My first half marathon recap!

Check!

One item crossed off the bucket list!

I ran the Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon over the weekend, my very first half marathon, and it was fantastic.

A friend of Joel's from high school, along with his adorable wife, persuaded us to sign up for this race back in February. It's a lottery, and we signed up as a team of 4, so we were either all in or all not. It runs in conjunction with Grandma's Marathon, and is a HUGE race.

Training Schedule

After getting in, I set to work putting together a training schedule that worked for us. It was a hybrid of a few different ones I found online, and included running 3x/wk for 12 weeks.

We decided to keep it loose.
So each week, we had to find time to complete our 3 runs for the week, in no particular order, and on no particular day.

Because that's the way we roll.

If we had set it up in any strict fashion, we would have surely screwed it all up. :-)
Joel's long-time friend (we'll refer to him as E) and his wife (R) have family that lives in Duluth, so we were able to stay at their house, which was a HUGE blessing! They live less than a mile from where the shuttle bus picks you up to bring you to the start of the race.

We got into Duluth Friday at around 3:30, so we had plenty of time to pick up our race packets, activate our timing chips, and peruse the expo before going out to dinner. After dinner, we caught a free show under the big tent by Rogue Valley.

After the show, we headed to E & R's relatives' place for the night. They have this charming old house, and they had a warm fire going in the wood-burning fireplace. They are pretty much the best hosts ever. They had all of the newspaper articles regarding the race out for us to look at, and we chatted and drank craft beer by the fireplace until we realized it was past 10:30, and we all needed to wake up at 4:00am!

Both Joel and I had some trouble getting to sleep. So many unknowns, so many jitters, so much excitement!

4:00am came early, but certainly not bright. We woke, washed, brushed, dressed and headed downstairs. Our hosts had a breakfast of bagels and PB, yogurt, fruit and coffee all ready for us. Seriously. Top notch hospitality!

After grabbing a couple of big black garbage bags to use as ponchos, we headed to the shuttle pick up location in the damp dark. Duluth is a foggy city, but that morning was ridiculous. So much mist and fog and drizzle. And 46 degrees. This is not exactly the weather I had expected, but at least it wasn't raining; not really.

The shuttle seemed to drive on and on forever, and then we were there. We waited in line to use the porta-potty once, and then went to throw our bags in the U-haul truck that would transport them to the finish line for us. Someone sang the national anthem, and then it was time to just wait, with 7,000 or so other runners, for the race to begin.

I didn't hear a gun shot, but an announcer announced that the race was beginning. Over 6 minutes later, I finally walked across the START line! That's how many people there were. Just a big sea of people, in spandex and running shoes, all ready to do this thing!

I started out slowly, because you pretty much had to, unless you were near the front of the crowd. With each minute it seemed to spread out a little more, until I was running a pace that seemed so comfortable I was just sure I was going too slow. I didn't track this run with GPS, and I started out way behind all of the pacing groups, so I really didn't have any concept of my speed. But I kept passing people, and very few people were passing me.

They warn you not to start out too fast. That the excitement and adrenaline will make you want to go all out right away, leaving you with nothing left to finish strong. So I was consciously trying to conserve energy. Right around mile 9 is Lemon Drop Hill, which some say can "make you or break you". So I had decided to go a good comfortable pace until then, and run all-out the last 4 miles of the race.

When I hit the 6 mile marker, I was so surprised by how fast this was going and how good I felt, that I picked up the pace. Lemon Drop Hill turned out to be highly overrated, and was no biggie. And after that, I just ran faster and faster.

Often, when I run, I aim for negative splits. Or at least that's what I call it; I'm not sure if that's correct running terminology, but whatever. I run my first mile as usual, and then I try to make each mile a bit faster than the last. That's how I finished off my first half marathon. :-)

At the beginning of the last mile, you run down a small, steep hill. I used that momentum to just charge the last mile, and by the time I crossed the finish line, my cheeks were sore from smiling.

Seriously, you guys. I think I smiled like the ENTIRE time. I smiled at the block lined with troll dolls. I smiled at the man in the head-to-toe green spandex suit. I smiled (and whooped it up) at the guys playing bagpipes. I smiled at the belly dancers. I high-fived the kids watching along the road with their parents. I thanked as many of the volunteers as I could. And I smiled at the people running alongside me.

My final time was 2:15:01. Not bad, not great. But I'm not sure I've ever smiled for 2+ hours straight, and I'd call that a victory!