Lincoln Presidental Half Marathon

Jim & I ran a half marathon early in April.  We were able to make this experience extra fun.  For starters it was the first time Jim & I had been away from the kids in over 6 years.  Yeah, baby....bow-chica-wow-wow.  So we had fun taking off on our little road trip.  The race was in Springfield, IL so about a 3 hour trip.  We stayed at the Hilton and had a room up on the 16th floor.  It had such a nice view overlooking the area.  We had supper at the Olive Garden, shopped at Dick's Sporting Goods & then loaded up on Ben & Jerry's from Walgreens while lounging in our room that night.  Now ideally, that is not good pre-race eating.  We really wanted to enjoy our time so we just didn't care.

Per usual, especially with first time races, I had my camera along to make a picture diary of our race.  (Although, who am I kidding, I just always have my camera with me).  Here we are waiting for the race to start:

Here we are just a little under a mile into the race.  The house you see in the background is the Lincoln home.  The actual house that former President Lincoln lived in when he resided in Springfield.  It's neat to run right past history!  Later we also ran past Lincoln's tombstone & burial plot.

You can see our shadows as we run up to the Illinois state capital building.  Another historic building.  It was on these steps that Representative Lincoln gave his House Divided speech upon accepting the Republican nomination for President.

Here we are at the half way point.  I am detecting a massive difference in my my demeanor vs. Jim's.  Just noting that he looks like he's about to die and I'm super psyched and ready for more.

We did finish though. Side by side.  We can now say that we did this together.  Look at the neat medal we got. It's a big penny!

Afterward they had President Lincoln & his wife Mary Todd there to post for picture.  This Mr. Lincoln was very funny, hence my laugh in the picture.

I'm glad that Jim & I had the chance to do this together.  What great memories we will have to put in the Peterson history book.  Next we are looking forward to running a marathon together.