That Was More Like It!!

Ok, today was my 2010 inaugural half marathon (13.1 miles for you slow people). With the birth of my daughter 2 months ago, I have been doing not much of any running. This is fine, I've come to the conclusion that 2010 is NOT going to be a "racing" year for me. I just dont have the time to dedicate to full fledged training. Even for the past week, DW was on call and I got 1 run in for the entire week... a mere 10 miles!! Yeah, big time slacker I know... Last night I did just some real slow stationary bike stuff, in hopes of loosening things up for today. Hit the sack close to midnight!

The morning of, I commit the cardinal sin... I put on my new pair of running shoes that I have not tried out on a practice run. But they matched my uniform (not outfit, thats for girls) perfectly! Had to get up 5am and load the kids in the car and rush them to my parents house to babysit, since we had no sitter, in PJ's stinky breath and all! So headin out around 615 for the run which starts at 730. All goes well until like 2 miles from the event, there is an accident, so I had to detour around and luckily found a place to park 1/2 mile from start. I barely got the spot as the cops were blocking off the roads. So now its 715 and I'm jogging to the start. I had a large cup of coffee and HAD TO GO!! The nasty filthy port-o-johns had a line a mile long... so to the bushes I go!! I quickly put on my bib and my chip on my "untested" shoes. They start the Star Spangled Banner and I'm still not prepared totally to run. I strip down to my running gear and jump (take cuts) near the mid-front. Low and behold, I forgot my Ipod AGAIN!! Not this time... I jumped out of line ran and got it from my bag then siren goes off! Made sure all was perfect, then I cut back in line since it too 2 minutes for the line to pass the starting mat... so I'm off... without my gloves, LOL.

As usual, I do the Bob-N-Weave for the first like half mile. Why do people walk after just half a mile and its a 13.1 mile run?? So the intro to my Ipod Run Mix ends, so I know I'm near the half mile mark, and I'm at 6:30 pace. Once again, I have to reel it in and slow down. The adrenaline gets me everytime. My goal was to keep it even paced for the entire run. It has been a while since I "raced", I didnt know how to gauge my pace. But I shook the rust off pretty nicely if I say so myself. The first miles went by without a glitch, and the shoes were feeling GOOD. Mile 5 I'm at 35 minutes flat, OK, i'm doing good.

It was an "out and back", so at the turnaround, I hit a real bad patch. Mile 8-10 was tuff!! This is where I wanted to quit. I thought "Man, I wish this was a 10 mile race"!! I always get this way at this location. Plus I dont care much for running on HINES DRIVE because it is so open and the headwind coming back was taking its toll. I hit mile 10 around 1:10:51. So I'm thinking, "hmm... I can run a personal best here... I KNOW I can run a 25 minute last 5k". But lo and behold, after mile 10, we merge with the tail end of the 10k "runners" (walkers). We had to run thru a park on a trail that was 2 or 3 people wide MAX. This slowed me down considerably. Yelling "To your left!!" became irritating!! We had a couple of short steep hills... I thought I was ok with hills, but people passed me like crazy going up. Then it was this bridge made of wood. Running on it was "interesting". It was bouncing up and down, so if your stride was off, you got caught landing when the bridge was bouncing up (ouch!!)

Aside from wanting it to be over, it was pretty uneventful. I finished with a Garmin reading of 1:34:27 A NEW PR!! Weird thing is I didnt get that dizzy spell thingy... I guess the iron pills for the last couple of months are working. I ran into a guy that I ran a half with last year, I beat him by one minute last year... he ran a 1:31:xx today!! So I got my work cut out, but he is now part of a running club, so he got an advantage, plus he lost A LOT of weight. But I am totally happy with my result... and totally happy with my new found love, the Brooks ST4 Racer shoe!!! It was firm and close to the ground but was cush enuff for the half that I think i could run a full in them... but thats another story for 2 weeks from now, but until then, I run on...