Completed first Half Marathon!

Today I completed my first half marathon...

I didn't feel prepared for the race today as I had injured my foot a few weeks ago while doing yard work. I have taken it easy the last couple of weeks ensuring to take a day or two off between runs and limited the distance of my runs. My foot has healed but I totally felt under trained for this event.

The first hurdle was getting everyone up and out of the house... My youngest was convinced that it was too early to be up!  And that she would rather sleep!  We all agreed that it would have been better to be snuggled in bed, but we were out of the house just after 7AM.  My husband packed a picnic breakfast for he and the kids and we arrived at the race location about half an hour before the event start.   After walking around and trying to keep warm, there were two very energetic ladies who led the warm-up and then we were warned about ice and the clock started... it didn't take me long to get over the start line, but I did have to pass some walkers to start...

The day started out beautiful, clear but foggy down near the lake - at a local regional park. The route was a double loop around the lake with a short out and back towards the parking lot to get the distance correct.

Half Way!

The lake trail is listed as 10.3km around the lake... so twice around the lake plus a little more. It was a small event capped at 500 runners, but I don't think there were 500, and final results aren't posted yet. There was also a 7miler route as well (they did one loop of the lake). The trail is well maintained and fairly flat, but is built on a bog and does wind around the lake, so its not completely flat, nor is it straight.  Some of the route is over bridges, on boardwalks and up and over the dam.  The first few bridges were frosty! But we had been forewarned to expect ice on the bridges.  The dam has a 8 or so steps up and one of the boardwalks has 5 - I didn't find them took difficult the first time around, but the second the ones up the dam at approximately km 16 and in the 19th km were the hardest.

For the most part the run went as expected, I did keep myself slow during the first part of the race averaging just under 6min/km.  I finished the first 10km in
59:30, so not my fasted 10K pace, but I didn't push it in the first half as I knew I'd have 11 more to go when I got to the 10K mark. The second 10K was 1:04:37 so I didn't manage negative splits, but wasn't too far off!

Rubber Ducky Half Marathon by l3designs at Garmin Connect - Details

I found the worst part of the trail around the 9th and 19th km markings, the trail winds, has the nasty boardwalk with stairs at either end, is "bumpy" not really hilly, but short up and down spots...

The only other difficult part was the out and back right before the 21st km.... we were so close to the finish line, yet we had a to run AWAY from the finish line first! I crossed the finish line at 2:14:02 according to the clock, and 2:13:40 according to my Garmin! I beat my goal time of 2:15:00! And felt great at the end, except stopping to have my chip removed, felt like I was going to fall over if my legs didn't keep moving....

The only other request I would have would be an additional water stop... I chose to run without my water thinking the water stops would be as advertised at km 1 and 6, but the water stops were actually at km 6 and 10... so on the second loop, it was really long between the water stop at km 10 and km 16.5!

After there was a pancake breakfast: pancakes, apples, mandarin oranges and water/Gatorade...

Sunrise