CHaD Hero Half Marathon

On Sunday, I ran the CHaD Hero Half Marathon. I trained for it most of the summer and all of the fall. I was hoping for a better time, but you know what? I raised over a thousand dollars to help out a great hospital that serves a lot of kids and their families. I think I’d rather be better at fundraising than at running.

(Although I wouldn’t mind being better at running too.)

(Next year? I am doing a lot more hill repeats. That course is seriously steep.)

Kristian, Lilian, and I drove up to New Hampshire a day early, so we wouldn’t have to rush up for the race. That also gave us a chance to spend some time with my sister Christina and her husband Luke.

(And to stay in a hotel and swim in a pool.)

(And to go out to dinner and eat french fries.)

(Best weekend ever.)

It rained all last week, and Lilian liked my pink rain boots so much she asked to kiss them (I may or may not have imparted a little too much of my love of shoes to my child). So, we figured she might need a pair of her own. We didn’t find any boots in her size at the local mall, but we did find a kinda creepy bench.

You know why I love my husband? He saw me trying to get Lilian to pose as one of the monkeys and he coached her into being the “See No Evil” one. That’s my guy!

We kept up our pre-half marathon tradition (we’ve done it twice, so now it’s a tradition, dammit) of taking Lilian to a local park and then going out to dinner. Vermont and New Hampshire have some kickass parks. Or maybe our local parks are just kinda lame.

You know what’s not lame? The delicious dinner that we ate. And my brother-in-law letting Lilian make herself comfortable on him, while she ate half of his dessert.

(Not pictured: Lilian announcing to an entire table full of strangers, “I went pee-pee on the potty!”)

(They all clapped for her.)

(Which was very sweet but also kind of extra embarrassing.)

(Oh to be two years old and have people applaud you for such mundane tasks as passing urine.)

I would say that we had to be up bright and early on Sunday for the race, but that would be a terrible, terrible lie. This bad boy didn’t start until noon. Decadent! We didn’t even set an alarm. And Lilian let us sleep until 7am. We got breakfast with Christina and everything. And still had time to take some goofy photos on our hotel room of me dressed up like a super hero.

This would probably be a good time to mention that the race is super hero themed, and that I didn’t just randomly decide to dress up like Wonder Woman. But you know what? Dressing up like Wonder Woman is kinda all kinds of awesome. I may run all future races dressed up like Wonder Woman. Especially if it means that people give you extra thumbs up, high fives, and yell “way to go, Wonder Woman!”

Photos taken by the very awesome, Pepper, aka the nicest friend ever, aka I can’t believe how far she drove to stand in the rain and cheer for me.

I have no photos of the race itself, but picture rain, and a lot of hills. I rain the first five miles or so with one of Kristian’s coworkers. Then, there was finally a porto-potty for me to use, so he took off while I waited in line. I don’t know that I would have been able to keep up with him the rest of the way, but I do kind of wish I’d tried. He definitely had us going at a good pace (tough, but not impossible). I ended up falling way off the mark once I was on my own and I didn’t even come close to the time I was hoping for.

I was still four minutes faster than my last race, on a course that was a lot more challenging. So, no complaints here. Also, I saw a little baby near the starting line that had an oxygen cannula in its nose. Which kinda gives on a heaping dose of perspective. Like: your kid is happy and healthy and you are strong enough that you can run a half marathon without stopping too much. Get over yourself about wanting to finish faster.

I will say that the part of the race where you pass right next to the finish line, but then have to run four more miles, and the volunteers keep telling you “you’re almost there!” but then you turn a corner and there’s another fucking hill to climb? Yeah, that part kinda sucks.

But then I sprinted out the end, and I could hear the announcer say my name, followed by “put away anything flammable, because she’s on fire.” And that was pretty awesome. So was the part where I firefighter wrapped me up in one of those space age blankets. I’ve never had one of those before! They really are super warm.

Not pictured: Me stuffing my face with chocolate chip cookies.

Because I hit a thousand dollars in fundraising, I got a few extra perks. Apparently there is a display somewhere with my name on it (I didn’t see it, but we didn’t have a lot of time to wander around). I also get a free entry for next year’s race (smart move on their part, because I will most likely try to raise a bunch of money for them again). Best of all, I got a voucher to spend at the CHaD store after the race. The jacket I picked out was pretty sweet, but it was even sweeter to have the volunteer say “wow, that’s a big voucher!” and be able to reply, “I raised a thousand dollars.”

It was a really great day, and I am so grateful to all of the friends and family who made it possible. I was honestly shocked by how much money I was able to raise. I have some seriously generous people in my life, I am just blown away by it. Kristian was a great sport, doing almost all of the driving and most of the toddler wrangling. My sister treated me like a princess (she made me a little gift bag, cheered like you would not believe, and then took such sweet care of me post-race when I was seriously hurting). And Pepper drove 2 hours up from Boston to cheer me on! I felt a lot of love from my friends and family this weekend, it was amazing.

Next half marathon I want to be faster, and next year I want to raise even more money.

And I kinda want to be Wonder Woman all the time now. :p