Sam Costa Half Marathon 2015 recap

I love this race. I ran the quarter-marathon last year and it's just a really great race. It's the oldest half-marathon in Indiana and has a lot of history. It's also got a great venue with lots of bathrooms and a coffee shop and it's got about a bajillion volunteers with 2-5 at every turn (there are A LOT of turns, it's a very twisty race) to make sure you stay on course and to cheer you on.

 Since I'm neck-deep in marathon training, I hadn't paid much attention to this race and was mostly looking at it as a break in my higher mileage long runs. After a month of strong running, I aggravated an old injury on the Thursday before the race and wasn't sure about running because going into the marathon uninjured is more important, but by Friday night it was feeling good enough I decided to give it a go.

My Goals 

•  Good- Run a strong race without aggravating my injury.
•  Great- Make it through a whole half marathon without making a potty stop. (Very important if I ever want to sub-2.)
•  Awesome- PR (2:09:46) I was not aiming to run hard but my long pace lately would put me very close to that PR.

 My Strategy

Start out easy to test the leg, setting into a comfortable but not too hard of a pace. Stay consistent for the race.

Race Morning
This is the first race that I haven't brought my family along to so getting up and getting going was pretty easy. I was there a little early but had lots of time to get my gear together and have a latte. I was supposed to meet two of the girls in our virtual marathon training group but they weren't able to make it so that was a little sad.

RACE TIME!!!
Mile 1- 9:30 I think I started way to far forward as I was being passed like crazy. My goal was to start slow to settle into how my leg felt but honestly for the first half mile, I was getting passed so much that I wasn't sure if I was running 11:00 minute miles or 8:00 minute miles.

Mile 2- 9:13 Once I got passed by all the people I was able to settle into a nice, relatively easy pace. The course is so twisty that my GPS is already pretty far ahead of the official mile markers.

Mile 3- 9:17  I skipped the first water stopjust because I didn't feel like I needed it and I didn't want to break pace.

Mile 4- 9:12 Very pleased with the pace I'm keeping.

Mile 5- 9:26 I actually ramped it up a bit on this mile but did slow down for a water stop.

Mile 6- 9:01 OMG This bit is so *straight* and flat. It almost feels effortless. At this point, I consider picking up my pace and trying to finish in under two hours. In the end I decided it wasn't worth pushing had and set a goal of 2:05 instead since I was pretty certain I was going to PR.

Mile 7- 9:11 I can't believe that I'm half way already.

Mile 8- 9:51 Pretty steep hill climb on this one and I slowed down a little but was steadily passing people. Yay for having at least one hill climb on pretty much every run I do! Also a water break here.

Mile 9- 9:09 What goes up must come down. Not as long of a decend as the ascend but a nice little dip in which to pick up some speed. Again, I thought about picking up the pace and trying for a sub 2:00 Again I decided it was a bad idea.

Mile 10- 9:40 Another water break and a porta john. First one all course. One of my goals was to get though the race without taking a potty break so I smiled to myself as I wizzed by. (See what I did there??)

Mile 11- 9:08 Still feeling pretty confident. Bypassed the last water stop to make up a little time. That sub-two pops up again and if my GPS were matching the official course markers, I could have pushed for it but I was more than a quarter mile off and I would not be able to make that up.

Mile 12- 9:12 I've still totally got this. No matter what I'm going to finish strong.

Mile 13- 9:41 So.... 10 used to be my really hard mile. Now that I'm doing longer distances, that's been pushed out a bit and 13 is an awkward place to have a hard mile. It didn't help that I was running in front of an older gentleman who was obviously trying to make a certain time and was grunting with every single step so I finally dropped behind him.

Mile 13.5- 10:32 I hit 13 miles on my GPS at 2:01 and even though I knew I wasn't going to make that sub 2:00 in the back of my mind, it was kind of deflating. And by now my brace was drooping and my leg was started to get cranky andthere was a bit of a hill climb to the finish so I didn't finish as stong as I could have but it was still a strong race.

Stats

Finish time: 2:05:20

Pace: 9:32
25/35 Division place
122/197 Females
342/489 Overall

Something I hadn't seen at a race before was if you went back inside, (to get your medal since they were only given to those that paid extra) they had a table where you could get a little reciept with all your stats on it. 

Overall, it was silly to set my sights on a 2:00 half-marathon at this point and I took 4:30 off of my previous PR and I ran a really strong race so I'm very proud of that. And I'm pretty sure that sub 2:00 is in my near future.

Star Wars Party (Episode II or V, I'm not sure)

If you are just joining us, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.... I threw my husband a big 45th Star Wars themed birthday bash and I wrote about the details of the set-up and the decorations here. Today, I'm going to talk about my favorite part. The part about the cake and the food and especially the drinks. Let's start with the bar, shall we?

I had way too much fun coming up with a cocktail menu and decided to go with a kinda-cheesey retro vibe for the cantina. We downloaded Cocktails at the Cantina and had it's smooth jazz stylings of Star Wars classics playing in the background. It was perfect!

Photo courtesy of Todd Henning who took much better pics of the party than I did.

In retrospect, I could have chosen a menu that didn't involve a million bottles of flavored rum, but everyone seemed to like them. One of my husband's friends who actually is a bar tender volunteered to pour the drinks for us. The drink in the corner is the Death Star Scotch. My husband loves scotch and I could not resist the Death Star ice spheres. If you decide to make these make sure to use distilled water for best results and there is a white and a blue version of the ice mold, I got both, use the blue ones. They release much easier. One final tip, use a condiment or chocolate bottle to easily fill the molds.

Here are  the Jedi, the Sith and the Qui Gon Gin. They were all very tasty even if the Jedi was a bit sweet.

Photo courtesy of Todd Henning

The Trooper Shooters were too much fun. The shot was my variation of a China White using Rum Chata for the Bailey's because Rum Chata. Need I say more?? I cut the storm troopers out of black permanent vinyl and adhered them to plastic shot glasses. It was a little tedious but not bad. I probably didn't need to make 100 though. But a girl can never be too prepared.

We had non-alcoholic drinks as well. For the kiddos and kiddos at heart, there was Yoda Soda

Photo courtesy of Todd Henning

It looks like it came out of a swamp, doesn't it? The kids loved it! It's gingerale and lime sherbert (we had to go to three stores to find lime sherbet, what's up with that??) and a bit of green Hawaiian Punch for extra swampiness. We also had themed bottled water (mentioned in the other post) that went over really well.

Alright, enough with the drinks, there was food too!

I decided to go extra-cheesey with the food names and Star Wars tie-ins. This is probably NOT what they ate long ago and far, far away.... (And aren't the little Yoda and Storm Trooper the forks are in adorable?? Yay Target Valentine's section!)

The "Help me,  OBI WAN KEBOB-IES, you're our only hope" were on skewers that we wrapped in duct tape and decorated with sharpies to look like light sabers. These were a HUGE hit with the kids at the party. We had 2 pounds of grapes and 2 pounds of strawberries and they were GONE in 45 minutes. "Because he's holding THERMAL DETONATORS" were less fancy (Target brand cheese balls) but just as tasty.

"That's no MOON those are MEATBALLS"  were turkey meatballs in a sauce of cranberry sauce, pepper jelly, soy sauce and fresh ginger and garnished with crystallized ginger, green onions and sesame seeds. "Those aren't the CHEESEY DROIDS you are looking for" were the idea of my four year old. He bought me an R2D2 silicone mold I bought and told me we had to make cheese pops for daddy's party. The "pops" part didn't quite work but we mixed cream cheese, an Italian cheese blend and finely chopped green onion and packed it into the molds and let them set up in the freezer.  They were just as tasty as they were cute.

Last up on the food table was "Seven LEIA Dip" and "DARTH VEGGIES he's more produce now than man." They are both pretty straight forward. I had plans to sprinkle taco seasoning over the dip over a stencil of Princess Leia and her iconic honeybuns but in the last minute crush, that just didn't happen. The dip was tasty anyways. The veggies were served with a cream cheese dip (cream cheese, soy sauce, green onions, milk) and it's a bit hard to see but that's a radish carved to look like a Death Star floating in the dip.

On to the dessert table!! Who doesn't love the dessert table?? I LOVE the dessert table!

Here we have TATOOINE TRUFFLES (I used to live here, you know. You're going to die here, you know. Convenient.) The truffles were Ancho Truffles rolled in finely crushed in cinnamon graham crackers. If we skip to the other side of the table, we have "HAN ROLOS shot first" with a chocolate Han Solo in carobnite. Because when do you not need a chocolate Han Solo in carbonite?? And in the back, we have "Come to the DARK SIDE we have cookies."

Here's a detail shot of the cookies. Aren't they about the cutest ginger bread cookies ever??

But don't think I forgot about the cake! There were so many Star Wars cakes to choose from! We finally decided on a Millennium Falcon cake. Let's get to the money shot of the cake!

Photo courtesy of Todd Henning

The cake is a vegan chocolate cake with butter cream and sculptable butter cream details. I bakes a 12" round cake and a 9x13 to cut the details out of. I always forget how much darker gray frosting dries than what it looks when you first tint it so I meant it to be a bit lighter, but overall, I think it turned out really good! The cupcakes are carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, edible glitter stars and the fighters are mostly white chocolate with just a little dark mixed in to make them just the right color of beige.

We made it to the end! Overall, the party was a lot of fun to plan for and even more fun to be at!! Thanks for reading!