Charlotte's Thunder Road Marathon/Half Marathon

Finisher Medal Display
Originally uploaded by CellPhoneSusie

After starting to push for a late fall marathon many months ago, injuries kept me sidelined long enough to prevent sufficient time to train for a 26.2 mile race. So I compromised and trained for the half marathon while Erik trained to do the full. The rest of the Wake OBXers did their own things this fall. Only Bill and Lynn followed through with an event and they were scheduled to do the half marathon in Kiawah this morning. Bill also did another half last week: the W-S Mistletoe race, a great local event.

By the time I got the green light from my podiatrist, the Kiawah race was closed out, so Erik found this multiple distance race event in nearby Charlotte. Ron agreed to be our race support, so we headed down to compete this morning. The day's weather was perfect and I had a very solid race for me, finishing in 2:15. And it turns out that I finished third in my age group out of 11 competitors! Erik managed to come in at 3:55 - not his PR, but still under that popular target of "under 4". I really enjoyed running through all the areas I was familiar with from when we lived there years ago. So much has changed in Charlotte, but there were still plenty of familiar landmarks and neighborhoods.

Ron got a workout as well, since the finish lines for both races were quite a distance apart. So after he cheered our start he spent the morning hiking all over the city to see the 5K finishers, my half marathon finish, and then I went along to cheer Erik in.

A fun day!