Half Marathon (7.12.15)

The mile markers were off so it really messed me up.
Mile marker 1 was when my watch said 1.02.  MM 2 was when my watch said 1.94.   They kept getting worse. I just assumed my watch was off. MM 11 was when my watch said 10.5!   Then the finish line was when my watch said 13.25!

Early on I decided to do my old trick of finding someone and chasing them to pass them. Well it took me until 4.3 miles in to pass the girl I had chosen to pass. She was 3rd and I was 4th before the switch.  My 3rd place only lasted about 2 miles until a father/daughter passed us. She looked about 10.

I was also surprised how close we ran to Levi's Stadium. We had passed it before we even hit 3 miles. We passed it twice. I didn't know it was so close. I also didn't know there was a paved trail over there. My Garmin shows the path we took.

Around 6 miles in, I could see a curve and behind me I saw women in places 5, 6, and 7th all about 20 ft back. Maybe slightly more since  I just stopped to get water and they still had to get it.  I got a bit disappointed here that they would pass me.   My time slowed a lot.

At 8:11 and a few other times, I was texting Dave trying to get him to come to the race. He took forever. He didn't want to come then I got him to saying "Please come" but he was late. He couldn't find anything. He brought the wrong diaper bag. I packed one up for him. Well more like snack back since we don't do diapers. He took my normal one that I took things out of so we didn't even have wipes for when Ella would get messy.  Anyway when I was texting him, my pace slowed to 11:30 so I was getting mad. I had to try to answer his questions and I'm trying to run for a PR here! And I knew based on him not knowing if he was coming that he would be late and miss me finishing anyway.

I texted Beth a little during the race. I wanted motivating texts back but I didn't get any. Then when I was done some old texts popped up and she had texted me back!

I played bonus seconds a lot but then it got too challenging so I tried to just remember the previous split if I was too slow to try to make up for it. After 10 miles I was far off from my goal.  I hit 10 miles at 90 min or so!

I just looked at results and my 10k split was only 2 seconds slower than 3rd place overall for females!

My goal was 2:00 for the race and I made it. My official time was 1:59:49. I barely made it but made it! With about 100 yard left a girl was about to pass me and we ran together a bit. We talked. We both talked about how dead we were. Then we made a turn and there was a straight away to the finish. I told her to give it a kick. She said she didn't have it in her. I tried to encourage her and told her to finish strong. I beat her by 10 seconds!  It was about .2 mi left. It was a bad idea to kick it in that soon. I was ready to die and just stop and not even stop and walk when I was about 15 feet from the finish. I told myself to just finish and I could be done.

During the race, I thought of texting Callie. I needed her to motivate me. But texting is so hard while running. I would have done it if I knew she'd respond but she might have been busy. I also have 2 phone numbers for her and never know which to use.

I wanted to die

Marie's husband, Landes, got some pictures of me finishing so that's awesome. The video didn't work so there is no video.

I waited awhile for Marie to finish. She improved her half marathon time by 20 minutes.   I waited for her to finish and finally look away to text Beth that I was in fact done and I missed her coming in. I only got video of her from behind.

While waiting, Ella ate most of my snacks and drank most of my water.  I blacked out once going from kneeling to standing. I didn't realize that awards started at 9:30 so I missed awards. I only realized 30 minutes into awards for fundraising that I missed it so I went to talk to someone and got my medal. I also got $35 in Sports Basement gift cards. Too bad I never go there. But now I will.

I didn't really stretch after.  Now it's 5.5 hours after I ran and my right quad keeps cramping up. It isn't cool.

The race was for the India Community Center so there weren't very many white people there. Most of the white runners were all faster. I guess nobody runs the Indian race unless they are hardcore.
This is the worst race recap I've ever written. It's jumps all over the place.

I was surprised how quick the official race results were up online.

I actually didn't realize I came in second. I thought I was 4th based on my tracking of the other female runners. Marie's mom mentioned I came in second. She said that's what they announced. I remembered them saying my name but nothing else. I didn't believe her that I was 2nd. I loaded the results and sure enough. I couldn't believe it.  At 3 miles is when I could easily tell there were other runners ahead of me. The first 2 were really far ahead. Then the 3rd place person was like 20 yards ahead of me for about 2 miles.  I'm not sure how I got second. Maybe someone wasn't officially registered (the girl is my guess) but I'm not sure how the other 2 runners that were super speedy were 1 runner and only a time slightly faster than me.

I wore my stupid heart rate monitor but didn't make sure it was connected to my watch until near the start. Well I couldn't get it connected so I wore the thing and didn't get data!

I shared my water with Ella

I don't know how Ella got this!

Ella tapped Clara for about a minute straight right before this.

We finished!

I played bonus seconds.  I gut around mile 8 because I sucked too bad. I knew I had 1 penalty second at Mile 2 so I started to get really worried.  Mile 4 is when I overtook the 3rd place person so I was motivated. I'm surprised Mile 12 wasn't worse; I was texting a lot during that mile.

You can see where water stops were. I walked at the water stops.

I'm ready for another race enough though 2 days later and I'm still sore. It probably has to do with never running that fast for more than 3 miles at all while training.