We did it!...barely

After a few months of training and several setbacks (including barely making it to the race on time thanks to my incredible sense of direction), Rocia and I made it to the Napa Valley Half Marathon. Honestly, we thought the hard part was over before we'd begun. We planned on kicking some tail and finishing in less than 2 hours. We were seriously kidding ourselves. Actually, we were seriously misled. We thought "Napa...it's a valley...how bad could it be? It can't be any worse than running in this city full of hills." We knew it was a trail run and some people had described it as "rugged". "Mountainous terrain" would have been a more appropriate description. It started out on pavement, which lasted for .05 miles, and then it turned into trail. Then the trail started going up...and up and up and up. There were jagged rocks, creeks, giant boulders and fallen trees. All of which we had to run around and through and on top of. It never seemed to go down and when it did you couldn't run fast because you would fall and die (or sprain you ankle at the very least). Most of the people were like us and didn't know that the course was that insane and people were seriously upset, which actually would've been funny if I wasn't trying not to slip and fall. The half marathon was two 6.5 mile loops. Which means that all I was thinking the first 6.5 miles was "how in the world am I going to do this twice!” After Rocia got stung by a wasp (which later became infected) we were plotting how we would try and finish the first loop and then do the last 6.5 on the highway. But when it came down to it, we didn't want to quit and miss out on our sweet t-shirt (or not). The last half was actually better since we knew what to expect (and since all the wasps were gone because they had already stung half the runners). Despite the fact that it was the hardest thing I've ever done (at least during child birth you get and epidural), I'm really glad we were able to do it. Thank you Zach, Shay, and Kyler for letting me have training time and cheering me on, to my family and friends for power songs and loads moral support, and especially to Cia since I wouldn't have done this in a million years all by myself!






I've literally never been so thirsty in my life


We're laughing because we could've run the 1/2 marathon in SF the week before and got a Tiffany's necklace at the end instead of a t-shirt. Odds are there wouldn't have been a wasp nest standing in our way either.