I did it!! My First Half Marathon

I did it!! My First Half Marathon

I did it!! My First Half Marathon

I’ve had a dream for a while now. A goal that I couldn’t shake. I wanted to run a Half Marathon. You may, or you may not, know this about me, but I’ve run my whole life. Almost. I started running in Junior High to stay in shape (or get in better shape) for basketball. Through the years, I have come to love running. It’s my passion, my obsession, my sanity.

I decided if I was ever going to meet that goal and cross that off my Life’s “To Do” List that the time was now. So having said all that, I didn’t go from zero to 13.1 in a few months. I was running 25 to 30 miles a week when I started training and didn’t add any more mileage to that weekly total and just restructured how I ran those miles.

Pre-training – I would run from 4 to 6 miles six days a week.

I did it!! My First Half Marathon – Training

Training -To get my mileage up for the Half, I started adding one mile to my weekend runs. (I started this in the Fall…which is also when football season is….which is also when we tailgate for 14 hours…So I would make my long runs on Sunday….do you smell what I”m stepping in?… Fall Sunday long runs are a bit um, very difficult!!) So training started looking like this:

Sunday – long
Monday – rest
Tuesday – 5 miles
Wednesday – 3 miles
Thursday –  6 miles
Friday – 5 miles
Saturday – rest or 3 miles

I always experience anxiety when I register for a race. It’s just my don’t-want-to-fail-type-A personality thingy. Not that it’s the Olympics or anything, I just have high expectations of myself. Therefore, I don’t run many races. But, I wanted the official validation of a 13.1-mile race. (Anywho, enough of that!)

Where: Germantown, TN
When: March 17, 7:30
Temperature:  52 degrees at start time and overcast skies

I did it!! My First Half Marathon – Mantras

In elementary school, my first coach always said, “Winners never quit and quitters never win!”
If you don’t think grown-ups, teachers, coaches, and parents don’t have an impact on children, think again. I was in sixth grade and I have never forgotten her words. 

If you’re unfamiliar with mantras, it’s a word or phrase that you repeat over and over again to motivate or push you through something. (Click the word to see the official definition.) In athletes, it’s a motivational phrase that pumps you up and keeps you going when you want to die stop. Like:

Winners never quit…winners never quit…winners never quit

and sometimes I just say

step step step step don’t stop… dont’ stop…step step step step don’t stop…don’t stop

What it does for me is take my mind off whatever’s hurting or making me want to stop.

In addition to mantras, below are some things that got me through.

Products that helped me

Love some Mizunos! I’d rather have Mizunos than Manolos!

I have a narrow foot. Mizunos fit me perfectly. I wear the Wave Creation…I think I have every one of them. (They number the new ones each year like Wave Creation 11, Wave Creation 12, etc) Just a note, they run half a size small. Trust!

For more tips on shoes read this!

I started taking this a month before the event. It aids in muscle recovery and endurance.

 

I take the above supplements plus a multivitamin and drank Gatorade’s Pregame Fuel 15 minutes before the run. At miles 4 and 6 I ate Sports Beans

These are fantastic! Taste just like jelly beans except with caffeine, carbs, electrolytes & vitamins B & C.

Helpful!

I liked the flavors of these GU by Gatorade better. They’re a bit thick (think toothpaste).

They’re small and I took a couple in my ‘fanny’ pack.

(and you thought fanny packs were for older tourists!)
I drank, took, shot (whatever it is you do to it), consumed one at mile 8 and one at mile 11.

 

 

If it seems like I drank and ate a lot, I did. Usually, I run on an empty stomach. I was tired but not totally dying at the end. And, I never once thought I was going to have to stop.

My sweet family rushed to 3 different locations on the route and cheered. Truthfully, I needed them at the last one, I think it was 10 or 11-mile marker. They were the last push I needed. I also tossed Wesley my fanny pack — ah, freedom!

Do not attempt a long run without this! Otherwise, you will get chafed in places you didn’t know you could get chafed in! Put it on your feet, your bra line, your panty line, hell, rub it all over!!

Wear lip ointment with an SPF.

This under Armour is the best sports bra ever! It supports and doesn’t rub.

 I have this thing about protecting my knees.

 

Just in case there was pain!

Bib number and race route.

Luckily a flat course (or otherwise I may not have run it.)

Fun shirt for my hours of pain and suffering.

 

Right after the race! I was so happy!

And just a note, you don’t wear knee braces on your calves. I was tired of them on my knees.

 

My new bling!

I can’t stop looking at it!

Thankful

I should have been holding up thumbs up instead of #1, because I was nowhere near the first.
But, whatever, I was tired. I was happy!

I finished at 2:11:34 (that’s 2 hours 11 minutes 34 seconds) My goal was 2:15 and I thought I’d be dying at that pace.

The best advice I got prior to the race was from a random sales clerk teenybopper chick (because I get in deep conversations with my sales clerks at times) at Lululemon. She had run several marathons and countless Half Marathons. She told me to have fun and enjoy it. I needed that, motivation and strength come from odd places at times, but when she said it, it was the first time I thought, ‘this could be fun’.

It was fun! (thanks random chick!)