obx half marathon

on our 5th anniversary, preston and i went out to dinner to celebrate and talked about what we wanted to accomplish before our 10th (we are on 7!). our list was short but meaningful.

example: another baby (check. eli!)

another was to run a half marathon.

back in the summer we decided to go for it. after much research on preston's part, we settled on the outer banks. a condition of the run was that it had to be in a cool place and we had never been there before.

after much time and hard work, we've done it!!!

we planned the trip with the eaton's. mandy ran with us and michael rode his bike to different spots throughout the course to photograph us!

we stayed in duck. (quack!) our house was a short distance to both the sound and ocean.

this sunset welcomed us on friday night...

on saturday the boys played golf while the girls shopped. afterward we drove down to hattaras to see the lighthouse. though a hurricane was churning well off the coast, the waves were quite fierce and we could see bits and pieces of the action as we drove south. we got to the lighthouse right at sunset...

then went to it's original location (they moved it in 1999). a third of the monument base was covered with sand from this most recent storm! it was completely uncovered last week!! good thing they moved it!! here's a picture showing how far they moved it.... saturday night, preston made his special pre-race spaghetti for us. yum!

sunday morning. race day! we awoke early and got on the road to the starting line.

mile 1-6 went great

mile 7-9 were tough because we had to mentally prepare for the bridge coming up

mile 9-10 was the bridge. not so bad

mile 11-12 were torture

mile 13 was painful yet sort of numb at the same time

13.1 miles is no joke. we were all very glad to finish and felt we could not have done better. we spent some time recuperating on a dock overlooking the sound in manteo. very pretty.

we went to the beach to show off our medals to the ocean...

then we went back to our house...but more importantly our HOT TUB!! but since there was so much more we wanted to do we jumped back in the car and went to corolla.
the main road ends, yet continues in the sand. we drove a ways and tried to find some wild horses but ended up doing donuts with the car on the sand!! (preston and mandy did not love this nearly as much as michael and i)

monday morning sunrise...

lovely...

though our trip was jammed with sightseeing and other fun, crazy mandy still found the time to work on a puzzle we found in the game closet. she endured much criticism and skepticism from the rest of us but finished right before we left monday morning. one piece was missing...arg!!
our half marathon weekend was unforgettable (even after the ache in our legs goes away)!!