Race report – Madison Half Marathon, May 30, 2010

REPOST from Monday, May 31, 2010 at 9:49am

Overall – it was Mad City hot, but still a decent race, and I’m proud of our results. (Most of the time that is. I vacillate between wishing I’d done better and being pretty happy with it). Josh ended up at 1:58:16 and I finished at 2:15:03. Original goal times were 1:45 and 2:00-2:10. If you want any perspective from Josh, you'll have to harass him about it. But here are my thoughts:

After getting down to the capitol square, making a random lady take our picture (isn’t it nice? Josh thought I was weird for wanting it so badly), and hitting up the port-a-pots, we headed to our respective pace groups. The 2:00 pace group was so packed that I couldn’t get anywhere close to the pace leader, and never was able to find or catch them the whole race. So I just did my own thing. I did somehow end up right next to Pat Coyne however, one of our fellow Endurance House teammates, who was also trying to catch the 2:00 pace group. It was fun to run with her for a bit, but she left me pretty quickly. :P (She ended around 2:10) Also saw Keith Hatcher, who started out way back, blew past me and Josh, and proceeded to lay down a 1:48 time!

My quads were still a little tired from Thursday’s brick workout, but I had settled in to it by mile 3 or so. Which is about when I got passed by the lead marathoner (Holy cow! Fast!) It was his mile 10, but I did end up eventually beating him down the finish shoot. ;) By about 15 minutes.

It was definitely hot - I felt my face flushing already at halfway through the first mile, and made sure I drenched my body with water at every aid station. So of course I was wondering how Josh was doing, since he does NOT do well in heat. (Last weekend while mtn biking, he managed to achieve a state of heat exhaustion.) Around mile 7 or so, I saw a guy being wheeled off the course on a stretcher– same shorts as Josh, same color hair and cut, and his back to me. I just about freaked. Is that my husband?!?!? Thankfully, I quickly noticed the tattoo on his arm. Whew!

Pretty much uneventful after that – running, running, pouring water on myself, running, weaving across the street to hit the sprinklers people had set up for us, running some more. I walked a bit around mile 8 and 10. My quads started cramping up, bad, around mile 10, and I had to force myself to run. It actually hurt a little less running than walking, but I kept forgetting that. :P By this point my shoes were squishy from all the water I’d dumped on myself, and I ended up with 3 blisters. But I was definitely cool!

The spectators were great. At one point, as I was dragging myself through mile 8, I spotted an old lady, standing all by herself on the side of the road, just silently clapping as we ran by. I teared up a little. Because yes, I am my mother’s daughter. Actually, I think I teared up 4 times. But hey, that’s less than once every three miles, so not bad, right?! :P Anyway, lots of people cheering us on, and holding up some great signs. Some of my favorites:
- “Your feet hurt so much because of all the @$$ you’re kicking.”
- “I’m proud of you. Yes, you!!”
- On the hill right before the finish line: “Suck it up,” with a skull and crossbones.
- At the last aid station: “Last water for 1.25 miles. 716 miles to Wall Drug. Speed limit: As fast as you can run.”
- And my absolute all time favorite: “That’s not sweat, it’s your fat cells crying!”

So overall, it was fun and I’m happy. Like I said, at times I’m upset that I didn’t make that 2:00-2:10 goal, but then I remind myself – I didn’t taper for this race, I haven’t been training specifically for it, it was hot and they even had to cancel the race two hours early, I’ve only been running for a year and a half, I was only over goal by 5 minutes, and – I beat last years time by 8:27. Whoo hoo! :)