Five Arrows Farm: the half marathon (that happened over 2 months ago...)

I just realized (because I ran into someone today, that I hadn't seen since early high school, who reads my blog - HI SARAH!) that I never wrote anything about that half marathon I'd been training for for oh, NINE MONTHS.

I ran it! We ran the whole thing (as per my personal goal) without walking at all and I'm so proud of that!

A couple of things about the race.

1) It's a long flipping time to run! And the whole if-you-run-faster-you'll-get-done-sooner crap? Yeah, that doesn't work. It's more like if-you-keep-breathing-you-won't-die ~~hopefully~~.

2) I have never, NEVER felt more proud of myself than I did seeing my family there at the finish line cheering me on and seeing their proud faces as I finished. It brought tears to my eyes! It was amazing. My husband's pride in his eyes? Yeah. Nothing like it.

3) Eat the goo stuff they're tossing to people along the way. I lost my energy at about mile 9. I ate a half of a really mushy nasty banana at the beginning of mile 7, but it didn't seem to last long and I should have had something to eat to give me a boost for the last few miles.

4) The signs spectators were holding are priceless. They were encouraging and hilarious and everything good that keeps your mind in the right place to stay strong and finish. My favorite sign was held by a woman sitting in a lawn chair on the sidewalk sipping coffee - it read, "THIS IS THE WORST PARADE EVER." Another one I loved was, "Hurry up! The beer at the end isn't going to drink itself!" And at about the last mile there was one that had a huge picture of Christopher Walken on it that read, "This ain't the time for Walken! Finish strong!"

5) Running with someone is imperative to making it to the finish line ~~for me anyway~~. I would have had a much more difficult time running the whole thing if it weren't for Maria's encouragement. She's seriously like the energizer bunny and it was great having her there ~~dragging me~~ running with me the whole time.

When we were done I had two immediate thoughts. The first was, "I am NEVER doing that again!" followed quickly by, "I will do WAY better than that next time!"

So, there you have it. I DID IT!

Oh, our finish time was 2:09. This made it an average pace of 9:52 or something and our normal average pace is about 9:10 so I was really disappointed with the time, but again, still proud that we finished and really proud that we ran the whole thing!