twelve months of running | april | rock the parkway half marathon

holy crap! I just ran 13.1 miles!

My first half marathon! The farthest I have ever consecutively ran in my life... ever!

And it was absolutely amazing! I completely surprised myself with averaging a 7:59 minute mile the entire race and finishing it in 1:44:43. My goal while I was training was to average an 8:24 minute mile and when I went to pick up my race day packet Wayne told me that he thought I could do an 8:00 minutes if I really believe in myself. I have to say that the adrenaline you get while in a race helps motivate yourself so much. Plus, Rock the Parkway is one of the most beautiful courses, with fountains and beautiful trees and some of the greatest cheerleaders ever! Seriously, those spectators make you feel like you are just the most amazing person!

I learned a lot of great lessons from my first half experience. 1. Do NOT eat Chinese food the night before you race... even if it has noodles. Never again do I think I will eat Chinese. I was fine throughout the race till I got to mile 10. I had already hit a wall at mile 9 but I started to feel super sick and nauseous and pretty miserable and it was seriously all a mental game the last three miles. Hope that next time it will be totally different.

2. Don't wear new socks no matter how expensive or fancy they may have seem. I should of just stick to the socks I have been wearing in all of my training but I was so afraid I was going to get blisters that I splurged on these fancy, blister free socks and only wore them a couple times in training. Unfortunately I ended up with a ginormous blister on my foot. Luckily it didn't start bothering me till after my race, thankfully.

3. I should of started in a wave closer to the front. I probably would of shaved off a lot more time off my finish time. I started in a slower wave and even though you are supposed to start off slow and steady in the beginning, I spent most of the time trying to squeeze through the crowd and that meant running on the grass and doing funking dodge moves. But this was all a big learning experience and there is nothing I would change.

  I am just extremely proud of being able to accomplish this huge goal. It's so amazing what your body can actually do and it really did pay off all of the hard training and early mornings I had to endure. I loved every moment of this experience and I hope that I can continue to train and get better. 

 

I know it sounds completely crazy, but I am running another half in two weeks. The Garmin half marathon to be exact. I signed up because they are local and I use their products for training so I felt like I needed to support them. Plus, I have already done all of the hard training so I feel pretty good about it. Although, while I was running my last race, at mile 10 I started to think I was crazy to be doing this again. But I am honestly really excited about running another half again. It will be another amazing experience no matter how the race goes!