Another Half with a Friend

After Oak Barrel Half a friend asked me if I was going to run the Bridge Street Half. I had not planned on running it. I don't love that course -like AT ALL- but I do love the finish party and I usually love the medal. This year the medal was fine, the registration shirt looked really awesome, but the price was more than I really wanted to pay for a cool shirt. But when my friend said she was considering it I said I would absolutely do it with her. She is the gal who ran with me for my first ever Rocket City Marathon. She is in the group I've been running with on Tuesday and Thursday and I just love her to pieces. I knew we'd talk the whole time and I knew I wouldn't even see the course for the conversation, so I signed up.

The shirt didn't disappoint, except WHY do shirt makers think women like v neck shirts? I don't understand why 95% of the time men's are crew neck and women's are v neck? I like a more fitted CREW neck shirt....and the shirt is super thin....but I love the way it feels and it's sweet looking.

The morning of the race my friend picked me up and the chatting began! Another friend was going for a PR (sub 2 hour half) so we talked some about that. I knew it was going to be "easy" for her because she was BARELY over at Oak Barrel and Bridge Street is a much flatter course. 

We went to the bathroom and then lined up...minutes later we were off. We set out to run a 3/1 interval (just like we do Tuesday/Thursday mornings). My legs were TIRED. I was wondering when we first started if I was going to be able to hang on the whole time. My friend had been having some issues with her hip/piriformis; she was saying it was going to take a little bit for it to loosen up so we commiserated a little bit but we stayed on target almost the whole time. It felt like we blinked and we were at mile 3 or so. 

I saw another friend who had been at Oak Barrel; she asked what interval we were doing (3/1) and asked if we minded if she stayed with us. Of course we didn't. But I think we didn't give her an opening to join in our conversation! She stayed with us quite a while and was running strong but I noticed that she was holding her head down and breathing heavier than I would have expected in the run intervals*. At one point I looked back to see where she was; she said she was fine and told us to keep going.

(*When I saw her after the race I asked if I could share a couple of my observations with her...when she said yes I talked to her about keeping her chest "open" and her head up while running...she told me a few days later she tried it and felt much better! YAY!)

The miles were really flying by. It didn't really register on me just how far we were running until about mile 8 and I realized we still had 5.1 miles to go! I have to admit, I was TIRED and HOT. I think that race doesn't have quite enough aid stations but then again, it would help if I carried water with me! I also wasn't paying close attention to fueling. 

Dwayne was watching my live track and was texting that we could break two and half hours but we slowed way down toward the end. We were both tired and she was in pain. There's a couple of little hills on the backside, and then there was the zig zag of the Double Helix... (I'm in the minority probably but I do NOT like that part of the course-running on concrete and zig zagging along a DNA strand is tiring to me!) I had to laugh because his mentality in a race is "run the fastest time possible"...my mentality lately has been "run with friends I love to chat with and enjoy my time with them!"

We were both ready for it to be over about mile 12...we ran around the Westin for the 2nd time of the day and then jumped a curb to run into the heart of Bridge Street and across the finish line! 2:33:05. Sweet! I felt confident if I had been out there to get the fastest time possible I would have broken 2:30...but I knew without a doubt I wouldn't have enjoyed it nearly as much! We found out just after we finished that our friend had indeed broken 2 hours!

We got water and a banana, chatted with more friends, and headed home. 

Later that day Dwayne and I were running errands...I told him about reading a blog when I first started running written by a gal who had run a half marathon and then was doing all kinds of things with her family the rest of the day. I remember thinking how crazy that seemed to me. In my mind I would have needed a nap and would have been wiped out the rest of that day and the next! But here I was doing that very thing.

It's funny because I'm pretty far into my "athletic career" as it were but I continually find myself struck with shock over where I'm currently at. I think the biggest factor at play is the five years I've battled with the effect/after-effects of the brain disease. To be at a place (FINALLY) that I can run a half marathon on a whim and then run errands the rest of the day (and then teach a hard Spin class the next morning, that I actually DO myself)...shocks the crap out of me!

Thanks so much to the friends that keep me going! 

Next up--my first RACE in a LONG time...and more shocking myself!

Thanks for stopping in and sticking around.