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

 



Random Tahoe Adventures

My Scenic Walk to Work

I don't know if you guys knew this, but I walked to work almost every single day of this season.

This is why.  It's SUCH a nice walk.

(also I really like walking)

So something pretty cool happened when walking to work this week...

It looked like Spring!

First incredibly scenic spring day of the season

Naturally I took lots of Pics

And I even took one of a house, just because it looked awesome.

And thus ends the spring walk-to-work pics...

(also, for any of you who might be worrying about the daaangerous walk to work, 95% of my walk I don't pass a single car, and the parts where I do are very safe)

Because the next day I woke up to find that it had DUMPED!-(snow) (Which, considering it's April, is pretty surprising)

On my walk to work, the next day, I took two similar pictures to see the contrast...

And there I was thinking Spring had finally come...

Not yet at least...

The Tahoe Comps

At the end of the year, Heavenly suddenly got really popular!

Because...

Huge Competitions Started Happening
Like every day...

First,

The Mogul-Freestyle Event!

Which is where people would do the moguls, then hit 30 foot jumps, then keep skiing moguls

Normal.

And then...

 Skiing Big Air Contest!

And an Awesome Jump Contest!

Close up on jumps

Just a normal triple backflip move.

And the 65 foot Shaun White jump!

Which sadly is all I got of this one...

And

The Gunbarrel 25

A contest where people do this 25 times in one day!

And now for the moment you've all been waiting for...

Mountain Nature Pics!

Lake Tahoe with some cloud cover...

And this one was really special.  A thermal inversion occurred and left us with really hot weather above 7000 feet, and really cold and wet weather below 7000.  Super cool.

Photo Cred goes to Mike's iPhone.  (I was on the Gondola at the time with 7 Spanish speaking kids...)

And this is the view of one of the scenic trails.  Lake of Tahoe on the left and the trail on the left.

Awesome View!

ANDDD 

Fresh Tracks! (aka I was the first person to snowboard this section)

Nothin Below!

And one more. 

Top of the Mountain Shot

Enjoy!
Chris