My First Half Marathon!!

If you read the title of this blog post carefully, it says “My First Half Marathon!!” You would be correct to read between the lines and guess that I want to do more. Surprised me, but I had been warned by many runners…so they can’t say they didn’t tell me. 🙂

Anyway, I am super happy to tell you about the half marathon I finished on Saturday. If you have been reading my blog, you know that I started training for this half back in the summer. It feels like forever ago to me.

I knew that my IT band might cause problems and that I needed to start early because I wouldn’t be able to add as much mileage each week as most training plans call for. My IT band was a problem and more so than I thought it would be. I persevered and one week before the half marathon the physical therapist and I decided to try some KT Tape. It worked and I used it again for the half marathon…it worked again! Yay! Without that, I wouldn’t have meet part of my goal, to actually finish the race.

One of my other goals for this race was to finish in under 2 hours. I’ll keep you in suspense as to if I managed that one.

It was 37 degrees in the early morning before the race. Umm..cold when wearing a t-shirt and shorts with a light jacket on top. Even colder when you have to give up the jacket about 20 minutes before the race starts.

As you can see, there were lots of people at and participating in this race. There were 19,866 total between the four races (Kids, 8k, Half and Full Marathons). My Dad came into town for the race. He and I went to the race start together. My husband and kids came later…keeps everyone happier that way.

My Dad thinks that I need a picture while waiting in line. Can you tell what I think?

I was a bit nervous before the race. I was nervous because I had never done this before. I also had no idea if I was going to actually be able to complete the race. The last time I had run 12.11 miles, my IT band had hurt so badly I didn’t think I would have been able to finish another mile.

The first few miles of the course, I was using my new Garmin watch to reign things back. I knew I didn’t want to go out too fast, I wanted to save energy for the end of the race. I kept looking at my pace, knowing I wanted to be around a 9 minute mile. I was OK with being a bit faster than that, but it seemed most times I looked down, I was going 8:30 or 8:10. I knew if I went at those paces, I would lose steam at the end of the race. I kept being conscious of trying to reign it back a bit.

With all the people, bands and runners on the course, it goes so much faster than a training run all alone. I knew when I hit the 10k mark, that I was doing fantastic and under the time I needed to be to finish in under two hours. I still felt great and my IT band was feeling good as well.

I took my own hydration belt. I’m not crazy about wearing the belt, but as I had trained with certain fluids and I know what works well for me…I took my own rather than relying on what they had on the course. I also like being able to drink anytime I want and from a water bottle. I can never drink from the paper cups without getting it all over me or not getting much at all.

I had planned to use an energy gel at about 7.5 miles. That is the only ‘problem’ I had in the race. The energy gel was in a little zipper pouch on my belt which also held my phone. I had trouble getting it out and had problems with my phone and my music. Anyway, I ended up walking a bit more than I wanted to in order to figure it out and finally get my phone back in the pouch.

I did feel my IT band a bit from mile 9 on and by mile 12, I knew it was there, but nothing like it had hurt in the past. I did let up for a short walk at each mile from either mile 9 on or mile 10 on (I don’t remember which) because I know from experience that just a short little walk helps my IT band and helps me make it further. It wasn’t hurting really badly, but I didn’t want to let it get to that point either.

I was pretty sure at mile 10 I was going to make my 2 hour time, but at mile 11, I knew that as long as I could run a 10 minute mile, I would make it! I was so happy and excited.

• 1:57:57 for the Half Marathon
• 8:59 average pace per mile
• Overall 2091st (out of 6855)
• 121st (out of 592) in my age division (40-44)
• 936th woman to finish (out of 4316)