Call me crazy, but I love to race. And by race I mean run at my slow pace and finish. I decided in about September that this half would be a perfect event to be working towards during the winter. I was right, it was great to work towards. My brother Chris was going to run it with me, but he partially tore his ACL so he was out. No big deal to me, I like running alone. I can run whatever pace I want at any time and not have to keep up with someone or slow down for them.
I hadn’t run a half in over 2 years so I didn’t know how I would do. I set a goal to finish in 2 hours and 24 minutes. I knew that was realistic. I had been running a lot, but only officially started to train 5 weeks before the race. I really like going on long races and getting ready for something like this.
So the weekend arrived. Bryan, the boys and I headed to sunny St. George. We stayed with our favorite Bingham’s. They are so fabulous and have a great place to stay. They have a few dogs with them and the boys LOVED following them around. They tried to bring one of them home with us. All Jacob wanted to do while we were there was sit at the bar and talk to Heidi, I don’t blame him. It was really cute. We love and miss them.
Well the morning of the race I woke up to see that it was raining pretty hard. I layered up (even though I was looking forward to running without layers!) and Bryan took me to the race. I debated back and forth about whether to wear my rain jacket or not. I finally kept it on and was glad I did.
It drizzled for the first 3 miles or so and then pretty much stopped. There were several rolling hills and I just kept trudging up them and tried to take advantage of the down hills. Luckily I learned from Whitney to lengthen my stride while running down and just let my body follow. I use to tense up on down hills, anyways that helped. When I hit the 6 mile mark I was right at 1 hour, which meant I was running 10 min. miles. Feeling good! There was one semi difficult hill, but I just kept at it. I hit the 10 mile mark at 1 hour 41 min. Still staying on track. About this point I started to lose steam and the rain started back up (I actually think we ran out of the rain system and then back into it). I didn’t look at my watch to see how I was doing because I didn’t want to get discouraged. I just kept on going and going. At one mile to go I cheered and the rain got harder and harder. As I neared the finish line I had so much water in my eyes I worried I would trip.
There is something about nearing the finish line of a half for me. I can’t breathe, not from exhaustion, but from emotion. My throat swells up, this mingled with rain pouring off my face made quite the sight. As soon as I saw Bryan and the boys I could breathe again and cheer. I crossed the line at 2 hours 14 minutes! I was so happy and proud of myself. That was a 10:15 min mile average. I was glad I hadn’t lost too much ground on those last few miles when I was run down.
Ah I get excited just thinking about it. Such a great time. I didn’t get to enjoy the finish line events because I was so wet and cold, and so was my family. I guess I better do another one soon!
The rest of the day was cool and rainy, but we still enjoyed our little get away. I made up for all the calories burned by eating lots of really good Mexican food and anything else I could get my hands on! We got to visit with James, Kristin and Annie on Sunday which was so fun.
Who would have ever though I would be a “runner”?
