shark bite half marathon | The Gilbertson Family

Back in January, I ran my first half marathon of 2019, the Shark Bite half marathon in New Smyrna Beach. Fun fact: New Smyrna Beach is the shark attack capital of the world… hence the race name.

This was my first time running this race. The best part about it was my dear friend from college, Kelly, was in town so we ran it together!

The morning started out a bit chilly (remember: January), so I had on a long sleeve shirt. I did not think, however, that we’d be picking up our race packet that morning and the race didn’t have a gear check. Therefore, I started the race wearing a tank, t-shirt, and a long sleeve shirt. Needless to say, the long sleeve shirt was stripped off very quickly once I warmed up.

We ran a solid 11 miles, then opted to do more walking for the last two miles. Overall, it was a fun race. Mostly because of the company. I loved getting to run and chat for 2+ hours with Kelly!

After the race, we got our beers and our pint glasses and walked along the beach. It almost felt colder with the wind coming off the water after the race, so it was a short lived beach walk.

Hands down, this was the largest medal I’ve ever run for!

Thanks for a good run, NSB!

I have been slacking on my blog posts in the last couple of months, so here is a quick (or, not so quick) recap of what we’ve been up to this month.

We kicked off the new year with the Fiesta Bowl! Unfortunately, the Knights started the new year with their first loss in a long time. We hoped for a better outcome but celebrated a great season and winning streak.

Christmas break ended and we resumed our regularly scheduled programming. Meemaw had to go home, and we headed back to Disney for the first time in a over a month.

Kenley played indoor soccer every Sunday in January and wrapped up her season this past weekend. She had a great time playing and it was exciting to watch.

We celebrated Tracy’s birthday with a chilly run and surprised her to cheer her on at the Disney half marathon over the weekend.

We had one brewery stop this month at Orlando Brewing.

We had several chilly runs this month, which was amazing!

We celebrated at four different birthday parties this month, two of which were at Double Down! Kenley got to go to Drive Shack and I am now realizing we need to get clubs in her hands more often.

Kelly was in town for work, so we got to hang out and run the Shark Bite half marathon together! I’ll share more pictures from the race soon.

We had a great family day at Epcot and enjoyed the winter weather.

The kids celebrated the 100th day of school! Crosby made a necklace out of 100 different Legos and Kenley dressed up as a 100 year old grandma… a stylish one, I may add.

Kenley and I joined some other girlfriends to run the Lady Track Shack 5k. She did awesome! I’ll definitely share more pictures from the race soon.

Greg headed up to North Carolina to see Mango and go to the Metallica concert this week. They had a great time!

We ended the month with the flu taking down Kenley. She’s on the mend now, but she missed four days of school! I did a lot of purging of a lot of things in the house while we were home on those sick days. It feels great to start the year off with less stuff laying around.

I hope to resume normal blog posts soon! I also have a bit more catching up to do, so stay tuned.