I live for action packed, adventure filled weekends and the weekend of the Covered Bridges Half Marathon was definitely one of them!

Sometime last year, after hearing a bunch of people raving about the race’s beautiful course and hearing “bridges” in the name (I have a weird passion for bridges) I decided I NEEDED to run it. The only thing was, it sells out in about 15 minutes. So I threw caution to the wind and actually signed up for a race in advance for once.. like REALLY in advance, so I had no idea what else my schedule would hold at the time.

Turned out, it was to be my boyfriend’s grandparent’s 50 wedding anniversary party the night before. A party that I was to help prep for the two days before hand (when I wasn’t at work), then help set up, then party at. Of course, it turned out SUPER FUN, but after helping make about a million chocolates for the dessert table, eating half of them, and dancing for hours I was pooped and beginning to question my decisions. I left at 9:30 to make the 3 hour drive to the campground I where I was staying. I couldn’t believe there was STILL traffic going through Boston 😒 and I ended up getting mildly lost trying to get gas in NH because their exit amenity signs are different than the ones I’ve evidently come to know and love here in Mass.

In the end I made it to the KOA campground I was staying at in one piece, but questioning my decisions further, at 1AM. I pulled up to the office and was somehow surprised it was closed.. yes it was 1 in the morning, but they had even had an “Extra Comments” section in registration for late arrivals that I had filled out so I was kind of stumped why they’d just leave me. I honestly debated just camping in the parking spot in front of the office for a few minutes until I finally notice a “Night Registration” sign off to the side. It was above a what looked to be a brightly colored bulletin board with only one paper posting a “Non-Emergency Number” on it. It seemed off, but I figured this isn’t an emergency after all so I gave it a shot. After clearly waking the poor woman up, the park ranger explained to me that the “bulletin board” was actually a box.. the night registration box.. which had my info.. so I didn’t have to go disturbing people 😅 She then proceeded to try and direct me to my site even though it was literally the first one at the entrance. I think she thought I was clueless at this point (which I guess I kind of was). I parked in my spot.. 20 feet from the office and attempted to Google Map to the start line so I could figure out how early I’d need to be up. Of course I didn’t have GPS signal so I just went with more than 20 minutes to spare since I thought I remembered it being about that far of a drive. Exhausted and kind of exasperated with how things were going I set my alarm for 5AM and laid down in the backseat of my car. That’s when I looked up to see the sky FULL of stars that I was going to be sleeping under. I immediately felt better and like this was all worth it again and passed out after a short star gaze 😊

I woke up before my alarm, feeling pretty good that morning. I remembered it being a pretty straight shot to the race start so I figured I’d just start driving and hope to find GPS and/or signs. Turned out I just needed to go to the entrance of the campground for GPS AND the race parking (I had looked up the start line before) was 4 minutes down the road! I ended up being the first person there who wasn’t a volunteer! After how hot it was the day before I wasn’t going to be caught dead without my hydration vest. But that was fine by me because then I had more real estate to stash all my other stuff.

I got in line for the shuttle and chatted with others as they gathered for the race. One was staying in a cabin in the KOA campground and told me the pool (that my site was directly across from) was heated (so that’s a fun note if you ever stay there). I arrived at the start with insane amounts of time (especially for me) before the race. I was pumped my Instagram friend Meriam found me and we spent the rest of the time taking a bunch of pictures with her phone because mine was dead from trying to find signal ❤️

We ran up the mountain for warmup 😜

We lined up across the entire road at the start, which wasn’t really surprising, but what was surprising was we were allowed the entire road for a good 3 miles! It was pretty cool to see such a large pack of runners take over the road for so long. The course started as nice country back roads, went though a cute little town at one point, then became all roads along one or more beautiful rivers! It wasn’t super hot but they were those wicked clear, kinda shallow rivers that look too perfect not to take a dip in so it was really hard to just run past them! There was a medium length and incline hill at mile 5, but tons of people cheering and only one other REALLY steep hill at mile 8. That one they had a full out marching band at the bottom of to pump you up to the top! The rest of the course was only tiny inclines and declines and the race FLEW by! I don’t really remember much else for racing details.

Already Captioned 😂😂😂😂

I could see it as a course you could definitely PR on. I think I’ll make a weekend of it (if I get in) next year, so I can explore the course by walking the day before and then go for speed during the actual race. Some other fun things about this course was they had clocks and live music about every 2 miles along with the water stops. The water stops were also generally really big, on both sides of the road, and manned by some adults, but also lots of adorable kids! It also turned out I hadn’t needed to shove everything I owned into my hydration vest since they shuttle your bags from the start to the finish (I’m just really good a reading instructions and hadn’t seen that 😅)!

I ended up taking my time and running 1:50:11. I will definitely be trying to get into this race again next year and would totally recommend you join as long as you don’t mind registering so far in advance! Even with a much less than optimal night before a race this race was 100% worth it!!

This past weekend I had the pleasure of running the Howling Wolf Half in Stoneham, Mass. The original plan was to take a break from races for the rest of my full marathon training cycle (after finishing all the halves I had signed up for before I even had any thoughts about a full), but that quickly went out the window when an old track bud asked if I’d want to do a race with her. I’m a sucker for halves to begin with, but I absolutely can’t turn down the chance to run with a friend. Also this one was at a zoo and gave free admission as race swag!!

When I woke up race morning it was 27 degrees 😱 I hardly ever feel cold and run extremely hot when running so I honestly had no idea how to dress to be comfortable while also not getting frost bite. I ended up packing pretty much every piece of warm running gear I own (which honestly isn’t all that much) in hopes it would suffice.

I was super happy to find out the swag they gave away at registration was a winter hat (or baseball cap) and gloves so I at least had a hat now if that ended up seeming like a necessity. I found my friend and we warmed up and caught up some before the race! I wasn’t planning to go crazy, but I think between the cold and our reunion we were too exited and went out at 7:25 and 7:14 for the first two miles 😅 Once I looked at my Garmin to realize this we turned it down a notch for the next couple of miles 7:52 and 7:47.

The course is made up of two loops. One big ~4.8 mile loop and a smaller ~3.4 mile one. You go once around the big one, then the small, then back around the big. As we passed the starting area after the first big loop at around mile 5 I got rid of my outer shirt (I had ended up deciding on two long sleeves), which I had been carrying for a good amount of time by this point. Soon as I did I felt like I was flying and took off for the next two miles at 7:35 and 7:07. It was honestly so amazing! It felt effortless!

Then suddenly right around mile 7 I stopped being able to breathe. It was so weird and I don’t think it was the cold because I’ve run in it plenty and never had anything like this happen to me before. It felt like I was taking deep breaths but there was no air to actually breathe in. My breathing became super rattly and I probably sounded like I was having an asthma attack, but I tried to push through. It was also up a nice large hill so that was extra fun. I managed an 8:03 so I was happy.

My breathing went back to normal as suddenly and seeming randomly as it had stopped. I felt infinitely better, thought I wasn’t getting my effortless flow back and definitely felt the effort of running again. The next few miles were slightly more difficult just because I had to get out of the funk my lack of breathing had caused. It also didn’t help that this segment was rolling hills that I normally would have loved. Instead, I got to think about how I should like them while they slowly killed me. 💀 7:39, 7:49, 7:34, 7:45.

At mile 12 the air disappeared on me again. It was a bit less intense this time (Possibly just because it had happened before so I was less shocked and knew it would go away..?) and I was able to stay at 7:55.

I was super grateful I gained my breath back for the last mile and there were no more hills to climb. I was able to stay at 7:14 and “sprint” the last 0.1 at 5:56!

My final time was 1:39:38 for a six second PR! I also placed 1st in my age group and 10th female overall!! My friend also PRed by over a minute and got 3rd in age group!

We finished the day by checking out the zoo! 🐆🦓🦒🐻

Nice and warm in my awesome new hat!!