It appears I may have communicated about my first half-marathon with a bit more negativism in my previous post than I intended… The pain made me do it! The pain made me do it!
I had so much fun. SO much fun! My 2 favorite memories:
1) Discovering at the half-way point we had maintained a skintight-less-than-10-minute-mile average up to that point.
2) That moment just before the finish when I told Katie I felt like crying, and she nodded… That moment.
C) Seeing our guys, with the kids, in the rain, waiting at the entrance of the finish.
D) Trash bags – to keep us a bit drier.
5) Cones and mile markers – the cones in the road proved to be a bright distraction… True, there was lots of beautiful scenery to look at, bit the cones ended up being my main focal point. The mile markers kept us motivated as we realized we were keeping up a great pace.
6) Space blankets… who knew something so not-fuzzy could be so warming!
7) We caught the ferry we needed, and had no problem with parking downtown. That’s big.
H) Passing people. More specifically – passing runners that looked runner-like. Oh, yeah, that was a good feeling for sure.
Enough of the positivism! I’m probably gonna lose 2 toenails. It seems my little friend Katie hasn’t been feeling quite as sore as I. I have a theory though… she is at least 1-2 inches taller than me. It is apparent my body had to work much harder to keep up with her. Obviously, with such a dramatic height difference, I had to take 2 strides for every one of hers. Obviously 🙂
The Stats:
- 2048/3468 (women’s half division)
- 384/625 (age group)
- 2:18:42 (chip time – when I actually crossed the mats)
- 2:22:09 (official time – from the horn)
- 1:08:39 (halfway split – official time)
- one lost toenail
It took us about 3 minutes to make it to the “start” timing mat after the the horn. It was packed!
