Race Recap

Today was a long day. My alarm clock went off at 4am this morning - after 6.5 hours of waking each hour to look at the clock. Needless to say, I was exhausted. We met up for our carpool at 5am and were parking at the Assembly Hall parking lot by 6:15am. A few of Justin's friends were running in various events, so we chatted it up until the 5K started at 7am. When Justin, Jill, Amie, and James lined up for their race, I found JG, MM, and RH. This was a nice surprise. After my second stop at the porta potties, it was time to line up. At this point my race jitters were in full swing.

After some contemplation, I decided to head out with the 4:45 pace team (2:27 half ). I figured this would be my best bet. When I looked at my watch at mile 1 I realized that the pacer was under pace - 9:53 for the first mile. I'm not sure if she was just trying to break apart from the crowds, but I was hoping she wouldn't keep going at 9:53. By mile 5 I had been running for 53 minutes and was beat (we had rain last night and it was ridiculously humid). A little after mile 7 I still had the pacer in my sights. After that I was feeling it. I was definitely excited when I reached the water stop near mile 7. Soon after this I found one of the TNT coaches on the course (DG) and she ran with me for a little bit - this is always really nice. :) As we ran through Meadowbrook Park the path was pretty narrow and we were dodging around people.

Right before mile 10 I saw another familiar face (JH) at the water stop! At mile 11.5 the marathon and half marathon split. I could see the marker for mile 12 ahead in the distance and was saying to myself, "wouldn't it be the best if that was mile 13?". Alas, I still had 1.1 miles to go. And of course, it felt like it was never-ending, mostly because I could see Memorial Stadium at this point! Just past mile 12 we turned toward the stadium and I got really excited. ( I also saw some friends waving at me from the corner!) Then I realized that the course was taking around the stadium to the north entrance! Ugh. It took all my mental strength not to walk to the finish.

When I finally entered the stadium I was just glad to be near the finish line. I used my last bit of energy to sprint (it was a really sad sprint) across the finish. My official chip time was 2:30:03. Just 3 stinking seconds from my goal of 2:30. But that's okay, I'll take it! It's an 11 minute improvement on my previous PR. :)

Congrats to all of my amazing runner friends who ran strong today, and THANK YOU for helping me be a better runner. ::hug::

These are some of my fantastic runner friends at the race expo:

JH, JG, MB, me, DG & MM

The 5Kers - all of them were first timers :)

Kerrick, Justin, Jill & Amie

The family :)

I was excited pre-race, can you tell?!