Rock N Roll Virginia Beach - Friday & Saturday

As I work my way toward my full marathon goal in November I decided to complete a few half marathons along the way to help prepare me. I wanted to treat these as training runs and not worry about times to much. I decided on doing Virginia Beach as I had heard it's a great race. This race turned out to be an amazing weekend.

It was the Labor Day weekend, my birthday weekend and my first half marathon. What could be better right? Well I got invited to stay at my friend Donna's house AND my friend Jane flew in from Texas to run with me! We ran both our first half marathons together. What a blast.

The weekend started with a visit to the race expo on Friday at the VB Convention Center. There were lots of give-a-ways and vendors. $50. VB Half Marathon Tech shirts ... no thanks. I'll appreciate the one that came with my registration :)

We walked around and tasted a few sports nutrition products and took some fun pictures at the mock finish line. I wish I ended with the time on that clock of 2:03 :) More on my finish time later.

Donna bought The Stick
since she had tried mine at the house earlier. I love that thing for warming up the muscles before a run and for working the lactic acid around after.

The energy drink on the course was Cytomox and they had samples of that available. It's a bit sweet to me full strength.

After the expo we went to the beach for a little bit to check things out. The weather was just amazing. People had warned me this race is normally pretty hot and humid. Well this weather was in the 80's and not to humid. I was loving it!

We left the beach and did a few errands. I picked up a Virginia is for runners shirt I had seen someone at the Expo wearing at the Running Etc. store and hit Trader Joe's.

Donna and her husband Randy were great hosts. We ended up going home and having a relaxing dinner and a chocolate cake for my birthday. Thanks guys!

Saturday we planned on going parasailing but the company never called us back to book the time. After a morning warm up run and a great breakfast including BACON :) we decided to take a flight down to the Wright Museum in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Randy and Donna have a 6 seat Cherokee plane and Randy our pilot flew us to First Flight Airport. What a nice day. Jane was a little worried about being in a small plane but she did just fine. I've been in small 4 seat Pipers before so no problems here.

Smooth take off and landings ... thanks Randy! While on the ground the monument for the Wright Brothers had a quote on it that really hit home for Jane and I. It summed up our feeling about getting to our goal of running a half marathon. "Achieved by dauntless resolution and unconquerable faith"

We walked around and saw the spot where the first attempts at flight took place. There were stone monuments marking each distance they were able to achieve. We visited the museum briefly and made our way back out to the air strip to take off again for Virginia Beach.

After getting back to the house we got ready and head out to the beach to check the race area out and have dinner. We decided on a Greek restaurant that looked good and was right on the beach. We ate outside and the weather was gorgeous. As we sat there we saw a bunch of people parasailing. We took a picture and said we would label it "Not Us" Donna had a shrimp dish. I had a gyro platter and Jane the gyro sandwich. Nice balance of carbs and protein. We also had some hummus. YUM! After we hit a custard stand and enjoyed some desert before heading home to get some rest for race day! Stay tuned for my race report up next. Cheers! Tom