race report: half mary

so i put this half on my pre season schedule to kind of test things out and well it had been a REALLY long time since i just ran a race so i thought it might be "fun". ha. fun is going to dinner with your friends. fun is playing with the dogs out side. fun is NOT racing a half. especailly when you are still trying to master the hurt locker. i dont think anyone really ever had any fun in there. but i had conviced bobby to run the 5k so it was nice to have him out there not just on the sidelines.

so friday night we head down to the shore. pretty terrible drive as it took almost an hour just to get out of Raleigh. after arguing about stopping for gas (my side : the light is on and we are about to hit the last exit for an unforseeable amount of time. we should stop. his side: keep driving until i freak out saying get off here! and gesture and point frantically at the exit. nice). we make it to the hotel about 830 and after spilling my hot chocolate (yes in the bed) we call it a night. lovely.

we debated a bit about what time to get up. the race was staring at 8 am and was only about 10 minutes max away. but we still had to get our numbers and well i'm so used to being rushed at triathlon starts that i made the call to get there by 645. at 630 i was doing my best to shove a bagel down, but for some reason i wasnt hungry and couldnt force it. not a good feeling. i was wishing i had some sort of smoothie or something but no dice. so dumped the rest of it in the trash and we headed over to the race start-- and in a matter of 6 minutes had a parking place and our numbers and were back in the car to stay warm. temps were about mid thirties. i think we both actually fell back asleep....i went out for my warm up and felt ok. not too springy but i had chipped some of the concrete off of my shoes... :)

so i stripped down and we headed over to the start. "dont over dress" jen says. she forgets that i do get cold. 35 is still cold. i'm sorry. it is! especially in shorts and wind off the water. the half was starting at 8 and the 5k at 815 (or so we thought) there was a wheelchair race as well and THEY started at 8 and we had to wait for them to do a loop... the announcer guy said "ok 5 more minutes" about 4 times and by now we are all pretty much frozen solid and any warm up i did is long forgotten. cue the gun at 8:23. nice. cant feel my legs.

i went out at what i thought was a pretty comfortable pace, letting the lead pack fly off ahead and staying with a nice little group. i was running hard but not out of my limits. i check the spilt at mile 1 and see 6.32. ohhhhhh bad. kinda fast. but i was feeling great (dumb rookie move i know!) and even heading into the wind. so i just stayed with this group. mile 2 was 6.34. hmmmmm well i just kept on. knowing it was going to be a long race but hoping for the best. it had been so long since i'd run a half that perhaps i forgot just how long LONG can be! i felt great for the first 10k. though we were into the wind quite a bit and had to go over the causeway bridge (UP and over). ugh.

here is where i met my new running friend from DC. we started chatting about mile 5 or so and ended up running the rest together. when i started to tell him who i worked for i realized maybe i wasnt running hard enough.. shit.

the middle miles passed pretty quickly though i could tell i was starting to lose my pace. i sucked on a gu around mile 6-8. yes it took me about 2 miles plus to finish it. and i reconfirmed that i do actually STINK at drinking from a cup while moving. also my butt began to hurt. really hurt. like a knife. now who would ever stick a knife in their butt i dont know.. but lord it would hurt. i think it mght be a little residual from my new ART/massage lady. i looked at her after that (on wed) and asked how the hell a little person could have so much strength! she laughed. (thank god cause she could have laid me out...)

mile 9 came and i was really starting to hurt. but kept trying to push along. having my nameless dude to concentrate on helped alot, espeically since we were back into the wind. UP and over the causeway and we hit mile 11. he says to me "lets do this MF." ha. love it. right about now this chick comes gliding by. and i envied her easy stride, she seemed to just roll thru. she ran a smart race. the race i should have run. but instead i was fighting for every step. DC guy was calling out our paces as we ran and at mile 12 we just went for it.

he totally out sprinted me the last 50 yards. oh well. i ended up 4th over all. or maybe 5th. this girl we had passed with about 1/2 mile to go ended up catching me at the line and i'm not sure who got what. i do remember being mad though. this girl had been right ahead of me the whole time and she was pissing me off. she had this really fast leg turnover. i'm talking like 50 strides per 15 seconds. it was so awkward looking. her legs barely got 2 inches above the ground. anyhoo i was happy to have finally passed her only to have her little wily coyote legs come back to get me. ugh.

so not a bad day. my over all time was decent. i didnt break 130 like i had secretly hoped. but for as crappy as i have been feeling since, well december, i'm pretty happy with the result.

on a side note - bobby's 5k. so he has been running a lot lately with the intention of doing a marathon in november. i know he's pretty random. swinging his focus around from power lifting to triathlon to running back to body building and now on running.. you just have to go with the flow here... anyway i told him he needed to break 25 minutes on the 5k. he was shooting for about 28. when i finished i asked how he did. he says "well i didnt run 25..i ran 22.30" WHAT? thats a PR for him by about 6 minutes. pretty good. he even won his age group.

anyway one chocolate milk and dip in the freezing hotel pool, we were on our way home.