Time for a recap of half marathon 2!
On Friday (September 17), I found out that I get out of work at 3 through the end of October (I know!) so I headed to the race expo right after work. It was a huge expo but I just buzzed through it because I do NOT need to spend anymore money on running gear. I picked up my bib number, shoe tag, and tech tee and headed home.
Count down!
Saturday night I went to bed relatively early and I ended up waking up at 12:30 thinking it was morning and jumped out of bed. When I realized I still had 5 more hours til I had to get up I went back to sleep. At 5:30 I got up for real and got ready for the race!
Mom and Vic were troopers and woke up early too to drive me downtown to the race. I was the first person in my corral and I had an hour to kill before the race started. I ended up chatting with a few different people about trail running and other races. One woman had on Vibram Fivefingers and I talked to her about those (turns out they would most likely amplify my running injuries, so no barefoot running for me).
Five fingers
Eventually it was time to start! It was 8:00 and we were still standing completely still in our corral. 10 minutes later we started moving slowly. I crossed the start line around 8:20! Then we were off!
I started out at a comfortable pace and at a little under a mile I approached the Comcast Center where I spotted Mom and Vic!
I was too fast though and they only caught a picture of my back ha
I continued on, feeling good and passed the first water station right in front of my office building! We raced through the city and it was pretty fun to see all the places I am familiar with. Before I knew it I was hitting mile 5 and I was on Kelly Drive. A little after the 10k mark Mom and Vic were waiting for me again. They ran alongside me for about a tenth of a mile or so. All the pictures came out really blurry, the best shot they got was of me running away again.
Running away at mile 6.5
I was feeling great until mile 9, when I started to feel burnt out and I could tell my IT bands weren’t too happy with me. For the last 4 miles I struggled a bit and took some walking breaks when I needed them. At one point right around mile 9 I saw a couple maintaining a slow but steady pace and I kept my eye on them for the rest of the race, if they started to get too far away I would pick up my pace. If I passed them I knew it was okay to take a little walking break.
At the 20k mark I knew I would beat the time of the first half even if I walked, so I let myself just do what was comfortable. I could have pushed harder, but maybe that’s what half marathon number 3 will be for!
Then, I crossed the finish line! My Garmin said that I only ran 12.77 miles, but I know that it’s not always quite accurate. So my mile splits aren’t exact, but I figured I’d share them anyway. So here are the splits based on 12.77 miles:
| Mile 1: |
10:22 |
| Mile 2: |
10:17 |
| Mile 3: |
10:35 |
| Mile 4: |
10:35 |
| Mile 5: |
10:38 |
| Mile 6: |
10:52 |
| Mile 7: |
11:07 |
| Mile 8: |
11:02 |
| Mile 9: |
12:22 |
| Mile 10: |
11:19 |
| Mile 11: |
12:18 |
| Mile 12: |
11:58 |
| 0.77 |
8:29 |
My official time for the half marathon was 2:21:46. I finished seconds behind the couple I was pacing with and I went up to them to thank them. Then I got my finishers medal and then found Vic, Mom, Mommom, and John. We took some pictures, which is a good thing because the official race pictures sucked. They were all aerial, so I just look like a speck!
Yay!
Vic, Mom, and Me
Sisters
❤
In front of the art museum
After, we quickly went home so I could shower and then went out to a celebratory lunch. Then I went over to a running store to get some fresh sneakers since mine were quite worn in. I got the same ones I had before, just the updated version so they are orange now. I’m going to take them for a test run tomorrow!
Overall, a very fun race!
–Melissa
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