My journey to 26.2, and 39.3 miles!: Lucky 13.1 1/2 marathon

I've never gone to bed dreading having to get up for a race the next morning. I've been nervous before, but that's not what I was feeling on Friday night before this race. I had the day off of work on Friday, and had such a lazy day. I did almost nothing all day, and it was so nice! Thinking about waking up to go run a 1/2 marathon the next morning was the last thing that I wanted to do. I wanted to sleep in another day, and relax again. Luckily I got out of bed when my alarm went off Saturday morning, and off to my 6th 1/2 marathon I went.


I got my new cute strappy tank in the mail Friday, so I did what I shouldn't have done and wore it for the race...

When I left for the race it was sprinkling some, and windy. Some pretty strong thunderstorms had come through the night before, and there was a fair amount of debris in the road from all the wind. The exit ramp I had to take for the race was partially blocked by a tree that had fallen by the side of the road. When I got to the race location it was still raining and windy. I was glad I grabbed my rain jacket before I left because the rain pelting against my face was not a good feeling. The rain was just leaving the area, so the race started about 5 minutes late which gave the rain time to stop before we started.

This race had a 5k option or the 1/2 marathon. I think there were only about 150 people running the 1/2 marathon. I wish there would have been a separate start for the 1/2 marathon and the 5k because I definitely started out too fast. It kind of turned out to be a blessing in disguise though. I've been really bad about doing my Galloway intervals during races, so when I started getting tired 2 miles into the race I started to run intervals. I got passed by a lot of people on my walk breaks, but I was okay with that because I kept reminding myself that this was a training run and not a race for me. Soon everyone settled into their pace and I didn't really have anyone right in front of me or behind me.

The scenery was nice. It reminded me a lot of the smaller 1/2 marathon I ran last month that I really enjoyed. One thing that bugged me about this race was that the road was open to traffic. I understand that 13 miles (or 6.5 since it was out and back) is an inconvenient amount of road to close for a couple hours, and there weren't that many cars on the road, but it just made me nervous. I wear headphones when I run, but I usually run on trails where I don't have to worry about cars. Another thing that bugged me were the roads we ran on. Some of the roads were in really bad condition, and the different terrain was hard on my feet.

There were a lot of big potholes that you had to either run off the road for, or run over to the other side of the road. This isn't the race's fault though since they have no control of the roads in the area.

The race went by fairly quickly considering how much I was not enjoying it at the start. I remembering thinking at mile 3 about how happy I was going to be when I finished in 10 miles, and then not long later I was done. I think it helped that I downloaded some new songs to listen to while I ran. Good music always gets me through my long runs!


This was about 9 miles in. Definitely not as hot as the last 1/2 a few weeks ago!

Hardly any other races to be seen...

The second half of the race I started passing a lot of people. I went back and forth with one girl who seemed like she might be close to my age group for about 1/2 a mile. After the last water stop I got a second wind and left her behind. There were a lot of people I passed that had nothing left to give. I was glad I'd started my intervals early because they helped me keep going until the end. I ended up finishing the race in 2:17:38, which is my second best time to date.