Nashville Half-Marathon Weekend

We just had such a fun weekend!  We spent the weekend in Nashville so my sister and I could run in the St. Jude Country Music Half-Marathon!

After Emory was born, I knew I wanted to get back into running a little bit, so I decided to sign up for the half-marathon and my sister agreed to do it with me.  I knew that signing up for a big race would make me train and run at least three days a week.  After "training" (I'm using that word pretty loosely because I didn't follow the training as closely as I wished, but I still did okay) for the last 12 weeks, it was finally time to head to Nashville!

We headed over on Thursday afternoon during the girls naps.  We went out to dinner and shopped a little bit and headed back to our hotel.  (My parents went too, and so they stayed with Lindsey and Curt since L/C only have a one bedroom apartment, and we figured it would be a little too crowded with me, Ryan, and both girls).  

Friday we got up and all headed to the Expo so Lindsey and I could get our race packets.  We had a lot of fun looking around at all the vendors, and Brynn LOVED it! 

One of Brynn's classmates has cancer and has been going to St. Jude for treatment.  Since they are a big sponsor of the race, we were able to fill out a poster for him and I got to get this tag to run with.

Emory was having a blast too...there was so much to look at!

We walked to a Panera in downtown Nashville and enjoyed lunch and the BEAUTIFUL weather.  Then Ryan took the girls back to the hotel to nap, and my sister and my parents and I all headed to the Nashville Flea Market.  I ended up getting the girls matching lace rompers for some upcoming pictures.  

I can't get this picture to flip over, but here was our race shirt.  It was really cute!

For dinner we all headed back to downtown Nashville to eat at one of my favorite restaurants...Old Spaghetti Factory.  We got to eat with two of my VERY BEST FRIENDS from college!!!  Jaclyn lives in Clarksville and Alicia had flown in for the weekend to visit her, and so we all got to meet up for dinner.  My parents, Ryan, and my sister are all really close to these girls too, and it was great for everyone to catch up over dinner.  LOVE YOU GIRLS!

Saturday morning Lindsey and I were up bright and early for the race.  I wasn't really nervous like I usually am for one of these races.  I think it was because I didn't have a specific time I HAD to run, and wasn't trying to be really competitive.  I knew I wanted to RUN the whole thing, but other than that I just wanted to enjoy it.    

I think there were about 24,000 people in the race!  WHOA!  We got off to a good start and had a great time!  I mean, as much fun as you can have running 13 miles.  =)  There are bands every mile or so, lots of water stations, and we had the best cheering section!  Our family got to see us twice (my sister actually ran with her cell phone so we could tell them where we were and we could try to find them cheering), and of course the whole route is covered with people cheering!

Here are some pictures Ryan took during the race.  

Here we come...this was around mile 4.

Then they hopped back in the car and drove to another spot to watch...we saw them about mile 4 and again at mile 8.

Then they drove to the finish, and we had about 5 more miles to run.  Those were some LONG miles!  HA!  And then...WE MADE IT!  FINALLY FINISHED!  Clearly, I was tired!

We met up with everyone after the race...YAY!

Brynn was wearing a shirt she got out of my suitcase...who knows???

On the way back to Lindsey and Curt's apartment, we turned around and saw this.  Lindsey and I were DYING!

Yes, Brynn had opened up a pack of gum, taken the gum out and stuck it between her toes, and was saying "I'm a MONSTER!  MONSTER TOES!"  Never a dull moment with that girl!

We all headed back to Lindsey and Curt's apartment and just had sandwiches for lunch.  Then Ryan and my Dad and the girls drove back to Cape, and my mom and I stayed in Nashville.  As part of the race registration, you get to go to a concert that Saturday night, and we were going to have a "girls night" and go to dinner and to the concert!  (But of course before that, we RELAXED AND TOOK A WELL-EARNED NAP!)

We all watch the show "Nashville" on TV and the headliners for the concert were the cast of NASHVILLE!  We got to see Deacon, Scarlett, Gunnar, Will, and Zoe!!!  They sang a bunch of the hit songs from the show, as well as other famous country songs.  It was really good!

We got up on Sunday morning and drove home and were back by the time Ryan and the girls got out of church.  We all had such a great weekend in Nashville and I'm so glad my sister agreed to my crazy idea of doing this race!  Now I just need to go pop a couple more Tylenol for the soreness...HA!