It's been DAYZZ since the half marathong and I KNOW I haven't written. I suck, I'm sorry. I've been crazy busy, but I finally found some time to sit down and write about how the Parkway Half Marathong went!!
We'll get to the part everyone wants to know: I finished in 1:57... WITHOUT TRAINING! I don't care what people say, I think that I did AWESOME considering I did not train well this time around!!
This experience was WAY different to say the least, compared to my other runs. For one, I was doing this race all by myself. For ever other run that I have completed, there was at least 1 other person running the event with me, and this time, I was it :(
Around 7:50am, I hopped on one of the shuttles they had there and made it to the starting point. This year, like last year, they had this awesome Celtic procession where this bagpipe band played music as they marched down the starting point. They lined themselves along the sides of the start point so that when we passed the start of the race, we were surrounded by all this crazy bagpipe music!
Anyway, I started off just cruising at a super comfortable pace with no real motivation to finish with a certain time. My mentality for the day was to just run and get a nice workout in :) At one point, I checked my watch and realized I could probably do a sub 2 and THAT's when I decided to start running through the water stations and stuff. Have you ever tried to drink water from a Dixie cup while running?
I even tried being like the seasoned veterans where I would grab the cup and smash the lip of the cup together to limit the amount of spillage. By the time I was ready to drink from it, there was little, if anything left in the cup. I had a couple good ones where I kept the water in and I was able to use the amount that I couldn't drink as a cool down and I just poured it down my back (it was getting a little warm).
I finally saw the 13 mile marker and began SPRINTING. I swear, every time I do this, the distance seems so short in my head, but my legs totally beg to differ. My legs are pretty tired, but as I'm sprinting, I see the chronological time near the finish and it reads, "1:59:20". OMG, I NEED to cross before that becomes a "2:00:00", and I command my legs to move faster, but not before I take a leaping jump in front of the very last camera guy and throw up a peace sign. (The photographer was NOT ready for my big moment and I was PISSED, but who can blame him really? I doubt there are a lot of people leaping in the air and throwing up peace signs at the end of marathongs...I'd post it in my blog, but the stupid photo site has already figured out how to block cheap asses like me from stealing their images...)
And that was that. My official D-tag time was 1:57:50. I finished 31st in my age group out of 226 female runners between 25-29 years, and I finished 506th overall out of 2615 runners. Not bad for my last hurrah, eh?
That's the other thing... I'm officially taking a running hiatus for an indefinite amount of time. Is that was sabbatical is? When things stress you out and you have to take a break from it? Anyway, that's all I wrote and I hope you all enjoyed it!! Who knows, maybe I'll be back with some crazy fitness events and stories to share with everyone. Until then, stay healthy my friends!!
T.Lee
