Race Recap & a Revelation

I'm just sitting here resting on a wonderful sunny Sunday afternoon and figured I should write the race recap while I'm still basking in the joy of a new personal best.  First of all though, I wanted to tell you about a moment I had while running solo yesterday.  I think I've only run alone twice since this half marathon training clinic started at the end of February.  Not because I'm scared or hate running alone but because I'm self-conscious.  There's safety in numbers.  Nobody is looking at one person when there is a group running by.  I was always worried about being slow or looking silly or looking fat.  Stupid I know, so stupid.  Then Saturday morning came.  I knew I wanted to get in about 5 km.  I also had to go to my running store to pick up a spibelt (love it).  I mapped how far it was from my condo to the store and back and it is exactly 4 miles.  I decided to run there and back so I had an actual destination and then once I was there, I really had no choice but to run back.  I ended up taking another way home but kind of goofed and ended up going almost 7 km but managed to stop in at a mom & pop little store for a bottle of water.  Anyhow, that first two miles was fast for me and I was having a great time.  By the time I got to the running store, all my self-consciousness was gone.  I remember when I would see people running, short, tall, fat, skinny, young, old, slow, fast, I always thought "I wish I was doing that".  I never thought mean things or laughed at them.  So I figured, if someone is laughing at me for any reason, then f*ck them, and they're probably not a very nice person in real life.  And if they are looking at me wishing they were doing it or thinking "good for her", then awesome.  Either way, I'm good.  So I'm relieved that I will no longer be missing any of my homework runs because I don't want to go alone.  YES!!!!

Okay, the race recap.  It was the 9th annual police service half marathon and they also have a two person relay.  My partner was my super friend from work Nicole.  We are both redheads so our team name was Gingers Kick Back.  She likes to say I talked her into doing it but the conversation went like this "hey Nicole, you wouldn't want to do this relay with me would you?".  Less than one second passed before I got a Sure!  I was running the first leg. Nicole is super speedy so it made more sense for me to run and then wait for her at the finish line for 45 minutes than it was for her to run and then wait for me for an hour and twenty.  I was really paranoid that I was going to sleep in so the night before, my coffee table looked like this:

I went to bed at 9:30 pm so I could be nice and rested.  I slept solidly till 4:30am, woke up for a bit, fell back to sleep and woke up again at 5:30am.  At that point, I got up.  I knew if I fell back to sleep, I would likely sleep in and didn't want that!!  I chugged some water, made some breakfast, and put all my stuff on and out the door.  It went down to -4 last night I think so I had to scrape my windshield.  Not impressed!  When I got there, I checked my bag and then wandered about looking for people I knew.  I found a few and then my brother, who I didn't even know was going to be there was at the start right before I took off!  Got a last second high-five and I was off.  The first few miles were great.  Then it started to warm up a bit.  I took my jacket off and tied it around my waist.  Kept on trucking.  Mile 5 was tough although the water station cheered me up by naming themselves Cinq-o de Mile-O.  (I found out later that day, they had shots of beer!  Damn!) I looked down at my watch a little later and realized that if I was running an even 10 km, I would be about to set a new personal best.  My last 10 km was in October  and I finished with 1:24:15.  I was looking down at my watch just waiting for it to roll over to 6.2 miles and when it did, I was at 1:17:14!!!  That made my day.  Although, I still had another 1/2 mile to go so celebration was short-lived.  I ran around the corner onto the main drag where the relay exchange was and I was worried I wouldn't find Nicole because there was so many people!  I was scanning and then up ahead she and another guy were partly into the roadway jumping up and down!  It was so funny, they almost looked co-ordinated. I think he must have been the relay partner for someone near me.  I slapped Nicole's hand and she was off!  At 10.7 km, I was at 1:22:47.  I'll take it!

I made my way back into the park to wait for Nicole.  This race is really cool because you wait for your partner and then when you see them coming, you jump out onto the course and run the last stretch together and cross the finish line together.  Then you get a medal with two straps and the medal comes apart like a bff necklace, hehe.  I calculated what time I thought she'd be coming around and I started stretching out and limbering up.  I stiffened almost instantly and was thinking that I might jump out to run with her and then just fall down.  Baha!  So something I would do.  When I saw her come around the corner, I jumped out onto the course and started jumping up and down like she did, I have to admit, it was a lot of fun and then sprinted hard to finish line and crossed!!!  Team time 2:10:49.  Our individual times are a little wonky online because we ran in reverse order than what we registered so it shows me as 1:15, I WISH!  So subtract my garmin time from our total and Nicole ran her half in a blistering 48:02 if my math is right.  Wowsers.  Best relay partner ever!

Just noticed that both years, I got the same side of the medal, hehe.

I need to get better at medal pictures.  What is happening with my arms?!

WE'LL BE BACK!

The other really cool thing about the day is that I started thinking about what the pictures would look like and would I look huge and honestly, I loved all the pictures we took.  I didn't think "ew, I look too big in that one" even once.  Happy fricking day!!!