Oak Barrel Half Marathon

First off I want to say how proud I am of my husband, Greg for running his first half marathon!!  He did great and I am so proud of him!  I am also glad that I got to run his first half marathon with him.  I had gone back and forth about whether or not to run my own race or to run it with him.  I thought about it and prayed about what to do, and then the day of the race I listened to my heart which told me to run with him.  Since it was his first I wanted to be with him through the whole course and get to experience it with him.  Also, Greg and I don't get to spend 2 hours alone that often, so that was a big factor in my decision as well!

Another factor was the course!  It intimidated me since the last two half marathons I had done were both flat courses.  This course was a whole other ball game!  I wasn't sure if I could run this course at my usual half pace.  We kept getting emails about this course from the event organizers telling us that this course is full of hills and that there's one hill that even has it's own name:  Whiskey Hill.  They even called it a "character building hill".  A friend of ours had done one of the practice runs for the hill, and he told us that it was no joke!  Here is an excerpt from one email we got:

Hills are your friends
You can probably not do too much hill training for Oak Barrel.  The course has one very challenging hill that is about a mile long and starts a little after 3.5 miles into the run.  This hill is significant enough that it has been lovingly (well, … maybe not lovingly) named Whiskey Hill.  It even has its own facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/OakBarrelWhiskeyHill).  It is reasonably gradual for about the first part of the climb and then the fun begins about half way up.  It isn’t too late to get in a bit of hill training before the race.
The pay back comes at about mile 9 when you have a gradual 3 mile decent back to the highway and from there to the finish where the run is flat. 

Here is some more information about the course that I found on their website:

The course starts just off the square in Lynchburg, Tennessee and winds through rural Moore County Tennessee and passes the Jack Daniel's Distillery.  The course finishes the 13.1 mile loop on the Lynchburg  town square.

Lynchburg sits at the low point of a beautiful, picturesque valley, and because of this, the race course does include a few hills. Since start and finish locations of the race are essentially at the same elevation, any hills that you get to climb, you also get to descend.

Understand, that because Lynchburg sits in a valley, the race course incorporates a few hills.  The scenic beauty of Moore County; however, will far outweigh any of the challenges presented by the hills.  This will NOT be a “flat and fast” personal record setting course but hopefully will be a fun and memorable race.

So Saturday morning we woke up around 5:00 a.m. since we had about an hour or so drive to Lynchburg, TN, and the race started at 8.  My parents had come up the night before to watch the kids for us during the race.  They had planned to come to the race because my parents wanted to see the distillery, but after giving it more thought, we all decided it was probably best for them to just stay at home.  That way they could spend more time with the kids and didn't have to worry about getting them all ready and driving all that way.  My mom also said that she wanted to give us a break and not have to worry about taking over as soon as the race was over and just to be able to enjoy ourselves.  So that was really nice of her to do that for us.  The kids had a fun time with them and got to do some special activities.  Here's a picture of the Easter treats that they made.  They were carrot planter boxes.  My grandma saw the idea in the newspaper so she went out and bought all the ingredients for the kids to make them.  I thought that was really sweet of her. 

We got ready and made sure we had everything we needed like our Gu, ipods, and my favorite item which is my Garmin!  I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich which I know is a little heavy, but I ate it two hours before the race.  It lasted me the whole race, and I never needed my Gu.  The drive to Lynchburg was very serene and quiet since there was no one out that early on a Saturday morning.  We took a lot of highways that ran through some beautiful countryside.  We even got to see the sunrise which was beautiful too.

Once we got there we had to head to packet pick-up.  I made a last minute wardrobe change since the shirts that gave out were really nice long sleeve Nike Dri Fit shirts.  It was pretty chilly, and I had planned to run in a short sleeve shirt, but I thought it would be nice to have the long sleeve yet still have the lightweight material.  Then we walked to the town square which was the cutest one I have ever seen.  You can tell they have really fixed it up, and I'm sure it's because it's a touristy area with the Jack Daniels Distillery being there.  It looked like a little town right out of a movie.  We got to talk to a few friends, and then we had to head over to the start which was right up the street from the town square. 

We got to the start and the nerves were flaring up a little.  But thankfully we didn't have to stand around and wait too long because they started the race on time.  So it was like as soon as they finished the national anthem, they said "GO!"  Let me say that this is a very beautiful course!  It runs through the country and I just loved the scenery.  I remember there being this one big open field that was full of yellow wildflowers and a few horses walking around.  We also saw a few old barns, cow pastures, and pretty hillsides.  I tried my best to take it all in because it's rare that I get moments like this where I get to enjoy nature!  I was also enjoying getting to run with Greg.  We didn't talk a whole lot since it's hard to talk while running, but it was great to get to be side by side.

 Thanks to my friend, Kathy for this picture.  Greg said that we were in sync.  I loved that.

Now onto the hills!  There were two small hills before the big one.  Once we got to mile 4, we began to run up Whiskey Hill.  I knew we were there when I heard the song "Highway to Hell" being played!  Greg and I got a kick out of that!  The first part like they said was gradual.  It actually wasn't that bad until you got to the really steep part at the end.  I decided that I wanted to run up it because I wanted to show that hill who was boss!  On the hill's facebook page it would post a lot of smack talk to the runners saying things like, "So I heard the race sold out really early this year! Can't believe they're gonna let 1,050 crazies into Lynchburg April 7. Only crazies run me!" and "Did you know there's a Whiskey Hill blues band? I should invite them out April 7 when you'll be singing the blues!!!!"  It's really silly since I know it's just some guy typing this stuff, but I guess I just wanted to prove that I could do it since I have that competitive nature.

Once we got up to the top of the hill, we were just chugging along.  I don't remember too many details from that point on.  Around mile 10 my legs starting getting tired.  Greg told me that we only had a 5K left to go, and that was a good way to look at it!  Once we got closer to town, we passed the distillery, but we really didn't get a good view of it.  I was hoping to get to see it better.  After that we took a left turn and there was the finish line!  I let Greg go on before me because I wanted to watch him cross the finish. What an awesome moment that was!  I was grinning from ear to ear with happiness and pride for him.

Sprinting to the finish!

With our unique Oak Barrel medals

After we walked around a few minutes to cool down, we went over to the tents where they had all the food for the runners.  I chugged down a bottle of water then a bottle of gatorade in about 5 minutes!  Obviously I was more thirsty than hungry, but I still grabbed some pizza and Greg got a bowl of Brunswick Stew.  We talked to some friends after that, then we decided to head back home. And that was it!  Time to get back to being parents!  But much to our surprise, my parents and the kids were not home.  They had taken them out to eat, so Greg and I collapsed on our bed and took a nap!

Overall it was a great experience, and we hope to get to do the race again. It was definitely a challenging course, but that can be a good thing!  My official time was 2:12:02, and I came in 41st place out of 104 women in my age group.  Oh and here is a link to some professional pictures that were taken of us.  I never take good pictures while I am running, but this time I actually did so I wanted to share them.
http://www2.brightroom.com/98262/751
http://www2.brightroom.com/98262/752

 Here are a few pictures of our medals:

 We think that they are made out of cedar. 

Can't forget a picture of our family on Easter Sunday!  What a busy weekend that was!