Monday, October 8, 2012

Spirit of Survival Half Marathon Race Recap

I did it! I finished my first half marathon! My time was 2:36:45, which blew out both my official goal of <3:15 and my secret probably-not-attainable goal of 2:45. I'm fairly sore today, but I'll be ok.

Earlier last week, the weather reports all said that the temp when the race started would be around 45F, which I could probably handle since you're supposed to dress like it's 20 degrees warmer. However, as we got further into the week, it became clear that the temp was more likely to be in the upper 30s (correct-it was 38F at the start). I wasn't really worried about running 13.1 miles, but my nervousness manifested in a freakout about my clothes. I had my clothes planned out for the past 2 months, and I've done all of my long runs in them. I wanted to wear an underarmour tank and compression shorts. That won't work for 38F, so I wore some compression capris, my underarmour tank, and my running jacket. I added some cute gloves and an ear warmer and I survived.



Here are the tech shirt and my bib number. I find it very ironic that my number for this race was 17, and my number for my first race (the redbud classic) was 717.



We were freezing to death before the race. I'm pretty sure I was about 10x colder than Gnome was.


The race itself was fairly smooth. Either my mymyrun's GPS was off, or the mile markers were off. My app would yell at me about .1 miles or so before I passed each mile marker. I took my water bottle with me so I could use the pouch to hold extra sport beans (cherry and grape). I drank water until about 4 miles or so, and then I started drinking gatorade at every other water stop. I refilled my water bottle at the other stops. I went through 2.5 of the 4 sport bean pouches I brought with me (both cherries and 1/2 of a grape). I managed to not stop for the portapotties, although I don't think I'll be able to avoid it when I run a marathon. I was not able to run the entire race, but I didn't walk as much as I thought I would need to either. The turnaround point is at the top of a hill, and it was a bit rough getting up there. The rest of the course had gradual hills, and part of it was flat (mostly the part on the city streets). There was a tiny hill at the end of the race, which I thought was a bit cruel, but I ran it anyway.

Here I am, about 50 feet from the finish line:


And now I'm finishing:


My app says that I actually ran 13.59 miles, although I did forget to turn it off for a few mins in the confusion after I finished. It was like my brain completely shut off in the excitement of finishing. Also, my legs decided that they were going to cramp up if I stopped moving, so I had to keep walking. At one point I was walking circles around Liz and Katie because I just couldn't stand still.

We took our obligatory photo with our medals and went back to the hotel. Liz refused to get in a pic with us, unfortunately.


Stats:
13.1 miles
2:36:45
12:01 pace
165/233 females
24/33 in 25-29 females

Other stats:
Mapmyrun says I ran 13.59, with an 11:37 pace. I'll go with the official stats for this, but I like the MMR stats better :)

Training for this race was sort of difficult, since I initially pulled my hamstring on the Tuesday before training started, and then re-injured it in week 8. I ran about half of the mileage that I should have (108.74 of the 177.4-204.4 scheduled). I only ran the mileage that I was supposed to for 4 of the 12 weeks. But I'm proud of my effort, and I've learned some things about injury management, listening to my body, and differentiating between regular pain and injury pain.

I have finished this:


Now I'm starting this:


139 days until the Cowtown Marathon in Ft. Worth, TX, on Feb 24. It'll be the first marathon for both Liz and me. She started training 10 weeks ago, and I am jumping in at week 11.

**Note: the end of the half marks 252.77 miles on my shoes.**

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