Still talking...

The medal ceremony ;)

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Half Marathon, check!

As I mentioned on my last post, the Go! St. Louis Half and Full Marathon races took place in downtown St. Louis this last weekend. I had trained over 3 months for this event ("the half"), prepared myself for everything I thought I would face on race day, bought the right pair of shoes, shirt, shorts, ipod nano, armband, and there I was, in the middle of 17 thousand other runners just waiting for the gun to go off. The atmosphere would have been perfect if it wasn't for one small detail....it was raining! But I was not about to let one "small" detail (I thought) soak my goal, so here you go:

Mile 1: I had to make sure I did not go out too fast otherwise I would pay for it later. 7:45, perfect! I was at a conversational pace observing the views of downtown. Rain still coming down.

Mile 2: More of the same....same pace, more rain, dodging puddles!

Mile 3: At this part of the course, we went around the Budweiser brewery and the smell of hops and barley was in clearly in the air. I missed the mile marker but I'm assuming I kept up the same pace.

Miles 4-6: Not much going on. I was feeling strong besides having to go up a couple of small hills. The half-way mark was getting close.

Mile 7: I took my head phones off and scanned the spectators. This is what I saw:

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Amy and Claire cheering me on! Claire was wearing her runners "bib"!

Mile 8: Energized by my personal cheerleaders, I probably had my best mile. Under 7:30! However, this is also the mile where I realized a couple of things: 1) I REALLY needed to go to the bathroom...I had been holding since mile 1 (so much for staying hydrated and drinking lots of water prior to the race). 2) The rain was not letting up and my shoes were now soaked and heavy. I started to feel blisters forming on both my my feet, and I still had another 5 miles to go.

Mile 9: Bathroom break. That's right, I stopped at a conveniently positioned porter-party next to the course path. This added about 45 seconds to my time, gave me some much needed relief, and officially made me an amateur runner.

Mile 10: At this point I had realized that this was the farthest I had ever ran before. I did not have much left to go, but I was starting to feel the race on my back. My feet hurt. Rain still coming down.

Mile 11-13: These were kindda of a blur. I don't remember much of them except that I just wanted to get to the finish line. I knew my pace had slowed down but I was still on target to make it under my goal of 1:45.

Finish: A quick sprint to cross the finish line.....official time.....1:44:32, success! Under the rained I started to make my way back to my car. I finished in 558th place out of 8533 half-marathoners. Not bad for a first timer! A special thanks to Amy, Kelly and Claire for coming to watch me!

Here are a few pictures taken by Kelly.

Claire giving me some pointers before the race

About half-way through the race.

Her "bib" says "daddy's future running buddy"

The end!

The Half!

It's has been 3 months now since I decided to train for my first half-marathon. Claire was only a week old and she slept for most of the day. Amy and I were still in our parental leaves from work so finding time to go to the gym was relatively easy. My motivation? I had a few....lose weight, get back in shape, run a marathon, find another hobby....
30 pounds lighter and a couple of chapped nipples later, I now find myself only a couple of days away from running the 13.1 mile distance. To be honest, my initial goal was to simply finish the race, but as my training went on, I started to feel stronger and more confident. Averaging over thirty miles a week was not easy at first, but it feels pretty routine now. My new goal is to run it between 1:40 and 1:45, but to do that, I need to make sure I don't get caught up in the adrenaline kick of the first couple of miles.
I will be blogging about my race next week, so stay tuned.

See Go! St. Louis for race details and results.
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Claire updates

Claire is now a couple days over 3 months and she is growing so fast. Besides her usual morning talks (check out video below), she now picked up a couple of other skills/hobbies:
Smiling - Just about every time you look at her and make a face, she smiles.....
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Mirror Game - She likes the mirror which every time she looks at it, it tends to trigger one of her other skills, smiling (see above).
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Basketball - My personal favorite! Although we don't really let her watch TV, watching the NCAA tournament with dad is already becoming a must.
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Good Morning Claire!

We should have been more careful.....

oh well......I hope Claire is ready for a little sister/brother!
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you should have known that I would pull an April Fool's joke today!