12 | October | 2009 |

Hello All!

It’s Monday. It’s Columbus Day. I’m off work today!

I guess I had kind of a busy weekend but I have LOTS to blog about including my half marathon race recap finally! First of all, I was NERVOUS Friday at work:

Taking pictures of myself in my cubicle is not weird…

Friday night I went out and bought a new long-sleeve shirt for the race then got home and ate a big egg sandwich plus some other carby things then got everything together for the race. I bought that black shirt below:

I made a new running playlist (that definitely had a Miley Cyrus song on it). I get the feeling that image is going to be rather small. Hopefully you can read it. Who knew macs had a selection grabber tool like print screen? Anyway, when the Mest song (ohhh high school) and then the Queen song came on, I just about started skipping. It was about that point during the race that I started to die but I’ll get into more details about that in a bit.

playlist 1/2 marathon.tiff

So I went to bed around 10 PM Friday night with my alarm set for 5:45 AM Saturday morning (race day). My alarm went off and I immediately …got on my laptop and updated Twitter and Facebook statuses. Haha. I am … a loser. At 6, I got out of bed and made oatmeal with cinnamon, peanut butter, wheat bran, a banana, and fake Life. Everything except for the cereal went into the food processor. Easy digestion. It’s pre-chewed ..sort of. I also had two cups of coffee and a couple of glasses of water.

Aaron came over a little before 7 AM. We took some video of the morning.

Aaron and my cat:

And me putting on shoes!

After the video excitement, we packed up my car with everything that I could possibly imagine needing and set off for North Park. After some minor car problems, (my car spinning in the mud while trying to park in the grass, me abandoning the car and Aaron parking it for me so that I didn’t freak out), we made it to the starting line. Check it out, my new shirt has thumb holes!

Aaron trying to master my camera:

Still trying… it wasn’t dark, he just had the flash on.

Aaron also took a video of me retying my shoes:

That’s me with the green shorts/black shirt walking to the starting line. IT WAS RAINING. Just a bit though.

The race started promptly at 8 AM…I think. It started up a long, fairly steep hill. AH. I guess I started out maybe in the middle of the pack. The race wasn’t that big. I would estimate about 100-150 runners. I have no clue though because I can’t track down official results. I guess that goes along with smaller races. So I started jogging along up the hill then down the hill I realized my ipod was too loud so started messing with it and accidentally started playing CONOR OBERST. lol. I had to take the ipod off of my arm and put the playlist back on around mile 1.5. I did this while going down a hill. At mile 3, I passed Aaron for the first time. I was happy to see him! I was feeling great at this point. I think my pace was about 9 min/mile which was faster than I was planning… but oh well.

Also, at mile 2ish, I passed one of my coworkers!!! He is a runner also and came to cheer me on! It was so great to see him. He jogged with me for a minute and tried to take a picture on his cell phone. He took a picture and then I continued along.

Continuing along, I stopped at a water stop around mile 5 and had a few gulps of gatorade and continued. I passed Aaron again at mile 8. I was still feeling good at this point. I stopped to say hello and drink a little bit of Vitamin Water. My pace was 9:22 at this point! I think I ate a few Luna Moons before passing him. They kept moving around in my shorts and were chafing a bit. Annoying. I’ll know better next time and wear a shirt with a pocket.

Okay so I passed Aaron at mile 8 and felt good, I think I finished my Luna Moons by mile 10. BAD MOVE! I stopped at another water stop and had some water at maybe mile 9. I should have had Gatorade. One packet of Luna Moons is only 100 calories and not enough for a two hour race. By mile 11, I was dying. I was freezing and going really slow and just felt weak and empty. I was praying for a water stop where I could get some Gatorade. I FINALLY came across one and drank an entire cup of Gatorade. That helped until about mile 12. Okay one more mile. You would think I wouldn’t have wanted to stop at this point but I did for about 10 seconds. I figured I’d rest for 10 seconds and that would give me enough energy to finish. Oh also, I had to pee from about mile FIVE on. I just couldn’t bring myself to stop.

Around mile 10, I passed a car that was driving really slowly and realized it was my coworker again. haha. He said the picture didn’t take and then said keep running. I kept running and then realized he drove his car up a bit on the route and was standing there trying to take my picture again! haha. It was so nice to see a familiar face at this point because I was looking and feeling a little rough. I said goodbye to Tom and continued along.

So at this point (mile 11-12) I started chanting to myself, you can do this, you can do this. I think I even said, I am a machine. haha. I also knew by about mile 9 that there was no way I was going to finish in under 2 hours. I thought I might be able to about halfway through but my pace had slowed considerably. I really never had the goal of finishing in under two hours but I just thought it might be nice if I somehow managed to do that… My Garmin also lost the satellite signal at mile 10.76 and stayed there until the very end. I had no clue of my pace! Lame.

It lost the satellite signal one other time at mile 9.62 I think and I kept looking at it and looking at it and didn’t realize it wasn’t changing and was like THIS IS THE LONGEST MILE OF MY LIFE and then it jumped to 10.76 or whatever. haha.

Anyway, I finally made it around the bend and the finish line was in sight!

I can’t believe I was smiling. I tried to run a little faster toward the finish but just couldn’t. Then I saw Aaron and his bandmate (who randomly came to cheer me on!) and crossed the finish line!!!

There I am:

I got a medal for finishing! I immediately grabbed a banana and water, realized that I had some MAJOR chafing pain, and then took the best picture with Aaron.

Our first picture together!! Our relationship explained in one photo:

Aaron was the best during the race! He woke up ridiculously early on a Saturday morning and stood out in the rain for TWO hours while I ran.

I stretched a bit, FINALLY PEED and then we went home. I had like two bottles of water and a Vitamin Water in the car plus a Luna bar then my stomach was upset. It continued to be upset for a few hours after the race. We got back to my apartment, I took the longest, hottest shower ever and just laid in bed not moving much for hours. Eventually my stomach felt better and I got hungry.

Aaron made us pancakes!

While he made the pancakes, I made coffee and my own version of syrup. I just put a bag of TJ’s frozen mixed berries in a pot, added a bit of sugar and let it simmer on medium for about 15 minutes.

I had three pancakes plus that little one:

I’ll post the rest of the day in a separate post but that concludes my race recap. I guess I went into a TON of detail but I hope you enjoyed it! It’s now two days after the race and I am itching to run again. My legs are still a little sore (they were REALLY sore yesterday) and my leg chafing started to bleed today so I’m taking today off from running also. So now I’ve run a 5K, 10K and half marathon. The half marathon distance is definitely my favorite distance of the three and I can’t wait to do another one! It was a GREAT day!

Archive | October 12, 2009

I did not die. RACE RECAP!

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