Virginia Half Marathon in Middleburg, Virginia

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Beautiful rural Virginia!

My friend Elana and I had a particularly strong winter training cycle, she was preparing for the New York City Half Marathon. We were feeling well-prepared, but I did not have a half marathon on the calendar. I was itching to put my training and hard work to good use. Nolan gets the credit for discovering this Virginia race for me. The timing was perfect, the drive was reasonable, about four hours, and it just all seemed to fall into place perfectly!

I enjoyed listening to my audiobook (The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop) on the way down (and  during the race a little bit, too...) and I also enjoyed stretching out in the king-sized bed at the La Quinta Inn in Winchester, Virginia. 


Driving to the race = I could bring my freeze sleeves for my knees!



Love the motivational key card, thanks La Quinta!


This was a smaller race. Packet pick-up was tricky. I had to find a running store in a shopping area that was a out of the way and parking was difficult. In retrospect, I should have just opted for race-day packet pick-up, but I generally prefer to have my bib ahead of time so it's one less thing to worry about on race morning. Oh well. The shirt isn't very exciting, a white technical short-sleeve. I probably will not wear it, but I will hang on to it in case I decide to make a quilt with my 50 States race shirts.

Race morning, I gave myself plenty of time to drive deep into rural Virginia. Parking was easy enough, and it looked like a lot of people were picking their packets up on race morning. I walked over to the start/finish area, and an enthusiastic announcer was hyping up the crowd. It was a very interesting (and new to me) race design with several distances all running at the same time. A 5K, 10K, half, Merikos 3/4, and full marathon all utilized the same initial and final stretch, with different cloverleaf style loops making up the middle distance. It meant there were always people running some leg of their race nearby, which was nice!


Whoa hills!


I could have used hiking poles!



It was incredibly beautiful


I loved running by the horse farms







I felt confident I would finish, despite the crazy hills

 

It was a smaller race, but well-run with great crowd support




I had just started thinking about trying to run in all 50 States. I spent most of this race near two 50 State Half Marathon Club members (shout out to Jayvee and Sarita) who were sporting club shirts and chatting about their race plans. It really motivated me to keep going and I decided to officially join the club!






Three down, let's do this!



Virginia complete! State #3, Half #8

Date: 3/23/2025
Bib: 2830
Time: 3:23:22
Pace: 15:32

Next up is the Maryland Half in Fulton, Maryland!



Location: Middleburg, VA

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