There's a main highway cutting through Nag's Head parallel with the beach. It's pretty simple. It's a pretty busy highway (for this area). This is where all the strip malls and stores are. For the race they closed down one of the lanes for us runners.

Olga and I enjoyed this part of the race, because we had a few secret weapons. When we ran out of the nature preserve one of our friends was sitting on a bike waiting for us. It was really nice to have a fresh person to talk to. He also was pulling two kids in a little bike kiddy trailer. It was fun to run and try to talk and play with the kids.

Unfortunately the law put a stop to this fun. While we were running and biking down the road a cop pulled up to us and told our friend that he couldn't ride his bike in the runners lane. Stupid rule, but whatever. He rode with us another block or so, then turned off on a side street.

About a block after that we met up with his girlfriend (Olga's friend). She ran with us from mile 14 to the end. Again, it was nice to have a fresh person to talk with. I think she also helped us speed up for the last half of the race. It was a little hard on me, but I persevered. I didn't want to slow down Olga and Adrianna, and I wanted to try to push myself on this race.

This part of the race wasn't totally running on the highway. To get in all the miles, they had to snake the course through some of the neighborhoods next to the road. I like the idea of this, but it would have been a lot better if more of the people came out to cheer us on. It got very lonely in some places. My brother even said that there were places that he couldn't see anyone. Neither spectators nor other runners. That's just not right.