Surprise! Half-Marathon!

Yes, you read that right. I ran a half marathon on Saturday in 2:00:48 (so close to the two hour mark - and yet so far). A month ago, I did not plan on ever running a race longer than a 10k and a week ago I thought maybe I'd run a half marathon at the end of the summer to keep me motivated to run after the Ragnar in June. My brother (who trained for and ran a marathon with only a handful of people knowing beforehand) suggested on Monday that I run it with him, so with my hubby's encouragement we signed up on Wednesday. And that was that.

My only previous experience running a race was a free 5k that I didn't actually run, so I was really nervous about this (I was so nervous I had to push back the tears as the start neared - and one pushed it's way out anyway). I wasn't quite sure what to expect for my overall time. I knew that 13 miles is a very long way, so I decided to take it easy for the first few miles, then I progressively increased my intensity until I neared the end. I thought I could make it in under 2 hours if I kept up the intensity, but around mile 10 I got sick of running and thought I'd distract myself by running faster. I quickly realized that starting your final push 3 miles before the finish line is a bad idea and by 12 miles I was dead. Because I started out easy and sped up as the race went on, nobody passed me from about mile 4 until mile 11.5. It felt great effortlessly passing by all those runners, but not so great watching a huge pack pass me one by one the last half mile as I struggled in vain to find the determination and the energy to pick up the pace and stick with them. Either way I was really pleased with my time and averaged 9:02 the second half and 9:13 overall.

My computer is dead, so I can't download my pictures, but I'll post some when the computer fiasco calms down.