Nashville Weekend

This past weekend I got to head down to Nashville with some wonderful friends who were running (or supporting the runners) in the Nashville half marathon for our friend Libby. We had a fantastic time, so I thought I would do a little play-by-play of the weekend.

I left work early on Friday to meet up with Jen and Ben who were so gracious to let me ride with them down to Nashville. I loved the time we had in the car to talk and catch up. When we got to Nashville a bunch of the runners and supporters were eating dinner at a pizza place, so we joined them, ordered some food and hung out. There were a lot of us at the restaurant which made for a fun time, but it was also a little crazy. One of my besties, Sarah, was running in the race, and she had a hotel room, so after dinner, the two of us, and our friend Becca, went back to the hotel to get some sleep. The shuttle from our hotel to the race was leaving at 5:30 Saturday morning, so after some chatting and catching up, we got to bed nice and early.

Saturday morning came early. We took the shuttle to the race, and met up with everyone at the Parthenon.

Here are some of the runners before the race:

Would you believe that 2 of these guys didn't train at all for the race - they just showed up and decided to run! They didn't register for the race either, which is why their shirts are lacking numbers. And Nathan (in the green) finished ahead of everyone (unbelievable!) so around mile 13 he slowed up and tried to wait for the girls to finish, and a race official asked where his bib was, to which he replied that he lost it, and the official told him to get off the course! At mile 13! I would be so mad. Luckily he just jumped back in and was able to finish with everyone and even get a medal!

Ok, so back to before the race. As the runners headed to the starting line, I went to find my brother in law, Kevin. His wife, Kayla, was running the race, so he dropped her off, and I hitched a ride with him back to our friends Eddie and Emily's house, where we were able to walk a couple blocks to see the race at about the 5 mile mark. I was so excited when we saw our friends running by. They looked great!

And we even saw some Team Libby runners that we didn't know, but cheered for anyways!

And here is little Silas waiting for his mommy to run by. So stinkin cute!

After we saw our friends running we headed to the finish line. Unfortunately we couldn't figure out how to get to the actual finish line, and I'm not sure it was even possible, but we were able to see where all the runners came through the chute and we were able to congratulate them on their accomplishment. I have to admit, at 6 am, before the race, I was so glad I was watching and not running, but at the finish, as I saw everyone afterward, I definitely wished I had run it and it gave me the itch to run another one :) Here are the runners at the finish.

 Here's some of the runners with Libby

And here's me and Sarah. I was so proud of her!

After the race, we headed back to Eddie and Emily's house, where we had a post race lunch of Qdoba that some awesome person donated. The sun was out and the weather was beautiful, and we all sat outside and ate lunch and enjoyed the afternoon. There were super cute decorations and blankets in the back yard for picnic style lunch, and it was all real cute. Here is one last picture at lunch of all the runners and Libby.

After lunch some more hanging out we packed up the car and headed back to Lexington. We added a few friends for the ride back, which was lots of fun and a wonderful ending to a wonderful weekend.