Saturday, June 22, 2013

My First Half Marathon

Little Back Story:
When I was working at NCOBS I started wishing I had more time to get into running.  Back at UGA I was mainly climbing, and in the winter all the snow made it kind of sketchy...  Come April though, I found myself in a (beautiful) temperate rainforest biome, and decided I'd try it out.
 
My first day in Skagway I ran 15 minutes, and every other day after that I just added 5 minutes.  I got sick early May, but after that I just kept increasing my distance until about a week before the race I ran 9 miles.  Not only did I run 9, but I also felt like I could have ran more after...
 
And in a week (6/8/13) there was the Skagway Half and Full Marathon...
 
So...
 
$15 later, I was signed up!
 
And after a week of tappering...
 
Race Day!
(feat the two runners from our company) 

And the starting line!
And we're off!
About 2 miles in we started to spread out
Much more spread out around mile 5
And after passing like my 10th person,
I was feeling pretty good!

And the half way point!
My original goal was just to run it period, but after I got to the half way point at 1:07:00, I figured there was a chance I could run it closer to 2:00:00.  I never really thought I would get under, but I just wanted to see how close I could get.
 
The beautiful views helped my motivation...
(beginning of uphill shown above)

My push was going pretty well until I hit the mile and a half long mild uphill at about mile 8. After I got through that the smile was gone, and by mile 10 I felt like I was running hills. 
On that note, running hills was a brilliant way to train, because when I felt that way I knew I just had to embrace the suck and keep pushing through.
  
And the finish line!
(I was haulin it, thus the tilt) 
In the end, I finished with a time of:
2:01:02.
 
STOKED!
 
I then proceeded to walk around for about 3 hours, congratulate my friend who ran the marathon, and recover!
 
 
WHAT'S NEXT
After race day I downloaded about 15 running podcast episodes, bought myself a new pair of trail-runners, and (after resting) have begun to train for a MARATHON!
 
More info on that to come.
 
ENJOY!
CHRIS

 


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