Saturday was just one of those days that you wish you could bottle and re-play over and over again. I woke up early, ate breakfast, took my vitamins and got dressed. I wanted to have plenty of time to wake my body up and get moving before heading to the race. I met up with Amber in the parking lot a little after 7am to pick up our timing chips, stretch and jog a bit to warm up. About 10 minutes before the race we walked over to the starting line and the only bad part of the day happened. I went to turn on my Garmin watch and it was dead....nothing! I had charged it the day before and made extra sure to have it ready to go for the race. This has never happened to me before, so I started to panic quite a bit. I mean, my whole race plan was based on our time....and my watch was going to tell us our mile splits, our current and average pace, and where we were distance wise. I was depending on that thing!!! Amber had a watch that would at least tell us our total time and mile splits, and I had made a little cheat sheet to carry that told us what time we needed at each mile to be on our target pace. We would have to make it work!! The gun went off and the race was underway, with me still freaking out a bit mentally at how we were going to pull this thing off.
Now the plan was to run the race in just under 2 hours (hopefully), which would require an average pace of 9:05-9:09 miles. I was nervous about keeping that pace. We had planned to start off slower too and warm up for the first 3 miles, then settle into our groove. Well everything went out the window from the start. And it was the best thing that could have happened! We hit the first mile in 8:16, and it felt easy. We tried to slow down for the second mile and ran it about 8:20. The rolling hills started about mile 3.5, and by then we were over a minute ahead of our planned goal. I felt great, and figured we would lose some time on the hills, so it was good we had banked a little up front. We chugged away and keep cranking out the sub 9 minute miles through all the hills. I guess it was about mile 5 or 6 that I fully realized we were going to break 2 hours for this race, and I was pretty excited. It was a gorgeous fall day, perfect blue sky, no clouds, bright sun, and 50 something degrees. The wind did pick up quite a bit, but it kept us cool. By mile 8 I knew we would beat our time of 1:59 if we just kept doing what we were doing. We went up the last big hill around mile 9, and I felt Amber start to fade just a tad after mile 9.5. At mile 10 we were still about a minute ahead of schedule and I was feeling excellent, so I pulled ahead. At this point I was running alone and with no watch whatsoever. It was so fun to run by feel and just push my body without looking at the numbers. I couldn't help but smile the whole way too:) I knew I was crushing my previous time, and I felt amazing! I started trying to pick the people off in front of me between miles 11 and 13 which kept my pace strong. I turned the final corner and sprinted to the finish line. Official time.....1:56:18!!!! I had taken off over 12 minutes from my previous race time!!!
I was elated. I felt strong and good the whole time. I smiled and laughed and had fun through the whole race. I really enjoyed running with Amber in her first half marathon, and was so proud that she finished with a 1:58! She totally rocked it! Of course I tried to turn my watch on many times throughout the race, and it came on while we were driving home, go figure:) I am really happy that it didn't work though. I ran so much faster by feel than I would have if I had been staring at the numbers the whole time. It was so freeing to run without it! My average pace ended up being 8:53 minute miles, which was almost a full minute off my previous race pace!! Whooo Hoooo!
I got my medal and mingled for a bit, then we headed home to take a shower and get cleaned up. I went back up to the race to check on my official time, and realized they were doing awards. I ended up finishing first place in my age group and brought home a trophy and towel as a prize, which I didn't even expect!! I was the 11th overall female too. It was the perfect ending to a perfect race:) I love this gift of running and am so blessed and thankful for every day that I get to do it:)
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