The Texas Half Marathon Race Report

It was 27 degrees outside.

The wind chill was in the teens.

The wind had gusts up to 24 miles per hour.

What was I thinking?

I'll tell you what I was thinking: Let's do this!!!

The race didn't start until 8:00am but I got there at 6:45 so I could have time to register and then hang out a bit (I'm one of those people that likes to get to the race early so I have time to assess the situation and know exactly what's going on......or as Mike calls me "a Monica" from Friends).

You ready for the best story ever??? (Okay, how about a pretty good story??)

I got to the race so early that there were still REALLY good parking spaces on the side of the road--really close to the start/finish line. Sweet. I was on the opposite side of the road where the parking was available, so I would have to do a tight 3 point turn on a very skinny road with a ditch. I started my three-point-turn, first turning towards the ditch and becoming perpendicular with the road. However, I miscalculated how much I could advance and went too far into the ditch. When I went to back up my car, it wouldn't budge--I was stuck in the mud. OH-MY-GOODNESS. What was I going to do? I was all alone. It was dark outside. The people were pouring in. My car was stuck perpendicular to the road and people were having to drive around me. Ahhh! Why can't my car come with TIVO so that I can just rewind what I did! I noticed that the car that pulled in behind where I was trying to park was a man. (Not that it had to be a man to save me, but he was the only person in the immediate area, and obviously he understood this ditch parking better than me). So I timidly walked over to his window and tapped on it. "Hi, this is really embarrassing. My car is stuck." He was really nice. He said, "Oh yeah, sure, just a sec." So he got in my car and started to rev the engine and it wasn't budging. The tires just kept sinking...yeah flooring the gas, why didn't I think of that? I started to try and push the car from the front using the strength of SHE-RA while he spun the wheels, but it just wasn't enough. Fortunately, there was a lady walking by at that moment and she ran over and helped me push on the car...and we did it! Some really nice lady and I pushed my car up and out of the ditch! Awesome. I thanked these nice people then quietly said, "I'm going to go find another place to park" and drove about a half mile away to a 'concrete' parking spot. Whew.

Okay, now on to the race.

By the time the race started I was beginning to lose feeling in my feet...did I mention it was COLD? I was SO ready to start running and warm up. It took me about a mile and a half to finally feel comfortable and stop shivering. It took me about two miles to get into the swing of things. I didn't look at my watch for a long time because I didn't want to see my pace. I just wanted to push myself and see what I could do. So when I finally did look down at my watch a few miles in I was happy to see that I was about at a 10:30 pace. Good.

There was a man who ran right with me the entire time. If I sped up, he sped up. If I slowed down, he slowed down. It wasn't annoying though. It was like we were there running the race together. I actually kind of liked it because I figured he liked my pace and wanted to follow it. So it motivated me not to slow down too much so he wouldn't want to pass me.

At about mile 8 I finally looked over and asked him what his goal was that day. He said he wanted to stick with a 10:30-11:00 minute pace. Cool. I told him that I was just out there seeing what I could do and I was very happy with how it was going so far. We ended up running together and chatting until mile 11. He started to slow down at that point. I turned around and asked if he was okay and he said yeah, to go ahead, that he had never run this far before (10 miles was his longest run to that point). I felt a little bad leaving him behind but I knew I could keep going so I did.

As soon as I hit the 12 mile mark I was mentally SO ready to be done. That last mile was brutal. But I made it and I'm very happy with my time.

My official time was 2 hours 22 minutes. That's a 10:50 pace.

I placed #410 out of 560 people. And came in #43 out of 63 in my age group.

By the way. I owned the hills yesterday. I floated right up each one of them (they were pretty small) like it was nothing. Yay! These hills around here in McKinney are now my friends.

By the time I got home I was in so much pain that I couldn't move. But it also hurt if I didn't move. Everything hurt: my legs, my knees, my hips, my toes, my skin. I think it had a LOT to do with the cold because after I took some ibuprofen then took a nap with a heating pad tucked under my blanket I felt completely better. I feel so good in fact that I fee like I could go out and do it all again right now.

I also feel like I could have run faster. I was kind of taking it easy because I have two marathons to run this month and I didn't want to push too hard. So it'll be fun to maybe train for another half marathon to see if I can do better.

What an experience. The car getting stuck. The freezing temperatures. Dodging ice on the sidewalks and bridges. Breezing up the hills. Passing people in front of me.

Oh yeah, I didn't get any pictures during the race because Mike stayed home with Zoe to go help clean our church building, and by the time I met up with my friends Brenda and Keith I had already packed my bag. Oh well. I had Mike take these pictures of me with my medal. I was practicing for my modeling shoot. They say I'm a natural. I'll update this post when the official race pictures get posted.


Austin's next (February 14th) then Cowtown (February 27th)!!!!!