Twin Cities Marathon 2015

Wow! What an amazing race. I missed my sub 3:00 goal by 48 seconds, but I had an amazing experience running this race.
 
Kristjan and I drove down to Fargo on Friday night and stayed in hotel. I ate a sub that night for dinner and was making sure to drink lots of water. On Saturday we drove 4 hours in the morning to Minneapolis and we checked into our hotel. Next we went to the race expo, which I thought was great! Kristjan said that I made him feel like running a marathon.

After the race expo I went for shake out in the parking lot/around the block. I did some drills and a 20 minute jog. After that Kristan and I went for dinner at the hotel restaurant, it was pretty good, I predictably ordered pasta. That night I went to bed at about 9:30 after lying everything out and got my brain ready!

 
In the morning we got to the start line pretty early, downtown Minneapolis was shut down completely for the event!  I had a great pre-race warm up, there was lots of room for drills and such.  The temperature was pretty ideal that morning, it was dry and clear and about 7 degrees, throughout the race it warmed up to about 12.
 
When the gun went I was ready and I gave it everything I had! I held back for the first half, because I'm told that's what we need to do, but I think I could've gone faster overall if I had gone harder when I felt really good - but, really who knows. At the end I was dead to the world, I was thrilled with the result, taking off 3 minutes off of my previous time. My race gear passed the test, I took 4 GU packets and one pack of shot blocks. I didn't chafe or get blisters this time, I came prepared with Body Glide!
 

We immediately jumped in the car afterwards, we swung by the hotel to take a shower and then we hit the road to come home. We didn't get home too late and I actually decided to go to work the next day because it was a PD day at school. My legs actually didn't actually feel that bad after running a marathon and sitting in a car for 8 hours. It seems like every marathon I run I get less sore afterwards.
 
Props to my awesome boyfriend Kristjan for driving the whole time and cheering me on throughout the race and throughout my training! I will definitely run this race again, the race course was beautiful, the amenities were great, one could not ask for a better race!  All in all it was a very positive experience! I would recommend this race to anyone and everyone!