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Madison Mini Marathon 2016

I apologize for being so late on my blogs!  It has been quite a busy end of August and beginning of September.  Having taught summer school for the first time this year, I feel like I didn’t get a break at all from school and here I am right back to school.  I don’t feel rested.  I don’t feel like I was able to spend enough time with my kids.  Needless to say I have been stressed and am so glad that I can’t teach summer school next year due to going to Disney World!  So this is the first installment of my blogs that should have been done last month. Here goes!

On Saturday August 20, I ran the Madison Mini Marathon.  
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I like this race a lot.  It’s a fun one on a similar course as the Madison Half Marathon I ran in May.  I really like this one because of the cheer stations.  There are local groups and schools that sponsor a water station and basically cheer their hearts out for racers that they do not know at all!  It’s awesome! I mean seriously!  Who comes out on a rainy Saturday morning to stand around and cheer for complete strangers? These groups were extra awesome this year and really helped me along the course.  
It stormed something awful on our drive to Madison and then was misty until the start of the race.  The temps weren’t horrible but the humidity was something fierce after the rain stopped!  It was so thick running through the Arboretum!  I had a hard time breathing and my pace was off running through there! I literally could not wait to be out of that enclosed space!  Despite my struggles with the humidity, I felt like I ran a fairly decent race.  I knew I wasn’t going to get a PR with the affect the humidity had on me, but I was determined to run the best race I could.  And I think I accomplished that with a time of 2:26:04.  About 4 minutes slower than last year but I'm ok with it.  I'm training for another marathon for goodness sakes! It’s weird to think that all my fall races are really just training runs for my marathon but they are and it will help me get into racing shape.  
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One thing that I have been making sure to do is train hills.  I think I have mentioned this before but Tuesday’s for me are hill repeat runs and I can already tell with the Mad Mini that these are definitely paying off. Despite living in Wisconsin which is not the most mountainous state, there are still hills here and the Mad Mini has quite a few that we had to run.  However, because of my hill training, I felt like I was able to really power up the hills and not feel completely drained and out of breath.  I know it will pay off more than just running hills for my marathon; it is really strengthening my legs and more muscle in my legs means they will be able to carry me farther!
Anyway, overall I am really happy with this race.  I finished strong and was able to see my kids and hubby cheering for me at the finish line.  That’s always my favorite part!  I love them to the moon and back and am so appreciative of their support of my crazy running habit!

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Aren’t my cheerleaders cute??
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Check out my awesome race medal and shirt!  I think this is one of the best shirts I’ve gotten!  Love it!!!
So until next time,

RUN ON!!!  
Laura

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