Woo hoo! I’m officially a half-marathoner! I’ve come a long way in a year and a half. I didn’t think that I would ever be able to run a half marathon, but here I am: sore, tired, and happy. It was a great experience, and I already have four other halfs (yes, I’m making that a word) that I want to run (that I’ll tell you about later).
For now, let me tell you how it all went down.
After a night of light sleep, I woke up dark and early at 4:30 a.m. My sister-in-law was running the race too, so we both got ready, put on costumes (gotta love my TMNT costume!), ate (two pieces of toast and an apple cider for me), etc. and were out the door at about 5:30 and drove to the mall to catch the buses that would take us to the start. We didn’t have to really wait in line for the bus, so we hopped on, got settled, and chatted for the ride. We were told that there were too many cars and stuff up the canyon, so our bus driver overshot the start and had to turn around on a treacherous road. They let us out and made us walk (!) for like a quarter mile to the start tent. Now, our wave start wasn’t till 9:40, so we hung around for 2 hours in the tent. It was alright, I guess, since we got to people-watch and enjoy everyone’s costumes. If you run this race, make sure you have someone to talk to or something to do to pass the time because you’ll be waiting a long time . . . There wasn’t a line for the porta potties, so we were able to do our business. I brought a Zbar to munch on at about an hour till we took off. Another hour later, we were ready to start. Our wave was really small, which I liked. Then we were off!
The first three miles were awesomely downhill. I ran the first 5k about 10 minutes faster than I have ever run an official 5k before, so that was fun. So basically we flew down through the canyon. I felt like a rockstar. It was reeeeeally cold, and the steep downhill caused my pants to creep down a lot–nothing like a little plumber’s crack to make things exciting. (Sorry, people behind me!) I ended up pulling up my pants a lot. Moving on. The race continued on a gradual downhill, which was nice, then we hit about mile 6.5 or so, where there was a huge gradual hill–for like 1.25 miles. They had to move the start down the mountain due to some snow conditions, so they had to add the extra distance somewhere–why they chose a hill, I’ll never know. Well, it was a pretty logical choice, but still . . . I was able to see my sister-in-law going up the hill while I was running down. That was pretty fun.
Anyway, after the hill, we kept on a river trail, which was really pretty. I loved the fall colors. I ate a handful of gummy bears at mile 10, and started to slow down at like mile 11. The last mile was definitely the longest, and I think that the last .1 was measured wrong (It always seems that way . . .). I saw The Engineer (husband) as I finished, and the announcer called out my name, which was cool. We finished the race in a business park, where we got some water, bananas, oranges, and chips. I didn’t eat the oranges because they weren’t cut, and some were moldy (gross!). I got my medal and stuff, found The Engineer, and walked/hobbled around a little. Then we cheered my sister-in-law as she finished. It was overall a good experience. I have some beef with the organization/race itself (race review to come), but the course was pretty good, and now I can say that I did it! WOOOOO!
Official Chip Time: 2:22:57
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