Race Recap

Women's 1/2 Marathon Recap

Last Saturday I ran the Women's 1/2 Marathon in Nashville, TN.
But, before I tell you how the race went let me show you what we wore....

In the hotel before the race...

Every one loved the shirts!

 This was the first 1/2 marathon for my friend Angie, mother of 5..(we all know why she runs...peace & quiet)... Angie is a great runner.  She has always kept up in the long training runs, however, she has a hard time getting "out of her mind" during a race and let's her nerves win sometimes.  So I decided to run this with her.  Her goal...to finish.  
We both brought our husbands and two kids each. If we would have brought the whole crew we would have needed our own hotel...we have 9 kids between us!  So we each picked our favorite two kids to tag along.  (just kidding! We love them all.....equally...) 
We stayed at the Renaissance Hotel in downtown Nashville because they had awesome runner rates on rooms. We made the 2 hr drive to Nashville early Friday so that we would have plenty of time to blow our paychecks at the Expo and take in some sights too.

EXPO

The Expo was fantastic as you can imagine. It's like Disney World for runners.  My attention span drops to that of a 2 year old when I go to large Expos like this one. I pinged from booth to booth so fast that I had to go around the whole thing twice to make sure I didn't miss anything.  My favorite part of the whole Expo was that Disney had a booth and we got all the info for the Disney Princess 1/2...our husbands even agreed we could do it...two conditions...we have to wait until 2012 and we have to bring the whole family....all 9 kids!!!

That was fine with me, if I'm gonna fork out that much money I want to wait until the littlest prince is old enough to remember it.

We got our Princess crowns at the Disney booth....check out the awesome swag bags we got too!!!

Race Day

 Saturday morning we were all up by 4am (the boys wanted to go swimming in the hotel pool at 4 in the morning!!!) I ate my pre-race meal of Oatmeal, banana, and coffee, did some light stretching, got dressed and was sitting down in the hotel Starbucks with both families by 5am.  The hotel was all a buzz with women ready to run.  I ♥ runners, and I love the race atmosphere!  We got our coffee (I also ♥ Starbucks non-fat, cinnamon dolce latte, extra hot), got the kids some breakfast and took our pre-race pictures.

Could they be any happier? Mine are the two in the middle.

Waiting in line for the porta-potty before the race....starting to regret that last cup of coffee...

We made it to the starting line at 6:45am, just in time to hear Jo Dee Messina sing the national anthem.  And of course just in time for me to get all emotional.  I do, every time I hear the national anthem.

The Race

First of all this is the elevation chart for the race

Doesn't look so bad with all the pretty colors and shapes......

 Let me give you the mileage run down...
Mile 1- 9:08
Mile 2- 8:36
Mile 3-9:05
Mile 4- 9:18 - We took GU at about 4.5, actually I did, Angie was having stomach issues and barfed hers up...:(
Mile 5-9:30 - this time is not quite accurate.  In fact, it is not accurate at all!  My Garmin pauses when I am not moving.  At mile 5, Angie had to pee.  So I stretched while she waited in line for about 5 minutes for the porta potty!
Mile 6-9:44 - Angie was having a hard time with the hills, and the "I don't think I can do this" monster started to raise it's ugly head.
Mile 7-9:15- From the looks of the elevation chart it looks like from 7.5-13.1 it's all downhill.....this was not the case....I kept telling Angie..almost done with the hills...almost done...almost done....well, I lied.
Mile 8-9:42- Here the time is not accurate again because we stopped again so Angie could try and get a GU down and stretch a bit.  I gave her a pep talk and told her she could do it, she needed to just run it strong like she had in her training runs. We were stopped for about 2 solid minutes.
Mile 9-9:33
Mile 10-10:09 we went through an aid station and when I looked back to see Angie, she was standing there holding 3 cups of water!!!  She said "I'm sooooo thirsty!"  I knew that meant that she was dehydrated.  I also knew that because she took in so much water she was going to be sloshing.

Mile 10.5- our hubbies and little princes were waiting to cheer us on!!

Mile 11-9:44
Mile 12-11:14 It fell apart at about 12.5.  Angie said to me "my face is starting to tingle." I looked at her and her face was white. I grabbed her arm and she was chilled. I used to pass out every time I saw blood, so I knew what she was about to do.  Thankfully, she was able to calm down, she didn't want to sit, so I held on to her while she got her breathing under control.  I was amazed at how quickly she pulled it together and was ready to run. We only walked for about 2 mins. There were so many women dropping out at this point. I have never run a race where I saw people just quit.  But they were dropping like fly's! I think, like me, they underestimated the hills.
Mile 13-11:04
Mile .2(that's what my garmin said)- 2:04
Garmin Time: 2:08
Official Race Time: 2:12:05

I have never been so glad to finish a race.  Just to have it over and done with.  But, I am so proud of Angie and her perseverance.  I definitely do not regret the decision I made to run the race with her and I think that it strengthened our friendship.

The finishers party area...it was beautiful!

Angie getting her post race massage....the best part of the whole race!!! Seriously!!

Next up, a few 5ks in the Month of October: I have a 5k this Saturday, my goal is 23:30...very possible.

Then the Life Without Limits 1/2 Marathon on October 30th.  My dream goal: 1:45  My ideal goal 1:50  What I'll be okay with: 1:55

Hope all is well with you out in bloggy world!  

Do you have any big races coming up? 

Tell me about them!

Grace and peace,