Thought I’d better get this post up while my memories are fairly fresh from this weekend. I ran my first half marathon with my sister, brother, and brother’s friend.

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I woke up at 3:45am and got dressed and ate 2 English muffins and drank electrolytes. Then we hopped in the car and left the house at 4:35am, parked, completed final outfit changes and warm up, and headed toward the race area.

Next on the agenda was to find the bathrooms. The lines were long but moved relatively quickly, just felt like they took forever because I had to really go pee. Once that was taken care of, we grabbed our bibs and headed to the corral. The energy was great while waiting for our wave to go. I took a Mango BPN Go gel and then we were off.

Mile 1-3 Started at a good pace. Felt good cardiovascularly, but legs felt dead and right foot (which had surgery several years ago and is just really weak/I need to rehab better) was hurting already which was a little worrisome.

Mike 3-6 Took my second gel and grabbed water/electrolytes at the hydration stations. Still breathing through my nose, but struggling to keep feet moving. Starting to chafe between thighs which never happens. Wearing the same clothes I trained in, so can only think this was due to extra humidity.

Mile 7 Was hurting pretty bad in my feet, started walk/jog combo as going faster seemed to help my foot. Walking to recover with faster run pace.

Miles 8-11 Took my 3rd gel mile 9ish and downed more water from hydration stations. My thigh chafing was hurting pretty bad but was not noticing my feet as much due to distracting pain. At this point I was feeling really tired overall and discouraged as my time was nowhere near what I had planned. My sister kept me going and would make sure I wasn’t getting left behind while on my walking bit.

Miles 11ish-13.1 Think I took my Cliff sour apple blocs around mile 11? Really happy to be almost done as I was not doing so great physically. Prayed quite a bit during this time. Saw my sister’s friends cheering for us the last bit of the race and pushed last 0.1mile.

Was honestly relived I finished the race and super fatigued. Proud I had finished but also a bit disappointed in my time to say the least. I am glad I ran the race but would have preferred to not have had the worst run of this training plan to be on race day. The post race treats did make things a little better and at the end of the day it’s one run out of many.