Beach2Bay 2012

This past weekend I had the honor of running 2012's Beach2Bay Marathon relay from Corpus Christi to South Padre Island.  I ran with The Boyfriend, his Brother, his Brother's wife and 2 friends.  The Boyfriend's other Brother bought our entry fee but unfortunately was unable to run with us (I'm going to have to come up with a way to identify all of his brothers since there's THREE).  Friday evening we arrived at our hotel to find the following view:

Not too shabby! We went out that evening for some carb loading with our running group. Pizza and beer.  I took a photo of this one because it was just too cute:



Victory AND Summer Love...how can you go wrong??

Here's how, a race time that makes you wake at 3AM.  3AM.  I was AWAKE...not still awake like I could be, was asleep, THEN awake like should never, ever, ever happen, period.  Lucky for me I did get to watch one hell of a sunrise from the beach at my starting point.

I was surprisingly not nervous until I started to see all of the people. All of the people who were running my leg.  There were SO MANY.  At this point, I kept thinking "What am I doing?" "I've been injured" (just recovered from a stress fracture in my left tibia), "I only had a month to train," "THIS IS NUTS!!" But then, it just happened, I was running Leg 2 and suddenly we got word that Leg 1 was off, and there they came, all the runners, by that time I didn't have time to worry anymore, I just had to watch and wait for The Boyfriend's Brother's Wife who was our Leg 1, soon enough, there she was and I was off.  First of all, running in the sand is total crap, second of all whoever the race people are that made me run in the sand? You suck! But I did it.  4.72 miles, I did it.  I still can't believe it.  I can't believe how HOT and humid it was at 8 o'clock in the morning, I can't believe I went THAT far, I can't believe that feeling when you round the turn and your thisclose to who you're passing off to and you have that moment where you know you did it.  It was amazing.

Afterwards, I caught a ride to the finish line with a running group buddy and true to form, even though I had run 4.72 miles and walked another 2ish to get to the car and not gotten injured, I fell off the curb walking across the street and busted my knee wide open.  It was fabulous, let me tell you. But all is well, I have a great medal that's already hanging with the rest of our bibs and race garb.

After some rest and some serious showering, we met up to re-carb at the Macaroni Grill then went to a Beach Party where one of our buddies was staying in her camper.

A little Volleyball

A spectacular Sunset

And one HELL of a group of friends. Who knew a year ago I would be a part of a group of runners?? Certainly not I, but it's been a great year.  I just signed up to run the BlogHer 2012 5K in New York.  If you would have told me a year ago I'd be running a 5K in New York City I would have called you nuts.  And yet, here I am.  It's crazy, magic and fantastic all at the same time.  Life is good!

And one of me and The Boyfriend, just for fun!