Half

5/12/12


I ran my first half marathon in Indianapolis last weekend. It was 95% humidity and bout 84 degrees. Awesome.

Plus, I had not trained properly. I had been running about 6-7 miles twice a week until Robin, my running partner, left for a month to Finland. Then, I honestly ran about twice. Ugh. Not exactly a training schedule. Running 9 miles ONCE doesn't really prepare your body to race 13. Whoopsa.

I felt amazingly awesome until mile 8, then absolutely hit a wall at 11. I had to make a million bargains with myself not to walk during the last mile. But I didn't, and I ended up with a time that I'm really proud of: 1:54:23, which is an 8:42 pace. Not bad for an ill-prepared first timer right?

Here I am crossing the Indy race track finish line.
We ran thru downtown Indy to the race track. The best thing about the whole race is that I seeded myself slower than my pace, which meant that I was passing people the whole time. Horrible, but that always does wonders for my race-self esteem. The other great thing was the amount of small bands along the course. Little kids belting out AC/DC and Van Halen is a great motivator.

I'm not sure I will do another half anytime soon. It was fun, but at mile 9 I just kept thinking: "Why the heck am I doing this?" I didn't have an answer. Surely, it wasn't for the awesome photos. Yeah, check these out. I look like death! (p.s. the HOHA shirt is from my old running club, the Hoboken Harriers.)


Big Congrats to my sister Heather and Nephew Dean who both kicked butt in their first 5ks and my Brother-In-Law Ken who braved some bad seeding to get a great time on his first half!

So if you like to run halfs, why do you do it? I may need some motivation to not just return to 10ks.





4 comments:

  1. Good job!

    I ran a half once also. It was last year with my step dad who is insane and loves them (he keeps trying to convince me to do another). I had the same experience: hitting the wall at 8. And the only reason I wasn't walking was because I had my step dad next to me, otherwise I may have wandered off to find food.

    Now, I have lots of fun doing 5k's. Chris ran track and x country in high school and has become my coach. I have SO MUCH FUN doing that short distance and have gotten a lot faster with Chris' training. I still do 6 mile runs for training 1-4 times a month, so I feel like I have great endurance, but I get a lot more fulfillment from the 5k. I may do a 10k here or there or another relay (because those are amazingly fun), but I feel like the half just wrecks my body.

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  2. wow that pace is impressive!! congrats on your first half!

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  3. Thanks Katie!

    I'm with you Meryl. I was sore for 3 days!

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  4. I can never come up with an answer as to why I enter runs, so I just won't do them anymore unless there is free beer at the end. HA!

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