except for the 1 mile that crossed the bridge. With 1 mile left to go, I picked up my pace a little, but not much because I was exhausted. Thank goodness for the crowds of people cheering us on, because I was so tempted to walk. I crossed the finish line 46 seconds after Will with a finish time of 1:58:13. I was certainly happy with that. I finished 859 out of 3758 overall, 339 out of 2387 females and 67 out of 383 in my division. Not too shabby, I guess!
Here's my little brother, Will, approaching the finish line. My sister-in-law, Melissa, was there to cheer us on!
And that's me, in the black, approaching the finish line. And yes, I'm pretty sure that's a kid to the far right of me that ended up crossing the finish line before me.
Almost there! It's a little deceiving since the race clock already says more than 2 hours, but with the wave starts, the race clock had already been running for about 5 minutes when our group started. Luckily, they based our order of finish on our chip time, not the race clock.
Poor Scott, they herded us on out of the finish area due to the massive amounts of runners, so I didn't get to actually see him cross the finish line. But, he did great and finished around 2:02.
Enjoying a well deserved Coors Light!
After lunch and showers, we headed out to see some of the sights of the Outer Banks. We went to Corolla to see the lighthouse and some of the surrounding area. It was gorgeous and I wish we had more time to explore! Here's looking up at the Currituck Beach lighthouse.
Here's the inside of the lighthouse, looking up the stairs you can climb to the top. After running 13.1 miles, I had no desire to climb all those stairs. So we just stayed at the bottom!
At the lighthouse, there was a boardwalk area through the woods and out onto the water. Here's a little of the view from the boardwalk.
And another shot off the boardwalk.
We had a great time, and definitely hope to get back there again some day. We'd love to have more time to see the sights and take Bella and Austin to enjoy the Outer Banks as well. Maybe I'll go back next year and run the full 26.2 mile marathon!
