1/2 Marathon

Are you all dying to hear about my race? Here are way more details than you needed :)

On Friday I had ZERO foot pain, so I knew I was doing the race. I had been doing 2 ice baths a day and the stretches that the physical therapist had told me to do. It was seriously miraculous. My foot was so much better.

Saturday morning: Woke up bright and early to POURING rain. Drove by myself out to Georgetown Lake. It was in the boonies. And dark. And pouring rain. This was the first year they had this race- so when I got there to register, it was super unorganized. Before the race started, the organizer told us to watch for the white signs because it was possible to get lost or get onto another trail. Yikes. But there were probably 200 of us running the half marathon so I thought how lost could we all get? Haha... then we started. And it was a TRAIL (I knew it was a trail race, but I had no idea how much of a trail it was going to be).

Imagine a really hard hike through the woods. Are you thinking of it? Lots of rocks, tree roots, logs to jump over. More rocks, skinny paths that force us all to run single file (which meant if you wanted to pass, you had to kind call up ahead and ask everyone to stop and step off the trail). But really we were all running as fast as we could possibly cover the terrain without spraining our ankles to slipping down the edge or tripping on a rock. So passing happened of course, but there wasn't a lot of it going on. Speaking of ankles- within the first 2 miles I had twisted both ankles at least a dozen times. I only fell once, but tripped up countless times. So are you still imagining this hard hike through the woods (on a poorly marked trail? Now imagine RUNNING it- single file, in the POURING rain. I don't know if any of us knew what we were in for. I ran in front of this guy for a while who had done other trail runs. He said this one was so much more technical than he had ever done. It rained really hard for 5-7 miles of the run. The rest of the race was just a light rain, which was ok. During the pouring rain the trail got pretty flooded. So my feet were completely submerged under water and mud. Plus the depth of the water made it impossible to see where you were putting your feet which meant you tripped over more rocks and roots.

So here we all were, running in the rain on this terrain that was nearly impossible. It was fun. For the first 5 miles. :)

Then we got lost. There was about 7 of us that had run across this large flat slippery rock that dropped off. Kind a scary. But I think we all ran straight across the rock when we should have run more upwards. Anyway- we lost the path. We knew we were off the path because we started running on this paved road. This was not a paved road kind of race. We even saw a car- which we stopped to ask if they knew where the trail was. Shortly after seeing the car we saw a race worker flagging us down from 400 meters away. We found the path again- phew. But we probably ran an extra 3/4 of a mile.

I ran most of the race without foot pain. Ankle pain- YES! But my foot was feeling awesome until about mile 10. The last 3 miles were pretty brutal. I was basically running by myself by that point other than a cute girl named Kaylee who I'd see off an on and we passed each other back and forth. It was a tough end to the race! I was hurting pretty bad and wet and muddy and STARVING! I had told Dave not to come and bring the kids if it was pouring rain. Although by the time I got to the last 3 miles there was nothing I wanted more than to see Dave and the kids at the finish line. And what do you know? They came! The trail emerged onto this little circle drive, and it was so nice to finish the last 200 meters on pavement.

So my official time? I don't know it. But I think the clock said 3:00. I was too busy looking at my cute kids as I passed the finish line and thinking about the fact that I survived this crazy race in one piece. I was hoping to run this half marathon in 2:20 or less. The crazy part? The guy who was the WINNER of the race yesterday, ran it in 2:15. It was a tough course. There is no way I could have done it any faster. I am so incredible sore today, but I am so happy I did it. And so happy it's over. :)