This is going up a few days later than I had planned, but I had an extremely bad week this week studying my ass off for a test that I ended up failing.  I don’t even want to think about it right now and I especially don’t want to think about the fact that it might tack an extra year on my post bacc if I fail the class.  Nope, not thinking about it at all…

So anyway…

Here’s my recap of race day!  If you missed part one of my recap you can see it here!

Race day!!

I had gotten everything together the night before and it was all waiting at the door for me to drag my booty out of bed and get going.  I woke up with some GI issues (we’ll just leave it at that) and it certainly made my race pretty miserable.  Once I got to the race I took some back roads and would around the back way to fair park and didn’t hit a lick of traffic!!  This is a great race day tip by the way- find the back roads to get to the race and you won’t have to sit in race traffic!

My only complaint about the race was the shuttle situation to the starting line.  There was no information on how to catch a shuttle.  No signs.  Nothing.  So myself and a huge group of people were wandering around fair park trying to find the shuttles.  We couldn’t find anyone who actually knew where they were, they were all pointing us in different incorrect directions.  We wandered around for 30 mins trying to find these shuttles.  When we finally found someone who knew where they were they were a freaking half mile away!  Across all the parking lots (if you’ve ever been to fair park you know how gigantic it is) on the other side of the park!  WHAT?!  So we all take off running because it’s like 7:45 at this point and the race starts at 8.  As soon as we round the last corner and finally see the shuttles they tell us that they’re closing down the shuttles for the morning so we’re flat out sprinting and I am literally the last one that they let onto the shuttle.  Holy crap!  Seriously why couldn’t they start and end the race at fair park.  There’s more than enough parking and space.  I mean c’mon people the shuttle situation was ridiculous!!

We finally get to the starting line at 8:05 and the race had already started.  But I was in one of the last corrals so it was okay.  They had a countdown and a fresh start for each corral, so that was pretty cool!

So we get started.  The weather is lovely and I’m feeling pretty good despite the tummy troubles I was having.  I am making really good time for the first six miles and was loving that they had so many bands along the course.  At 10K I was on pace to do my half marathon at around 2:30.  Then around mile six all hell broke loose.  The course was straight uphill from miles six to about mile 9. 

Pure. Misery.

My stomach was hurting and my legs were hurting.  The hills were so steep that I eventually had to give up on trying to run the whole thing.  I started to do a walk/run and the course got a little easier after mile 9 but my legs were shot.  My 2:30 pace went to a 3:00 pace.  I didn’t really have much of a choice since my legs were done at that point and I made a new plan to just finish in under 3 hrs.  So I tried to just enjoy the bands along the course and the conversations of the people around me (most of them were doing the walk/run thing too).

The plan was to just finish!  And I did!!

I finished in 2:56:46 which is about 8 minutes faster than my last half marathon!

Exhausted face…

Second half marathon.  Done!