Well today was awesome, I finished that 1/2 marathon that I have been training oh so long for.
What an incredible emotional run, when I crossed that finish line I covered my eyes so no one would see me cry.
Why so emotional? Well, this last event pretty much closes out this blog (See why I am ending this blog). I journey that I found extremely interesting and rewarding, then again, most hard things are.
Don’t worry about the blog it continues in another form (http://www.apolonio.com/blog)
I have so much more to accomplish and there are so many supportive people, so I can’t quit now.
Anyway back to the Marathon, you can see from my last post how anxious I was. Although the physical preparation was started months ago, there was some mental and final prep things to do.
First off, I wanted to make sure my run was not stopped by a bowel movement (yeah gross but true), so I was extremely careful in what I ate over the past few days.
I wanted to make sure I was hydrated for the run so I drank a lot of fluids throughout the week, unfortunately I drank too late when I got up this morning, so when I got to the starting line I had to pee bad. Fortunately, the lines were still relatively short (still farking long), and was able to get in there before the start.
I packed up my goodie bag and placed it in the good hands of the UPS drivers and hoped to see it again in a few hours.
Walking around a little helped alleviate the jitters, at 6:45 I drank my 5 hour energy drink. Which may have been too early, because I started to understand the corral system. There were about 39 sections called corrals and each section started about a minute or two after the one before it. So by the time I hit the start line, nearly an hour went by. We finally started and I pressed “start” on my watch before crossing the start line.
Start Line 2010
I was worried that my “fans” were going to leave thinking they did not see me, in a way this had a side effect of getting me to run faster.
The first mile marker was reached in about 10 minutes, I was very surprised at this pace, maybe it was a mix of the adrenaline and the level road that allowed me to run this quick.
I skipped the first watering holes, because I felt well hydrated, I am not sure if this contributed to degradation in my speed towards the end.
The crowds started thinning out and I noticed I was seeing numbers from the corral groups ahead of me, so I was hoping to catch up to my coworker Alan.
While I was hitting around the 2 and 3 mile marker I noticed a familiar face keeps zipping by. I’ll call her “J”,we were running nearly an identical pace. Which in a way was good because I needed a “pacer”.
As I hit mile 5, I started to look for my “fans”, lo and behold, there they were.
It was the morale boost I needed. As I passed them I bid them hello and goodbye in the space of about 2 seconds, but that was all that I needed.
To my surprise another group of “fans” were looking out for me. That was a huge bonus and I was able to keep up the pace.
At about mile 8 I felt what was starting to be cramps in my toes, so I decided to get my first drink of this race’s version of gatorade. I was starting to doubt my strategy of passing on water. Also, water is pretty hard to drink from a cup when you are running.
Mile 9 was interesting, we started going up a hill and merged from a nice wide street to a narrow bike pathway. This is the only time I walked during the race, not because I wanted to, but because it was just way too congested to run.
I came out of the congestion into the Mount Baker Tunnel, and I lost a great deal of momentum. Also the cramping was more evident.
After a few I appeared out of the tunnel and claimed Hallelujah, its all downhill from here.
Not true… after a few hundred yards I came across another steep incline.
Sadly, this was not the last of the hills either.
At this point, the mile markers felt farther and farther apart. But as I hit mile 11, I was thinking, “This is less than a 4+”.
I saw mile 12 downtown and in my mind I thought “this is a simple 1 lap around RTC” but cramping started setting in more frequently, if I tried to to kick and lift my legs for more speed my toes would cramp.
At mile 12.5 the last song of my long playlist ended. But instead of looking for a new playlist I dropped the earbuds and drove on.
It was heartening to see the 26 mile marker for the Full Marathoners. The math in my head said I only had .1 miles to go, but alas, their ending route was different from the 1/2 marathoners so it was longer then I thought.
At long last I saw the finish line, and found some gas left in the tank. I checked my watch and saw that if I pushed, I could finish within 2 1/2 hours.
I did.
As a slowed down after the finish line I pressed “stop”. It stopped at exactly 2:30.00, so I knew that I had a good chance of beating 2 1/2 since I pressed start before passing the start line and stop after passing the finish time.
Exactly 2:30.00
When I crossed the finish line, it was so emotionally overwhelming, not that I finished a 1/2 marathon, but that all the training for the past year, from struggling to run a 1/2 mile got me through this run in a time I absolutely did not expect.
After the run, I met up with my buddies at work, we all finished 13.1 that day. I would post pictures but I feel the need to ask their permission first. But it was all good.
I lost my beer ticket, so I thought it was fate for me not to drink, but I nice lady gave me hers, so I took it as a sign that it was OK. I had my beer.
I could not find Alan, but afterwards I did see on the results web page that he completed the race as well.
As for “J”, she beat me by a couple seconds…. maybe next year 😉
For me, I can say I beat 2:30, but here is a screen capture as proof
My Pace Half Marathon 2010
My Time Half Marathon 2010
As a final note, yeah mostly water but still Makes it a 50lb weight loss
Weight: 244.8