Two Months Until 13.1

I can't believe that my first half-marathon is only two months away!  Actually, less than two months - it's on December 12th.  I'll be running in the Kiawah Island Half-Marathon.  Kiawah is on the South Carolina coast, not too far from Charleston.  I'm so excited for this to be my first 1/2, because Kiawah holds a special place in my heart.  My mom's side of the family has been going to Kiawah every Thanksgiving for over 20 years and it is a vacation that I look forward to each year.  Kiawah is one of my most favorite places in the world.  Kiawah has been named one of the top 10 beaches in the United States...see how pretty it is??

I've signed up to run the race with 8 friends, and we've all been training for the past couple of months.  We're going to rent a big house for the long weekend, and I'm really looking forward to it.  As far as the training, my weekly long runs are currently up to 9 miles (I'll be tackling either 9.5 or 10 this Saturday), so I think I should be able to get up to 13 by December.  It blows my mind that I can even run nine miles.  A year ago, I would have struggled with two.

One very cool thing is that I will actually be at Kiawah (for Thanksgiving) two weeks before the race.  My training schedule has my long run that week at 12 miles (and then the final week before the race is a taper week, so the longest run is 5 miles).  This means that I can do a trial run of the course!  I think that running 12 miles of the course beforehand will really help me on race day because I'll know a) what to expect, and b) that I've done it (or most of it) before!

Any runners out there have tips for the big day?