I am a half-marathon funner!

I say funner because when I was chatting with Carly online I said I liked to fun instead of run and we were so tired that this was highly amusing. Duluth half-marathon, June 18, 2011. I did it! So I missed a little more than 6 weeks of training due to my hip so I only had 8 weeks under my belt and my longest run ever was 6 miles and I just did that a week before the race. I figured I would give it a shot and if I couldn’t maintain pace I would just get on the bus (they come around and “sweep” up runners who aren’t maintaining time.) I was feeling ok but hesitant about running the race anyway with my missing so much training time, and then on Thursday night I got a stomach virus and by 6 am I yacked. Slept until noon and figured that was it for my hopes of running the race. Drank lots of fluids and felt pretty much back to normal by the evening so decided I would still do the race the next morning. As we are going to bed Friday night Brandon says he doesn’t feel well and when we wake up at 3:30 he is still not feeling great but plans to go to the race with me and get the kids up. I told him to just stay home because the last thing he wanted was to get sick out in that crowd when he had 3 little kids with him and nobody to help. My grandparents couldn’t go to the race either because they would have had to park too far away and can’t walk that far. Grandpa’s max these days is about 200 yards and his legs hurt for the rest of the day. So I went off by myself to the race and was kind of sad but figured even if they came to watch me they would only have seen me for a brief moment as I ran by.

The drive from my grandparent’s house to the shuttle bus that took me to the starting line was about a 40 minute drive. It is pretty yucky out at this point, cold drizzle and I had to keep my eyes peeled because there are deer everywhere up there. The bus takes us to the starting line and we have about 50 minutes until the race starts and it is now pouring rain and in the high 40’s. I’m thinking to myself that I am a genius for actually paying them money in the form of an entry fee for this privilege. No shelter, we are all getting rained on. Lots of moaning and groaning. There are about 6,000 people at the race and truly I could barely move at the starting line let alone stretch out. We were all mashed together, if someone fell I know they would be trampled. The guy behind me says “I have to go the bathroom!” and his buddy says “just go man, no one will even know” to which I reply “I would know, please don’t” and everyone got a good chuckle. The gun goes off and three minutes later I finally cross the starting line and everyone starts to spread out a bit. The rain actually stops and it is now nice running weather. I decided that based on my training runs I would likely finish the race in 2 hours 30 minutes so I found the pace setter for that time and tried to settle in. By about mile 5 I realized I was making myself miserable trying to keep up with the pace setter and decided to just run my own pace and from that point on I was much happier. I also have gone from freezing to roasting and have to take my light coat off and tie it around my waist. Lots of people just ditched theirs on the path which surprised me. The path of the race was beautiful along the north shore of Lake Superior and then the historic homes on London Road, downtown Duluth which is old but has lots of character and ending at Canal Park. I was doing pretty well until about mile 9 and my feet were killing me. Surprisingly before the race I was most concerned about my hip and whether I could hack it in terms of conditioning and leg strength, but it was my dang feet that caused me the most trouble. I realized pretty quick that they hurt just as bad when I walked as when I ran so I decided I might as well keep running. About mile 9 some guy yelled “Almost there!” which ticked me off because when you have 4 miles left you are NOT almost there. There were some really cute signs along the way such as “they are almost out of beer at the finish line so you better hurry up” and “Chuck Norris never ran a marathon” I must have been busy checking out the scenery because I kept missing the mile marker signs so was relying on my Nike shoe sensor to tell me where I was. It said I was at about 12.5 miles when I saw the mile 12 marker and I was devastated! This is about the point that the pace setter for the 2 hour 45 minute pace group passes me and I am horrified that I am 15 minutes behind my goal. When I finished the race I expected some big fan fare but there really wasn’t any, probably because I was at the end of the pack! The biggest insult was when I discovered I would have to walk about a mile to the loading zone for the buses to take me back to my car. I am still pretty sore but am glad I did the race. Gives me confidence that I can do the Twin Cities marathon in October but I have to make sure I keep with the training and stay injury free. They sweep at 6 hours and I finished the half in 2:46:09 so that might be cutting it kind of close. Here is the page with my official results. You can even see a video of me crossing the finish line! I am proud of myself for finishing considering an injury and a stomach bug!

http://www.mtecresults.com/runner/show?rid=10073&race=356