I'm an official half marathoner!

Yesterday morning I ran the first ever Newburyport River Run Half Marathon and completed my first ever half marathon!  Race report and some photos below.  There are definitely lessons to be learned all around, but it was overall a fantastic experience and I plan on running it again next year (although I'll hopefully have quite a few more halves under my belt by then).  Brace yourself, this is going to be long.  I only get to do a race report on my first half marathon once and, well, I don't want to miss anything. :p

Two weeks prior to the race I was sort of freaking out.  My running was going well, but my calves/shins  were in a sporadic, naggy, achy pain.  I kept hopping around to make sure that it wasn't a stress fracture (it wasn't).  When my shins weren't hurting my IT band kept reminding me it was there.  Not pain really, but just a little tension to let me know that it could be in pain, potentially.  In retrospect I was so hyper aware of my body and so nervous about the race that while there was definitely pain at least part of it was magnified by my fears that *something* was going to go terribly wrong to mess up all of my training.  Now that the race is over all of these pains have disappeared and been replaced by perfectly normal muscle soreness.  But I didn't know that would happen two weeks ago, so I iced, elevated and compressed religiously after every training run, pleading with my body to hold it together long enough to get me through this race without a real injury.

All of this laying around with my legs up gave me tons of time to read.  So I read, and re-read, everything I could find on race nutrition, pre-race nutrition, race planning, race gear, tapering, garmins, pacing, running with music, running without music, etc.  You name it, I read it.  Maybe twice. About a week ago I realized I was driving myself crazy with way too much information when I thankfully re-read the following line from the Runners World Big Book of Marathon and Half Marathon Training: "Remember that...half-marathon training runs you more than 200 miles.  The race day-covering just...13.1 miles-is a victory lap."  I closed the books and browsers (well, for the most part), looked back over my training logs and started focusing on things like where I was running and enjoying my last few miles before the race.

This helped immensely.  Even though I still thought about the race a lot (and I definitely spent too much time refreshing weather.com and accuweather.com, often at the same time, often wondering why they didn't agree, but I digress) I got substantially more level headed and clear about how I was approaching the race.  This was super helpful because it meant I went into race day with 6 days of the previous week having ideal fuel, hydration and sleep.  I don't think I do that, well, ever.  So doing it the week before this race was fantastic.  I even managed to find an hour on Saturday to get a manicure that matched my racing singlet.  This is clearly going to become a tradition.

Saturday night J and I went to packet pick-up and got our bibs.  We decided to drive the course because I'd mapped it and knew there were some hills.  I'm really glad we did because while the first 1.5 miles were flat the next 4 were a series of rolling hills culminating in a pretty big hill.  We both adjusted our race strategy a bit to slow down those first few miles so we didn't burn out early.  When we'd finished driving the course we wandered around Newburyport, which as you can see is a super quaint New England town:

We found an awesome farm to table Italian place.  We had an early dinner.  Finished at about 7:30, splurged on a little gelato and parted ways.  J was staying the next town over, about 10 minutes away, but I had to drive about 40 minutes back to my house (I decided I'd rather get up earlier and sleep in my own bed than worry about not being able to sleep in a hotel room).  About 20 minutes into my drive home, I got a text from J telling me I'd left my bib in his car.

I was not amused with what this was going to do to my plans in terms of sleeping and nothing going wrong but I *knew* I wanted to have everything I needed for the AM ready to go before I went to sleep.  So I turned around, drove back, got my bib from J and just dealt with the idea that I'd just lost 40 minutes on the one night I really didn't want to lose 40 minutes.  By the time I got home I had mostly shaken it off aside from the fact that I was now 10 minutes from my bedtime instead of 50 minutes from my bedtime.  I accepted the fact that I was just going to go to bed later and moved on.  I laid down at 10:15 pm and started tossing and turning a bit, but it wasn't long until I was totally out.

Sunday the 19th I woke up with my alarm at exactly 5:15 am.  I hadn't woken up during the night at all, which is unusual for me.  I got ready, had my coffee, an egg white and cheese sandwich on wheat bread, grabbed my water and started the drive up to Newburyport.  I got to the parking lot at exactly 6:58 am.  Two minutes earlier than I'd planned.  And then I waited.  I would much rather sit in my car, listen to music and wait patiently knowing I have a parking spot than get up later and stress about logistics.  It's sort of calming for me to sit there.  So that's what I did.  At 7:30 am I decided to take a walk and see if the Starbucks had any bananas (they did) and an available restroom (they also did - this will become super clutch later).  I decided to take a few pictures of early AM Newburyport and walk around for a bit.

Enjoying the port before the race

J got there around 7:45 and meandered around with me.  We found a bunch of cool little things around Newburyport, but as a Social Studies teacher, the Civil War Reenactors were my favorite:

A Civil War camp in Newburyport

By this point it was about 8:15.  I had to go to the bathroom again, and then we needed to walk down to the start.  So we made another trip to the Starbucks and then walked the .5 miles to the start of the race.  About .25 miles into our walk to the start (so you know, 7 minutes after my previous bathroom trip) I felt like I had to go to the bathroom again, and the second I mentioned it J felt the same way.  Clearly this was some sort of mental trick, but no worries.  There are always port-a-potties at races.

And this is when we realize that the race, in its first year, has severely underestimated the need for port-a-potties.  There were 5.  For 500+ runners and all of their family, friends, etc.  The line was OMG long and there were 30 minutes to the start of the race.  Luckily, J and I were of the mentally anxious needing to pee variety, but there were a whole slew of people who were of the really needing to pee variety, at least 50, standing in line when they told us it was time to line up.  Yikes!

(Seriously, I warned you this was long.  We are about to start the race.  If you need a pee break before the rest of the post, now is the time.  Good?  Good.  Continue.)

I went out a little slower than I would have liked.  I wasn't as warm as I'd wanted b/c I had spent so much time in line for the port-a-potty I wouldn't get to use and to be frank I was a little distracted by the cute little downtown we were running through followed by a gorgeous 9 am seascape

The view from mile 2

I finally got my head around the idea that this was a RACE, not a long run, around mile two and kicked it up a bit, but it was hard to tell how fast I was going b/c I purposefully didn't start a timer on my watch and my ipod app definitely went crazy and was inaccurate (it thought I ran 12.04 miles at the end of the race, we drove the course the day before, it was absolutely 13.1.  C'est la vie.  I know how I felt and my watch was close enough in terms of monitoring my times).  I managed to pass a few people through the hills but kept it fairly conservative in those early miles because I knew the hill at mile 5 was going to be brutal and I needed to not only get up that, but be able to run 8 miles faster after it.  So I kept it in check.  I ate 6 jelly beans with caffeine at mile 3 (first water stop) I would guess I was averaging right around 10 minutes a mile, maybe a bit faster, through those hills.

I felt great at the big hill at 5.  I passed a few people on it and came to the top feeling strong.  I also knew it was mostly flat after that and cautiously picked up my speed.  Miles 6-11 were by far my best miles of this race.  I was totally in control of my pace and knew I still had the ability to accelerate later in the race.  I was passing people throughout this time.  I basically would find a new group, reel them in, pass them, and start again.  At the mile 8 water stop I ate my last 6 beans and moved on at a faster pace.  I'm not entirely sure how fast I was going during this time, but if my math is right based on the finish time I had to be in the 9:30 or lower range.  Again, this was by far my best stretch of the race.

In fact, if we were just going by pace, then mile 12 would have to be included in that, as it was my fastest mile of the race and I felt amazing when I hit it...the problem was that I overestimated what I had left in the tank.  I had enough left for one mile, maybe a little more at around 9 min a mile.  I thought I had enough left for 2.  I was incorrect.  I hit the sign indicating we were in the last mile and a side stitch on my right side hit with a vengeance.  Prior to that point in the race I hadn't been passed since the first mile.  Granted, I started way too slow and was working my way back, but up to that point I had done all of the passing.  In the next half mile as my side ached more and more 4 people passed me and I could just sort of feel my dream of a strong finish fading away.

Two things happened simultaneously at this moment which were both super clutch.  First, I saw the turn off point about a half a mile ahead.  The finish was down this little driveway, maybe 50 feet off the road, and I could finally SEE where that was.  Second, these two girls I had passed about half a mile before came up on my right shoulder, and some little voice in my head said "Oh, hell no.  No more passing me.  Not today."  The stitch in my side continued but I ignored it and pulled energy from some reserve I didn't know existed and kicked it into high gear for that last half mile.  When I hit the turn off I was so excited to see that the clock said 2:08 still!  I was even more excited to see J (he'd finished about 10 minutes earlier) on the sideline with his phone out, cheering me on.  Thanks to him I have some awesome photos of me finishing my first half, including this one of me waving and grinning like a fool.

Waving right before the finish

I finished in 2:08:16.  Which pretty much blew away the goals I had set for myself at the beginning of this process (which included "run the whole thing" and "maybe I can finish in under 2:30), and even exceeded the "on a perfect day I bet I can go under 2:10:00" goal I set for myself a couple of weeks ago.  It's a pace of 9:47 a mile, although my splits (if they existed) were definitely all over the place from that.  In the future I need to make sure I have time to BOTH warm up and pee so I can avoid that slow mile at the start, and I need to contain my urge to speed up in the last 5K.  I opened up just a tiny bit too early.  If I had finished with the kick I had in mile 12, I would have been 15 or 20 seconds faster.  At the end of the day, those 20 seconds are irrelevant.  I'll get them back someday.  5/19 was all about this:

Two successful first time half marathoners!!!

After the race J and I wandered around the after party where they had good pizza and beer.  Well, I assume the beer was good.  I really just couldn't get my head around the idea of having a beer at that moment in time.  All I really wanted was water, gatorade and carbs.  We decided to wander back towards town and see what we could find.  We meandered into the most wonderful smelling bakery in the entire world (really, it's in Newburyport) where they list all of the ingredients for their products AND the farm/dairy they bought them from (how cool is that?)  It's called Buttermilk Baking Company and is really one of the most fantastic places I've ever eaten in my life: 

Post-race carbs at Buttermilk Baking Company

J had the bacon, cheddar and chive scone and I had the maple sausage honey bun.  Both of which were exactly as fantastic as they sound.

As yummy as the carbs were (and omg, they were fantastic) The best part of all of this has been the process of training which has allowed me to discover that I really love distance running.  I spent years, my whole life, really, telling myself I wasn't a runner.  I told myself I wasn't good at it and I didn't like it.  I had never run a race because I was sure races were for fast people, runners.  Even when I added running to my workouts last year I was convinced that running RACES wasn't for people like me running their 10 (now 9!) minute miles.  I have learned that nothing could be further from the truth and I LOVE running.  I like my long runs on the weekends (or weekdays, when I need to do them then) and my speed work here and there.  I like running hills and flats and watching the miles accumulate over time.  I like racing and getting faster on each mile and finishing feeling stronger than I started.  The running community is a fantastic group of wonderfully diverse people and I can't wait to spend more time in it.

In fact I'm definitely signing up for my 2nd half in September. I get to train all summer.  I wonder if I can break 2 hours..I'm sure you'll hear all about it, all summer. I can't wait.