Saturday, it was 43 degrees and raining. It was definitely fall weather, but one of those days where you want to stay inside underneath a blanket with a book and just wish it was still summer. Instead, I was out running a half-marathon with some pretty shaky training. It didn't get off to a great start as I was struggling a little early and my shin was acting up which was new. Thankfully though, I was able to fall in line right with the pacer for the 3:15 marathon time and that kept me right around 7:30 miles. Other than a few zipper issues with my jacket, things went fine until I hit the hill at mile ten that Krista and I had joked about. That hill sucked the life out of me and I started to fade. Thankfully though, the end was a few short miles away and once I hit mile twelve I was able to put a little more oomph in my stride and finished in 1:38:18, which is a little slower than I would have liked, but given the conditions and my mindset, I'll definitely take it. I did get beat though by an eleven year old though, which is kind of a kick in the nuts.
After I finished the race and got some food and a space blanket, I went to go look for Krista. I wandered down to the last turn, roughly a quarter mile before the finish. I got there at around the 1:55 mark figuring that I'd see her come by in the next couple of minutes. By the time it got past 2:20, I started getting a little worried that Krista was hurt, nevermind the fact that I was freezing my ass off. I decided to head back to the finish area where they had a few fires going to warm up. Right as I get back to the area, the first person I run into is Krista who decided to be all awesome and finish in 1:55, easily a p.r. for her. We had ended up missing each other by a matter of seconds when I first went to look for her. After that, it was off for a burger in a tent filled with stinky runners followed by a drive home and a much needed hot bath.
Yeah, the weather made the run fairly miserable and my lack of training certainly didn't help because I would've been screwed without the pacer. Neither of those things bode well for future half-marathons. I'd like to say I'm smart enough to take this as a sign, but I've already signed up for my next one and will be running the Indy Mini in May. I expect that will be quite the experience since there's about 14000 people running it and it finished on the track of the Indianapolis 500. I have six months to train properly and see if I can't knock a couple of minutes off of my finish time.
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