half marathon madness

The dangers of watching Community's Halloween episode the night before a half marathon? Having ABBA stuck in your head for two hours of running.

It was a pretty fantastic episode.

Anyway, my first half marathon can be considered a success!

 

Note to self- don't take off a headband before photos.

My darling cousin trained and ran it with me. Neither of us had ran more than a 10k before deciding to do it, so we kept a pretty equal pace the whole time. My unofficial time ended up being 2:05- meeting my other goal (the one besides finishing) of keeping about a 9:30 or 9:40ish pace. Not that that's fast by any means, but I'm not a very fast person.You should see me drive.

Action shot by the husband!

Speaking of husband, he made this delightful little sign while he was waiting for us to get to the halfway point.

Magically, my knee did not hurt AT ALL. I had run 10 miles of the course a few weeks ago, and my IT band started to hurt after mile 2. When I did my last long run before the race, it was killing me again for most of the time. I thought for sure it was going to be a huge deal since a) I'd never run more than 10 miles at that point and b) the first several miles were very downhill. I guess I've gotten good at stretching it when I give myself the time.

 This must have been when "Fernando" was playing in my head.

The race was really well organized- quite the feat for over 2,000 runners. They had pacers carrying signs the whole way with what time they were keeping. The event shirts were awesome, water stations were well stocked (and with Heed! My favorite!) and the course was beautiful.

Oh, and the COSTUMES. People went crazy. Really, check out the photos on Facebook (search Provo Halloween Half). It's amazing what people were running in.

One of my personal faves:

The amazing thing is that this guy made it on the podium and kept about a 6 minute mile.

Will I do a half again? Maybe by Spring I will have forgotten the agony of miles 10-13. The good news is, every race I do I like running a teeny bit more!