13.1 Miles

I DID IT!!!  I ran the entire Leavenworth Half Marathon on Saturday!  Leading up to the race, the weather called for showers and cold … morning of the race, we had blue skies (and it was COLD)!  Jeremy made me a surprise play list to keep me company on the run and I started the race to the Rocky theme (of course that was awesome!!).

I had two goals for this race: 1)Run the entire thing 2)Finish in under two and a half hours.  I told Jeremy that if I had a good pace, then I would likely finish in 2:15, but given my previous long runs, it was more likely that it would be 2:30.

My pace was awesome – for the first 6 miles I was probably running between an 8-9 minute mile.  As I started to get tired, I slowed more.  By mile 10.5 my body finally started to wear down.  I was doing awesome up until then, but those last 2.5 miles were brutal – my knees were tired, my legs were tired, and I was mentally trying to negotiate with myself the whole time to keep going at a decent clip.

I finished in 2:10:56, pacing 10:05min/mile.  I couldn’t believe that I was that fast!  Teary-eyed crossing the finish line, I looked around for Jeremy and couldn’t find him.  Unfortunately he was feeding Carter at the finish line, thinking he had all sorts of time till I would come across, especially given the expectations I set for him!  So instead of getting me coming across the finish line, here is a photo of me afterwards.

And Carter loved the medal that we got for finishing.

I am so proud that I finished – this race will always be special for me.  Not just because it was my first race ever, but the original day that I agreed to run it (June 2008) was the same day I found out I was pregnant with Carter.  I couldn’t be happier that I had to postpone running it for a year and for the reason I needed to get back into shape!