I'll be honest, I was very nervous at how well I would perform Saturday morning. It was my first 1/2 marathon and I knew there were individuals who had high expectations of what I could run, however I went to the race with the determination to just have fun and do my best!
I was very happy when I saw both Tony Vakaafi and Finni there because I knew I would have someone to run with for at least a little bit. The race started and the two guys who ended up taking 1st and 2nd took off very fast. Rather then go with them like I normally would have I decided that I still had 13 miles to run. It wasn't worth wasting my energy at the beginning and so I packed it up with Finni, a German Olympic cross country skier, and some guy in a red shirt. The first couple miles was a huge mental game for me. I felt like I was going too fast and that there was no way I could hold this pace. Luckily Finni snapped me out of this. He started to struggle, and so I decided that it was my goal to keep him with me until the turn around. This started my mental toughness which I contribute greatly to my race.
We came through the 5K faster than my 5K PR as a college freshmen which was another confidence booster since as a freshmen in college Finni consistently destroyed me. At this point we had hit 5:50's consistently, give or take a few seconds, and so I formulated my race plan. I know it was WAY late, but I didn't really know what to expect in my first 1/2 marathon. I decided that I was going to run 5:50's on the way out, and then when we turned around I wanted to run 5:40's. When we came through the 10K I was shocked when I looked at my watch. We were only 10 seconds slower than my 10K road race PR and I barely felt tired! This gave me the confidence boost to start to make my move at the turn around.
Not wanting to get caught behind someone at the very sharp hairpin turn around the orange cone, I surged into the turn around and started heading back at 5:40 pace. The German skier guy went with me and soon I knew it would be between us for 3rd place. We ran together until about 7.5 miles into the race when I surged again to keep my 5:40 goal and he stayed behind. The next 4 miles were tough to run alone, but I stayed on my goal. Unfortunately just after mile 11 my ankle started to hurt so I decided to back off a little bit rather then risk injury. I was passed by the German guy right before mile 12, but I held strong right behind him until the finish. My final time was 1:16:46. I ran very well and stayed fairly consistent through the whole race. I know I can run faster, so I am very excited to do another 1/2 marathon! Congrats to Finni and Tony as well who also ran well!
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