Missoula Half Marathon Race Report

The beginning of our Montana vacation started with the Missoula Half Marathon! For those of you who do not know, I grew up an hour south of Missoula, MT in Hamilton, MT and Missoula started their own marathon/half marathon 3 years ago. The first 2 years of the race, my husband, Chris ran the full and qualified for Boston there last year. This year, the whole family was able to travel to Missoula and then spend the rest of the week with my family in Hamilton. This was my 6th half marathon, but I had never ran one outside of SD, where I live now. It was exciting not knowing anything about the course. Two of my sisters, Lauren and Kelly, also ran the half and my husband ran the full again. My son, Caiden, did the kid's marathon where he had logged 25 miles the past few months and then did the last 1.2 miles with all of the other kids during the marathon. It was a really fun race and as it wasn't one of my fastest races, I really just enjoyed being in my home state and in the same town that I went to college. We started off along the river, with the sun coming up and it was really awesome. We then ran all over Missoula where there was so much more support along the course than there usually is when I run! People had written support messages on their sidewalks and in the street, they had made signs and even some of them has hoses and sprinklers on for us to run through along the course. The first year the race was run in 2007, there was record temperatures that day and people were not doing well. Because of that, there were A TON of water stations. Some were just a mile apart! It seemed like just as you were finishing your water, more was coming. This is great of course, but it also slowed me down. It's hard to drink out of a cup while running, so that is the only time I walk during a race, at a water station. As I was coming to the finish, I heard my kids, my parents, my other sister, Kristin and her husband cheering me on and I gave them a smile and finished in 2:21:38 - my next sister, Lauren, came in at 2:36 and then my sister Kelly finished her first ever half marathon in 2:49. My brother in law then took Caiden to the start of his race and they rocked it out running the 1.2 miles in about 10 minutes! Chris had a harder day than he wanted, but anyone who can run a full marathon in 3:19, is awesome in my eyes. After the race, we headed to the Iron Horse (an old college favorite) for some GOOD food and a very STRONG drink! :) I need to thank my Dad for paying for all of our race registrations to ease the financial burden of our trip too! It was a really great day and I hope I get to run this race again!

For the rest of the race pictures and pictures from that weekend, here is a link to go to and look at the rest of them!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=94976&id=504308423&l=e1d7a33ac1