Gazelle Girl Half Marathon

Hello!

Today was race day, one of the best kinds of days. The weather has been pretty crappy here and this morning was no exception. It was 35 with wind, snow and sleet. Lovely.

I got up at 5, made coffee and breakfast, and drove to my moms. I rode to the race with her and my step dad. Mom was running, Phil was volunteering.

Those are sunflower seed butter sandwiches. My nerves are always out of control on race day so I can't eat much. I managed to get one of those sandwich halves down. And the coffee.

We got there an hour before the race started. No lines for the toilets!

And food left unattended!

I lined up with the 9 min pace group and we were off. I totally lost the pace group but was fine with doing my own thing. I wore my watch but decided I wouldn't check it until I was done. I wanted to just run the best race I could run today and not stress out about it. I really wanted to finish in under 2 hours so I knew I would give all I had regardless of what my watch said.
The first 4 miles were great. Effortless. I hoped I could keep it up. It just felt so good and easy.

Then it got windy and sleet was blowing right in my face. It was obnoxious. It made things a bit less easy and enjoyable. I wasn't really paying much attention to mile markers for the first half. There weren't any clocks on the course either.

I forgot my Gu in the car but they were handing it out. The flavor I got was disgusting though so I didn't get much of it down.

I was still feeling pretty good for miles 7 through 9. I had no idea what my pace was or whether or not I was managing to keep it steady. I caught up to the 9 min pace group just in time to hear the pacer say they were going to slow down a bit since they did the last mile in 8:20. No wonder I didn't see them until the end. I have no idea how I managed to catch them at that pace. I passed them and was feeling ok until mile 10, then I started to struggle. My goal was just to keep ahead of the 9 min group at that point but still be close enough to hear what was going on back there.

By 12 miles I was really running on empty and just struggling to maintain my pace. I knew I had been gradually slowing down. I also knew the finish was just around the corner.

I was almost done when I heard someone yelling for me. They put our names on our bibs so people were cheering you on throughout the race but this didn't sound like that. I looked over and saw my sister in law Heather and her fiancée Obi! Great surprise! It's nice to have familiar faces in the crowd. And Heather brought my favorite beer in her purse. Now that's love!

My official time was 1:56:06, which puts my overall pace at 8:52 min/mile. I'm really happy with that, especially since nothing seemed to go right during my training for this race.

Beers with Heather and Obi!

Yep, cheapest beer ever. Runners got beer for $1.

Snow!

Black bean burrito and potato soft taco followed by a short nap. It was too short. I'm still really tired. My left hip is pretty sore. Everyone cross your fingers that its better tomorrow. I'll be limping around the rest of today.