Monday, September 04, 2006

A journey of a lot of miles...

... began with a single step and ridiculous amount of stubborn determination.

I rocked Virginia Beach (my finisher's medal even says so!). Final time of 2:58:26, which meant I averaged 13:36 per mile over the course distance. Yesterday was humid and sunny -- the ideal race conditions were present the day before (about 5 degrees cooler and what felt like half as much humidity). The excitement of the race and a faster than average runner in our little group meant we came out stronger than we meant to (my 5K splits were 12:18 per mile). I lost a lot of speed between mile 9 and 10 -- just after I saw my support crew and just before I saw my sailing friend Janessa, whose boyfriend's band was playing on the course. (One of the selling features of the Rock and Roll Half Marathon is live music on the course. I have to say what sold me was the "fast and flat" race course!)

As I was training for this event people said "will you do it again?" and "is there a marathon in your future?" My answers before race day were "I will tell you after race day" and "definitely not." My answers now "yes I would do a half marathon again... I have a couple of races in mind." I have about five witnesses to my statement of no more summer endurance events though! -- it was TOO HOT . Running a full marathon remains out of the question. I think 3 hours is long enough to run. I would run with Team in Training again in a heartbeat -- there were people there every step of the way when I thought what in the hell am I doing and I just want to stop running now. To the Maryland TNT staff member who walked alongside of me at mile 10 and gave me sport beans, the Northern New Jersey Coach who ran most of mile 12 beside me and to Coach Rich who took me into the finish, thank you from the bottom of my heart. It was simply an amazing journey...