Monday, August 19, 2013

Half Marathon #2 Completed!

I finished my second half marathon (and the first one I actually trained for) this weekend! My dad was also along for the ride, coming out from Indiana to brave 13.1 miles at altitude. It was a small race, but it was a great course and a beautiful morning!


Dad and I left Park City around 5am. The race started and finished at different places, so you had to park at the finish and get shuttled to the start. We arrived before the sun came up in Draper City Park, hopped on a school bus and got taken to the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon. After watching the sun come up over the canyon, we were off!

The course was much more challenging than I was expecting. The website had emphasized the fact that it was a fast, downhill course, so I wasn't too terribly concerned about hills. I was very, very happy that I had trained on hills, though, because despite there being a net elevation loss, there were definitely a lot of hills! By mile eight, I was starting to get blisters on my right foot and it was heating up (it was a rather hot day in the Valley). I was definitely struggling as I hit mile 10 and then, at mile 12, I somehow managed to follow the wrong runner and go off course for about a half mile. Unfortunately, that means my official time is above my goal time (2:32:40), but my actual time was within it! I guess that means I'll just have to run another half marathon for my wounded pride's sake :)

After the race, Dad and I had a leisurely afternoon. I'll write more about his visit in my next post! Today, two days post-race, I'm still pretty sore, but I was back at the gym today. I'm hoping to be running again by Thursday or so. I've always been bad about not sticking with running after a race is over, so I'm determined to not do that this time around. It's never any fun to start over with running from square one!

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