Check it Off

It's over!  I Finished!

On September 29th I ran my first ever half marathon.  Two days before the race I was so nervous I could hardly sleep.  I had several dreams about getting lost on the course and actually running a whole marathon, to missing the race entirely.  The night before I got everything ready I was so nervous about Blaiden because I knew it would be cold and I would miss a feeding or two but, Fred was there to take care of him.  We left the house just after 5 AM and we ended up waiting around for about an hour before the race started.  This was the worst part because it was cold and the anticipation just made me more nervous.  About 10 minutes before the start Fred and Blaiden left to go get a view of the start line and I got in line with about 10,000 other people.

The start was pretty cool, there were fireworks, music, and a lot of people cheering but it took me about 6 minutes just to cross the start line.  There was so many people that it was hard to get into a good rhythm, but by about the 2nd mile it was a little better.  The first time I would get to see Fred and Blaiden was about mile 3.5 and so I started looking for them.  We almost missed each other but I got to say hi as I ran by.  After this I was felling pretty good and started running a little faster.  There were people in different areas cheering everyone on and a few bands were out playing music.  This made the run a little more interesting.  The next time I would see Fred and Blaiden was in between mile 9 and 10.  Fred was ready this time and got a picture of me running by him.  I also was able to ask if Blaiden was sleeping, which Fred thought was funny, but you can't ever turn off this mother thing.  When I hit mile 11 I was getting tired but my goal was not to walk, so I kept on going.  At mile 13 I thought to myself okay lets push it for this last mile and that lasted about 3 minutes and then I was back to my regular pace.  This mile seemed very long but then I saw the finish line and although I didn't sprint the last bit I crossed it with a time of 2:09:04!  I beat my goal by 21 minutes! I placed 2078 out of 3989 overall, 797 out of 2084 for the women, and 148 out of 341 in my age group.

I have to say I was pretty proud of myself for what I had just done.  However, as good at I felt emotionally, I was exhausted physically.  If you would have asked me if I would do it again that day or even the day after I would have said NO WAY; but, now after my body has recovered and I look back I don't think I can rule out another race. Crazy I know.

 Here is one picture of Blaiden sleeping during the race.  I just love his little monster hat!