Did a mile warmup and headed to the Haunted Half Marathon. My foot felt pretty good warming up. A little pain but minimal.
I was surprised how big this race was. I expected a couple hundred people but one of the race directors said there were right around a thousand people running.
Since it was my first half marathon, I was pretty nervous and not sure how I would hold up. I've never tried running hard for more than 10 miles and I was concerned that my foot would start acting up.
Right out of the gate there were four of us that were immediately in front.
Nicholas Watson, a runner at Dixie college, Joey Mortenson, my old high school buddy that has been running marathons since junior high, James Moore a.k.a. fiddy and me.
Running down emigration canyon I didn't go all out because I was worried that I wouldn't have enough in the tank. For the first 7 miles I was in fourth place, I ran behind fiddy until we turned into Research Park and I was able to get by him. This is where the course got hard, the uphill section felt brutal after all of the canyon running. From miles 7-9 I slowly inched up on Joey. We ran together until mile 11 where I was able to pass him on an uphill piece. I could see Nicholas in the distance but he had probably 600 meters on me and I knew I wasn't going to catch him.
Luckily, I was able to hold Joey off and get second place.
I chose not to wear a Garmin so I don't have splits, I wanted to run by feel and not worry about a time on my first half marathon attempt. It was a good race that kind of showed me where I am fitness wise. The frustrating thing is that I don't know what my real time is. There is a picture of me crossing the line and the clock reads 1:19:55. The official results that several racers including the winner said were wrong, have me at 1:21:54. According to the results, I was 48 seconds faster than fiddy. Hopefully, he knows his time so I can get mine.
Anyway, I look forward to racing more half marathons. It was a challenge but I enjoyed every minute of it. The course today was much harder that I thought. I was thoroughly demoralized by the second half of it and realized I have lots to work on. That being said, I had lots of fun and know I'm capable of better once my foot is healed and I get a decent base built. Thanks to my family, especially Jing and all the FRBers for support.
Congrats to my little sis, Megan for running the half. She was right around 2:10.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/acorn84/
If you're interested you can check the link for a couple of photos from the race.
2 easy night miles hoping to speed up recovery
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