This past weekend marked one of the coolest and most challenging things I have done so far, the Philadelphia Half-Marathon!  I actually can’t believe it’s already over I feel like we trained for months and now its all over!  So rewind about three months ago I was in the middle of trying to get myself into shape and at first I just wanted to start running again because I really missed it.  For me it is a great stress reliever and it is the quickest way to lose extra weight.  A couple of my girlfriends from home who I have known since I was in elementary school had already signed up for the full marathon, so I was inspired to get it together and stop talking about doing a race and actually sign up for something.  I have only ever done a couple 5k’s and a sprint Tri which was not pretty but another story haha, so I decided the half would be a challenging goal to set.

Obviously my next step was to convince one of my sisters to sign up with me! Kelsey said she would do and that was that we were signed up and now we just had to start running more seriously!  I choose to follow a plan from myasics.com where you can set your pace and what goals you have and the website will generate a 12 week plan for you that you can actually sync to your phones calendar.  This was awesome and really helped to keep me on track and I felt that I was being held accountable even though I was training by myself.  There is also a corresponding app for smart phones that will track your runs and times for you!

I decided to find a new pair of shoes after the first couple of weeks and it was a great decision for me, I went to a couple shoes stores and tried on different brands and landed on a pair of Brooks.  Honestly I thought they were the ugliest shoe and didn’t want to buy them, but it doesn’t matter what they look like if they perform for you.  So I bought them and felt like a new person! They are so light weight, but still offer support, they come in a couple different colors but I picked black and am so happy with them!

After 12 weeks the race was here and I was super nervous!!! At this point I just wanted to get it over with!  My sister and I went and stayed with Michelle in the city and had a great time making dinner and meeting her friend from work who was hilarious!  Then we had an early wakeup of 3:45 in order to make it to the race and get through security in time for the race to officially start at 7:00am.  I think that we were the only ones who took the 4:30am arrival time seriously as you can see there was no one else at LOVE Park when we got there!

Then in my opinion the worst part was just waiting for the race to start, we got super lucky because the weather was actually perfect.  Then that was it we started and a little after two hours it was over for Kels and I! It was so amazing running through the city, everyone was so friendly and so encouraging from the volunteers to the spectators!  It really was a magical feeling getting to run through Center City, South Philly, past the Zoo, and then back to the Art Museum where we finished.  I am so happy that I choose the Philadelphia Marathon as my first race, there was so much to look at and just amazing people all around.  It made me miss the City so much and I can’t wait to go back!

I couldn’t be more proud of everyone who ran in both races, you put in the training and know that your body can handle it, but it’s all mental and we all made it to the finish line and everyone did amazing!

I highly suggest finding a race and challenging yourself! It is so amazing what your body is capable of.  The race was so inspiring and I hope that I can do it again next year, the verdict is still out if I would ever do a full I think I need to forget about that massive hill at mile 11 for a while!

xo Meg