2014 Publix GA Half Marathon Recap

I've been a little slow at writing recaps and I apologize. I still need to publish my recap from the 10K I did in February. Hopefully, I will get that up sometime in the near future.

Here is my recap from the half marathon I did on March 23rd, 2014.

A few days after finishing my first half I decided I would take the challenge and sign up for the Publix Half. I knew going into this that I was going to be facing a challenge....HILLS. I am not really a fan of hills. Heck, I don't think anyone really is, but I decided I was going to do my best and most of all...have fun.

After staying close to the race site for the Allstate 13.1, Jen, Brandi, and I decided we were going to stay as close as we could for this half marathon. Jen made reservations as the Doubletree Hilton. It was literally a block or two away from Centennial Park,which is where the start of the race took place.

Fast forward a few months and here we are at race weekend.

Saturday March 22nd, I met up with Jen to head on down to the expo to pick up our race numbers/shirts and to do a little shopping before heading to the hotel to check in. We also had made plans to go to Max's Pizza for a little carb loading with some friends of ours (Angela and her husband, Matthew, Jill and her husband, Matt and their daughter, Abigail, Brandi, Jason, and Katie). Had the best pizza and garlic knots. Seriously, think I will be going here again next year.

Lovely view from Centennial Park

After dinner we went back to Angela and Matthew's hotel to hang out at the SkyLounge before heading back to ours to call it a night.

View of the Atlanta skyline from SkyLounge

Before I knew it was time to leave, but we would be seeing each other the next day after the race for some brunch.

Since we didn't have far to go, I set my alarm for 5:20. Like always I couldn't sleep the night before the race. I am so anxious to get out there and go.

Alarm went off at 5:20.

It was time to get up and get ready.

All week we had been hearing about the threat of rain so of course we check the weather when we woke up to see what was going. Luckily, it wasn't raining and was going to hold off until after we were done.

At 6:20, we left the hotel. It was nice not having to take Marta down before the race.

Got to the park. I took my energybits, and ate some of my protein bar before going to gear check. After gear check, I said my goodbyes to Brandi and Jen before heading to my corral (G) to get ready for the start of the Publix Half.

A good thing about staying close to the race we were able to walk down 40 minutes before the start of the race. By the time I found and got in my corral we only had 10 minutes before the race started.

As I was making my way to the start line I kept telling myself to take it easy on the hills and I will do just fine.

....I did just that.

I really don't remember too much about the race. I remember getting to mile 6-7 and then 9. Most of the race I was in the zone and just don't remember passing a lot of the sites. I guess that's a good thing?

Soon I was passing over the "fake finish line" and making my way back to the park.

I was feeling amazing. I definitely felt better than I did after my first half. My legs were happy.

I crossed the finish line with an official time of 2:09:06. Not my fastest, but I wasn't trying to do that. I wanted to have fun and I did.

Earned my bling!!!