Well, it is finished! I have officially completed my first half marathon. What an experience!
The Story:
Night before the race...I eat a good hearty dinner and retire to my bed early, 9:30 to be exact. I am a little nervous, but more excited than anything. I am sleeping like a baby until one of my babies wakes up sick! 1:30 am Vivy wakes up and never goes back to sleep. I had my alarm set for 4 am and didn't need it. I thought maybe it was a sign that I wasn't supposed to go the race. I ran that idea past Jon and he said, "Go get in the car!". We packed up our little PJ wearing VivyAnn and off we went!
Morning of the race...We arrived in Mapelton a little after 5 am. I picked up my number jumped on a bus and headed up the canyon with all of the other participants. We were dropped off and then walked about 3/4 mile to the start line. I thought for sure we would start the race with in a half an hour...I think it was more like an hour and half! Let me tell ya...it wasn't exactly warm up there in that early mornin' mountain air. I was freezing!!
Finally, they start the race. It wasn't at all what I thought it would be. There were so many people in such a narrow space. We all got a slow, weird start. It was ok though, it kinda felt good to weave through a bunch of people until I was running my own pace. The only thing that I think is weird is that the race only had one official time. So the time started at the sound of the gun, but I didn't actually cross the start line until a couple of minutes after the gun. So I kept track of my own time with my ipod. Not totally official, but hey what do you do.
Ok, so I am running. And running. And running. Then I pass the 10 mile mark. And... ya baby...I am feeling good and am on line to finish under two hours. (Oh ya, that was my goal. I didn't cared how far under two hours; it could have 1:59.59 and I would have been happy.) I ran all of mile 10 and crossed the 11 mile mark and...dun, dun, dun....my legs turned to lead weights. I couldn't tell if they were bending at the knee or if they were even attached to my butt! It was the craziest feeling! I must of looked like some kinda of granny hobblin' around. I think my pace slowed to a 10 and half minute mile and that was probably the high point of the whole mile!
I kept yelling at myself..."come on you can't crap out now!", "are you serious Mind, you are practically done and this is how you are going out!", "Move it you wimp!". But nothing worked, my legs were in the twilight zone! Mercifully, I passed the 12 mile marker and miraculously I got some feeling back in my legs and picked up the pace ever so slightly. I was back under a 10 minute mile, but probably not by much. I was able to run the last half of a mile at a good fast pace, but unfortunately it wasn't enough to make up for lost time. I crossed the finish line and my ipod read 2:00:31. I cried.
I am trying so hard to be proud of myself for finishing, but really I am mostly focusing on how close I was to achieving my goal. Bummer. Can you imagine how the Olympic athletes must feel when they miss their goals by one one-hundredth of a second! They have trained a life time and here I am crying when I have trained for 3 months. That helps me put things into perspective.
I said that I only wanted to do this once for an experience, but now I have left myself wanting. I will have to run another one and crush that 2 hour mark!
