Cook Forest Half Marathon
Yesterday morning, I got up and had a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios and a cup of coffee. Got my gear ready and I headed over to the Y to carpool over to Cook Forest. There were 12 runners from the Steel Valley Tri Club. The ride over was fun. It is awesome to be in a car with 6 people who all have a common interest of running and know that my running chatter won't bore them. They just add to the conversation. We got to Cook Forest an hour and a half early and I registered foe the race and we got ourselves ready to run. I had to break down and actually use a port a pottie and they are even more disgusting than I remember.
We made our way up to the start of the race and a second later the gun went off. We started running and Yvonne, Cindy and I were in the very back of the pack. I hung with them for a little while and then decided that I needed to run faster...so the headphones went on and I started to take off. At the half way point I was 1:05. Not too bad. I continued to run and start picking slower people off my route...I would catch up run a couple of seconds and then push on. I did that the entire second half. I knew mile 12 was a hill so I walked for a couple of seconds and got myself ready mentally for the finish. There it was, the hill. So I dig in and walked the first 1/3 and then noticed that I could pickup speed while the other people were walking...so I did just that...past many people on the hill...the last 1/2 mile was pretty much down hill, so I sprinted and came in at 2:15:03. I am SO excited as it was a personal best for me. I know my time isn't as fast as most of the people in my age group, but this race was a training run and two weeks from TODAY I will be running a FULL MARATHON.
After everyone finished the race, we gathered our 'stuff' and took off for dinner and then home. We stopped at a yummy Italian place called Basil's. We had a good time.
I have no pictures because my camera battery died on me...I am going to try to swap pictures from Yvonne.
Marathon is 14 days+1 hour away!!!
1 comment:
Just found you through Stef's blog who I've known through the adoption community for 2 years- you make this 1/2 marathon sound so easy! I just finished my first 15K (The River Run) and it was so painful for me (having serious trouble with one toe, which has never been an issue in the past, so I'm not sure what's going on). Anyway, I'm sure once I figure it out and with more training, I'll be able to graduate to the 1/2 marathon one day! Great job by the way. It took me 1:45 just to do 9.3 miles!!
Kris
(you can read about it in my March archives if your even remotely intereested)
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