Valentine's Day Celebration - 10k and a fancy dinner

I know, I know, bad blogger going 2 weeks without posting.  But I have 2 or 3 posts that I should get up today/tomorrow to make up for it!  First was from yesterday, Saturday.  On Friday we didn't celebrate Valentine's day, we just went to my parents' house for dinner.  Saturday brought the inaugural Savannah Hot Cocoa Half and 10k.  My boyfriend and I were both doing the 10k, and we had both gotten SavedbytheDeal deals for half off (at different times).

The weather going into it was decent - it was 50's and sunny but the WIND was absolutely killer!  It didn't make it cold, really, it was just so darn strong, and most of the race it seemed we were fighting against it.  Sometimes I couldn't even hear him because the wind was rushing by my ears so much.

The race itself was in a community about 15 minutes away from us.  It's not a gated community, but very nice.  Gorgeous houses - I love to go "house shopping" whenever we have races through neighborhoods.  It was an out and back course with the 10k turning around at 3.1, and the half continuing on to 6.5 before turning around.  Probably the only issue I have with the race itself was the water stops.  I didn't end up stopping at all - I was on a mission to PR which I'll talk about later - but they were inconveniently placed.  The course went out and about a third of a mile in you go through a little gazebo type thing, where a water stop was.  Then you go around a lake (pictured below), and back through the gazebo, just around mile 1.  In my opinion, this is far too early for a water stop.  If there was one at the turn around point, I probably would have used it, but we just hit the gazebo again around mile 5 when we went back through.  That, for me, is too late in the race.  I will say that the water station was very well stocked - fruit, water, Gatorade, and of course chocolate!  They had Snickers, Reese's, and a couple other kinds I didn't see.  I just wish they were placed a little better.

My boyfriend ran this race with me.  He knew he couldn't PR, since he just did at Tybee with a time of around 1:10 and change, and didn't want to race for time if he couldn't PR, so he stayed back with slow little me!  I, on the other hand, DID PR!  I was so so so excited!  I finished in 1:22:52, which is a PR of 3 minutes and 17 seconds.  I honestly feel like if the wind was nonexistent I could have broken 1:20, but I was so excited to PR, and by that much!  I did my 1:1 walk:run intervals, skipped the first walk like I always do, and skipped I believe a total of 3 run intervals, which is much less than I normally do.  

At the finish line there was hot chocolate, Girl Scout cookies, and chocolate fondue with many dippers - strawberries, grapes, marshmallows, pretzels, and more things I'm sure I'm forgetting.  They also had Hershey's Kisses, homemade cookies, and a few other little things.  I just had a cookie and a Kiss; I pushed hard during the race and my body wasn't quite ready for food yet.  We got our medals and mugs, and walked around for a few minutes after to cool down, then met a friend at Cracker Barrel for breakfast.

Another comment about the race - there was really no course support.  The volunteers at the water station were absolutely amazing, cheering for every runner.  They had a few volunteers here and there to keep you on course, and at the 10k turn around (I'm sure the half turn around as well), and they were cheering.  A few people were outside of their houses watching, but not really cheering.  It didn't really bother me, but I did notice the lack of it, but completely understood with it being a neighborhood race.  I knew one lady who was running the race, Tara.  She's such a wonderful person that I met through running, through rarely see and barely know, but when she passed me on her way back in while we were still going out, she cheered for us and yelled our names, which was sweet!  We also met a couple (and their cute little baby) who did Tower of Terror and are doing Glass Slipper Challenge next weekend!  Overall, it was a great race that I look forward to running again.

After having breakfast/lunch and getting all cleaned up, we hung around the apartment for a while, then got ready for our fancy dinner.  We went to the Melting Pot, as we always do for fancy occasions, and it was fabulous as always.  They even brought us a champagne toast at dessert, which was so sweet!  I won't go into too many details, but if you've never heard of it it's an absolutely amazing fondue place!

I can't stay fancy & classy for long!

Overall, it was a great Valentine's Day a day late.

What did you do to celebrate?
Lauren