Half Marathon Recap

Leslie and I before the race. Leslie went to Ohio State and is a DG. I met her through the DG alum group here. I only found out she was running the race two weeks ago...too bad because we could have trained together since we have the same pace. We ran the whole race together :-).

Ali and I before the race, Ali is my normal partner in crime here in Dayton. She plays A LOT of soccer and plays in the same league as Craig on Thursdays. Leslie and I after the game (and after the 30 min search for the car...notice my shoes are already off and the flip flops are on!)
Ali and I after the race...she said we had to bite our medals because she "sees them do it all the time on the Olympics" HA!


I did it, I survived! I would lying if I said that I wasn't at least a little disappointed at my time. I really wanted to average out 11min miles and my max that I wanted to complete it in was 2:30. My time was 2:35 :-( There were 2247 women that finished and I was #1202, not too bad but I am definitely looking forward to improving my time. I think this will be a race that I do every year. It was so well organized and there were a lot of people there (there was also a 10k and a full marathon) that were doing the race. No real spectators though because we were on an army base...secret stuff.

I learned a few things and have a few funny stories. First I learned that I never should have bought the hype of how they "changed the course from the hilly version in the past and now it was fast and flat". I call total BS on that one. We had about 3-5 major hills! By major hills, I mean that one of them was a freeway off ramp that went up and over another road and lasted for .5miles (straight up). The rest of the course was gradual ups and downs...pretty much the opposite of fast and flat. Don't get me wrong, it was a great course and had I actually trained with hills it would have been awesome but when I read fast and flat that means I trained on our bike path (which is fast and flat). Hmmm. The hills got me. I will not let them win next year. I live in an extremely hilly neighborhood here, just didn't think I needed to run in it during training. Now I know better. Second, blisters SUCK!! I haven't really had them before during an actual race (had a couple during training but nothing that really hurt during the running). I think that the issue here is that you train on sidewalks or running paths but then when you run the race, you run on the road. Not sure how many of you have fun races, or even noticed the structure of roads, but they are like humps in the middle with slopes on the side (for rain and oil to drain off of them). It isn't something you really notice when you are driving but when you are pounding the pavement for 2.5hrs, you notice. I didn't have the hip problems that Leslie and Ali had but I think that having my foot be slightly slanted the whole time is the cause of the blister (I had them on both feet right where my big toe attaches to my foot, weird place so it wasn't my shoes rubbing). So, my advice if you are going to train for a big run is to find a road you can run on to practice that and the way it moves your foot differently than flat ground. I have strange muscles that are sore and I think it is the ones that have to stabilize your foot on uneven ground. Third, I learned not to lay in grass after the race. I had no idea this would ever be an issue. I have never had a problem with grass but the grass here is different and technically I am allergic. We stopped running and went to find Ali (she finished 15 mins ahead of us) and she was sitting in the grass. We got water and gatorade and joined her. About 5 mins later my legs started itching. I thought it was just my eczema because it gets irritated when I get hot so I scratched it. By the time we got up 10 mins later my entire legs itched and I had red bumps spreading everywhere. Then they were not just on my legs but they were on my arms and everywhere...gross. I didn't think much of it and we got our beer and then headed back to the car. By the time I got home, went to get food and then got home again, I couldn't stand the itch anymore. I took a shower and applied hydrocortozone but they were there all day! Today they are a little better, not as puffy and don't itch. How annoying though...who wants a rash after running 13 miles?? Not this gal.

So, funny stories. We luckily planned ahead and didn't pull our normal "let's just get there 10 mins before deal" and left early. It took us 30 mins to go 2 miles because so many people were trying to get into the base. When we parked it was all in this nice orderly fashion and on the grass (this is important later) and then we took our before pictures, got everything we needed and headed for a port a potty. We had to pee. We stood in line for the port a potty for about 30 mins...yuck, and we missed the start of the race. We didn't really care since they start the time when your chip crosses the start line but after we got out of the bathroom line and headed to the start it was a literally 10 min walk...oops. We didn't start until 8:42 HA! We thought it might be good because we wouldn't have to deal with the crowds...um, not so much. We didn't have to deal with the jockeying at the beginning but we did have to pass almost all 1000 of those people that we finished before. Most of them walkers in groups that spread all the way across the road. UGH. So much wasted energy!! I guess that isn't that funny except that we missed the beginning of the race. The second funny story is that after everything we limp to the car and then we can't find it. Remember how I said we parked all orderly? Well, apparently 5 million cars showed up after us and we weren't parked where we thought. It was really sad but if you had ever been to this base you would understand. We were not the only people who couldn't find our car...there were a ton of people out there just turning in circles. We didn't remember how far we had walked and since everything is grass, it is hard to tell what area you were in. I remembered that we went over some gravel but there were like 4 different places where you could go over gravel. Then there were some cars parked orderly but they were too close for where we parked so we went somewhere else and the cars were all over the place..ugh. FINALLY Leslie screams that she found the car and we got in it to go home. This was after 30mins (literally) of us walking around the grass parking area. I think we probably ended up doing close to 17 miles yesterday with all the walking to the start line, from the start line and in the parking lot.

All in all, it was a really fun experience. Even though my time was not what I wanted it to be, I felt pretty good doing it and I think that I can improve upon my time. If anyone else wants to try a half, then come on up...we can make a weekend of it :-) Sept 17, 2011.