5.04.2010

Second Half - DONE


Lauren and I at the start of the race!

I am happy to report that on Saturday, May 1, I ran my second half-marathon. As mentioned in my previous post, I knew it wasn't going to be super speedy, but I was hoping to shave a few seconds off my first half's time. Ummmm, not the case. Here's why:

1) I fell off the training wagon the two weeks prior to the race. In the 14 days leading up to the race, I did no cross training and ran a total of 7 miles.

2) When Lauren arrived at the airport on Friday afternoon, the first place we went was Fleet Feet Sports to pick up our race packets. The second place we hit was....the bar. Three beers later we were back home to carb up on a wonderful meal made by my dear husband. Oh, and we had two glasses of wine with dinner. Can we say, "Race Day Hangover?" (don't worry, we got plenty of water/gatorade in our systems before we ran - and the water stations were great on the course)

3) For the first 3 miles, the temps were about 70 degrees with 80% humidity. I haven't run in temps that warm or air so damp in months. I was considering following the 5K crowd at the 1.25 mile split on the course. At mile 3, the heavens opened up....and it started to rain. The rain didn't stop until about 2pm. We finished the race at 10:30am. Yeah, we got drenched.

Summary:
Final time: 2:36:06 (about 5 minutes and change slower than last year). I'm guessing that each drink the night before added on about a minute to my PR. Then add on an extra few seconds for the rain. BUT - I had an amazing time hanging out with my bestest buddy and crossing the finish line with her yet again. I'd run with Lauren - even with a hangover for 13.1 miles - any day. Well, give me some notice actually - damn, 13.1 miles is a long way to go on your feet! And huge thanks to Lauren for just enjoying the day and my needed walk breaks.

Race route was beautiful. Lots of spectators and we got to see a lot of Columbus. Great people all around. Would have liked to have had one more "fuel" station providing Gu or power beans or something.

LOVE the race shirt. Great fit, and it did an amazing job in the rain. No chafing at all from the shirt. Now, my race capris? Yeah, we won't talk about the chafing that happened there...

LOVE the fact that our names were on our race bibs. So very cool.

LOVE the finishers medal. I am almost more impressed with the super cool ribbon that comes with the medal. Absolutely beautiful.

What's next?

I'm taking a short running break. I am going to continue to eat crappy stuff the rest of this week - pizza last night and obscene amounts of Mexican food leftovers this evening. Then I'll get back on the wagon. There's a couple of 10Ks I would like to do this summer, and I believe Granville has a 4 mile run July 4th weekend - and my Mom will be visiting from Texas that weekend. She's never seen me race (and actually only has memories of my running habits revolving around punishment after tennis practice junior year of high school).

Great experience. And I think we get serious runner points for completing more than 75% of a half marathon in the rain. That counts for something!

Our super cool finisher's medal!

5 comments:

Tracy said...

Congratulations on the awesome job on the half! Given the conditions, you totally rocked it.

I don't think I knew that you were in Granville. One of my bff's lives there (she taught at Denison for a year, although she's moving in August).

M said...

Thanks, T!! What a small world! My hubby is on the Denison faculty, so we will be here for a while. What's your friend's name? It's a small enough place we may have crossed paths!

Unknown said...

I would be happy to run with you ANY day :-) Thank you again for sharing your new home with me and for giving me an awesome weekend. I love you and miss you! You're my bestest best furnning buddy and BFF in the world! BIG HUG!

M said...

T - I don't think I have met your buddy! Sad she's leaving this summer though. I've been pretty impressed with Granville and Columbus - if we could have a bit less snowy winter, I would be 100% sold!

L-bomb - love you, too, dear!

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