ZOOMA Great Lakes Half Marathon: The Neverending Hill

The most well-deserved after-race medal/award I’ve ever earned.

Truth.

This last weekend, us ZOOMA ambassadors reunited, along with a few more awesome Chicago bloggers/runners in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Our weekend had finally come- The ZOOMA Great Lakes Half Marathon.

We rented a lake house, officially dubbed the party house, and had ourselves a good time.The house was amazing and we easily fit 14 ladies comfortably for the night.

All we had to do was supply the food.

ssshhh… don’t tell the rest of the healthy living bloggers we may have had more candy than vegetables on site…

If only we didn’t have such a rude 5:00 wakeup call.

Twinsies! Or at least until I became a total baby and decided I was too cold to not dress in layers…

I hope you like bagels and peanut butter… because that’s what you’re eating…

Luckily for me, our breakfast was what I normally eat for prerace. Sometimes it’s awesome us bloggers can be so cliché with our peanut butter.

Because it was a point-to-point race, we met up at the Abbey Resort to get shuttled out to the start line.

Kelly was super pumped we were the cool kids on the back of the bus. Or at least we were self-proclaimed to be. Still counts.

Two hours after waking up, the sun finally starts to rise. So many things wrong with that sentence…

The view was lovely, but the temps were not as nice. We all shivered and shuddered until the start. I opted to keep my long sleeves on- something to be thankful for every time there was a brisk breeze.

So how was the race you ask?

Well.

We were warned about the hills. But even the warnings were not enough to prepare me for what was about to happen.

Turn the first corner, oh hey- a hill.
Congrats, you’ve hit mile marker 2.  Go run up a hill.
You’ve been running on a flat surface for a quarter mile. This is too long, so go run up a hill.
You just finished a subtle incline for a mile. Go run a steep hill.

I truthfully believe I was running uphill for 75% of the race.

The worst was near the end- mile 11. At that point, I was just keeping my head down to avoid the soul crushing inclines ahead of me. But at that particular spot, I looked up. Not one person was running up the hill. It was THAT steep. I attempted my arm-pumping, look like I’m running but in all actuality am barely moving, run. For about 20 feet. Screw this, I’m walking.

I would have cried, but it’s dangerous to dehydrate yourself like that in a race.

So after the half mile from hell (I don’t think it was this long, but that’s what it felt like), we ran a little longer and turned around. To go back down it.

Now, I’ll go ahead and say my love of the stair machine at the gym probably saved my life going up those hills (because we all know I wasn’t training for them on the treadmill). But the downhill? It was so steep. And it took so much energy to slow myself down as I was barreling down, that every time my foot hit the road, my body got a shock to the system. Everything vibrated. With every step.

“This is going to hurt sooooo bad tomorrow.”

But that was about the end of it. Which was good. I was taking a beating. My endurance somehow held up. But my joints weren’t going to take much more.

2:00:04.

10th in my age group. A small race, but I feel it important to throw that out there, anyway.

Some of the ambassadors post race. Smiling. Because it was over. Whew!

And with that, I finished my 5th half marathon.

Check out the sweet compression socks. It’s how a lot of us ambassadors were able to see each other in the distance. And they kept us warm. Duh.

Thank goodness there was wine at the post race. That’s all I have to say about that.

And thank goodness my parents were there to take me to lunch afterwards.

Because I wanted to eat EVERYTHING.

A local brew called Spotted Cow to go with my turkey burger. Because I like diversity.

Oh and more food…

Why yes, the tree of broccoli was quite delicious with my mahi mahi. Thanks for asking.

So yeah. That was my ZOOMA experience. Not my best race time. But not my worst. And with all the hills? I’ll take it.

Plus, I got to see my parents and hang with a bunch of pretty awesome girls for the weekend.

Wine. Jewelry. And a solid girls weekend.

Worth it.

Now excuse me as me and my sore thighs limp on out the door to work…

Laters.

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