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!