Palos Southwest Bank Half Marathon & New GU Energy Sampler

Cory had wanted to run another half marathon, and actually I had wanted to run this one last year, but didn't for some reason.  So we decided to sign up for the Palos Southwest Bank Half Marathon this morning.  The original plan was to run it easy with Cory, well I changed my mind about that...sorry Cory.  He did awesome by the way, he has run 1 time since the marathon in November, and it was a struggle let me tell you, I know because I was with him.  I was amazed at the pace he ran today on zero training.  How you can run faster than 8 minute miles for a half marathon when you have done no running is unreal to me.  Awesome work Cory!!!

I had a plan going into this race, I was going to go out at a 6:15 pace and then just try to hold on.  The race plan lasted until...the starting line.  Whoops!  This course was awesome and fast, and seeing how fast everyone was going out I couldn't help but to drink the koolaid and go with.  As we run through the first mile at a sub 6 minute pace I thought one of two things would happen.  Either I would slow down and still be able to hold on to my 6:15 pace overall, or I would blow up big time.  Well neither of those things happened much to my surprise.  Going through mile 2 (my slowest mile of the day) I tried to bring it back a little.  The problem was that I couldn't slow down, so I made the decision to just run by feel and to try to hold on.  At that point I knew that I still had 11 miles to go but I felt fine.  Obviously it was early in the race, but my legs seemed to be there.  As I kept running my pace was right around the 6 minute per mile area and people were slowly coming back to me.  I caught one guy and he asked me if I had ever run a half marathon before.  Kind of an odd question, not sure why he asked it, but I answered yes and then made it my goal to drop him like a bad habit.  I mean really why would he ask that?  Did I look like crap at mile 5, was it because I wasn't wearing a "race" team shirt?  Thanks to Lululemon I was rockin the most comfortable gear at the race!  Zero chaffing and all around super comforable, I LOVE my Lululemon stuff...if you haven't checked them out yet, you have to get in there!!

Alright back to the race.  The nice thing about this course is that it was an out and back.  So at the turn around I saw that I was in the top 25.  That was cool, and then the competitive juices really started flowin for me.  I would look ahead and just started picking targets to run down.  I was able to bring back quite a few people.  I did see Cory and high fived him on my way back which gave me a huge boost.  I kept bringing guys back all the way until the end of the race.  It was an awesome day, and another nice test of fitness.

Chad decided to run this race this week and he killed it.  I don't know if it's a PR for him or not but he had an awesome race...and he even gets to race another half marathon next week.  Good luck with that!

I was fortunate enough to finish 16th Overall, and 3rd in my Age Group, so for the 2nd time this year I was able to bring home some hardware:

Thanks to GU Energy and the Blueberry Pomegranate Roctane that I had at miles 4 and 9 I felt awesome the whole race.  Also to Brooks Running for my T6 racing flats, so comfortable and light!!

GU Energy also has a new product that's going to hit the market.

The GU Energy Sampler is about to take the world by storm!  Not sure what GU products you like the best, or you love the variety that GU offers, pick up a new sampler with all of your favorite GU flavors, Chomps Flavors, and Brew Flavors.  Apparently there are new FTC guidelines for bloggers so here is the disclaimer we were instructed to add...

"GU Energy provided the Performance Energy Sampler free of charge for me to review and the opinions that are above are mine."

Alright now that that's out of the way here is what you have to look forward to when you open up the box:

Time for some relaxing with my awesome dogs.  They are exhausted thanks to my Mom picking them up yesterday to play with Maverick.  Thanks Mom!  It's nice that I don't have to have two dogs "pawwing" (is that how you spell it?) at me so that I would pet them.