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Saturday, July 30, 2011

Our first time...

Our first time running a half marathon that is...

I thought we were ready run and finish, clearly Dave (that's my Sweetie!) had other ideas.


It all began, when I realized I could run further and further and I wanted to run as far as I could and then thought what next. Well a race of course, what else could we do. I had been reading a Boston Marathon training guide among others, and had heard about the Hyannis Half Marathon. I set my sights on my goal and asked Dave if he would join me on this scenic jog HA! He agreed, but who knew this winter would be ridiculous and training would be pretty non-existant. Oh yeah the Hyannis Half Marathon is in Feb, the 27th to be exact. So training was during the winter, well I love the winter and absolutely love running in the cold so all the more reason to pick a winter half marathon.

We tried to train as much as we could, I had joined a gym by this point so would get in treadmill runs alongside my cross training. I must admit though treamill running will NEVER compare to running outside with the scenery passing you by, the whir of the machines and the smack of sneakers not really the same (plus you don't smell all the sweatiness as much when the wind blows it away). I kept thinking even if we didn't train as much we would be okay, what was 13.1 miles; that's NOTHING. So my longest run put in was around 9 miles and by this point Dave's longest run was around 5 miles. Yes, we both know this is not so good when you should have at least run 12 miles two weeks before the half marathon. We still knew we were going to run, there was no changing my mind and I kept the motivation alive!

We soaked up as much as we could on running a half marathon and I'd get questions like, ummm why aren't we doing a 10k or a 5k first. Well I just figured why not grab the bull by horns do the long run first and then we do the 10k's and the 5k's they will seem like a breeze. I liked my logic, it made lots of sense to me. Tons of people thought I was crazy, especially since this was our first race ever. We read so much on how to train, what to eat and you what we ended up with BEING TOTALLY CONFUSED. There is wayyyyyy to much information on this stuff and everyone has different thoughts on what to eat, how many miles to run and how to do this properly. We pretty much picked and choosed amongst all the information what worked for us.

So finally as Feb. 27th was fast approaching and Dave arrived, we did a short 3 miler in the rain as a pre-race run. Then we rested, ate and packed up for our overnight stay down on the cape. We went saturday picked up our bib numbers and I started to get really excited, scared not me. I couldn't wait to start running!!! I just kept telling Dave that we'd make it and we could just walk whenever we needed to for a rest but we would be fine and cross that finish line.

And so we ran!!!

The race itself was beautiful, it did snow a bit but the weather was perfect (at least to me). Unfortunately I realized my nervousness of running a race comes out by having to use every single bathroom stop available (TMI I know, but that really eats up time). So when I would stop to go, Dave got a rest break. We did walk for at least 2/3 miles of the entire race, and we finished around 3:15. We were just happy to finish our first half marathon!! It was an awesome experience and I was so happy to not do it alone. Having my Sweetie right there running with me made the experience 20 times better and helped so much just to have him grab my hand when I needed to walk for a rest and to just know he was there was worth the soreness and pain after we finished!

WE DID IT!!!

2 comments:

  1. I was surprised I was able to finish. Having only run 5 miles as my long run before the race made me think I was going to be walking alot.

    Not something I would recommend doing but hey the race was paid for and I wanted to run with my baby. Everything turned out great in the end.

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  2. Your awesome and we did it, that's all that counts!!! :)

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