The Patriot Half Marathon

You might have guessed it, but I'm a little behind on my race recaps. I have still been running my one (or more) races a month, but I just haven't sat down and written all of it down. I'm trying to catch up with the races now that our move and vacation are over, so just bare with me - I'll be flooding the blog with race recaps. 

The Patriot Half Marathon took place on Memorial Day 2012 and was my third ever half marathon. All I can say is, I love this distance! The half marathon distance is the furthest I have ever run; I wonder if I will like the full marathon distance as much? 

This race in particular was H-O-T! Luckily there was some cloud cover so that it wasn't too incredibly unbearable, but it was pretty toasty. And there were hills. And I had to run up them - it felt like in both directions (it was a keyhole course I believe). The course started at the high school football stadium. Which was seriously nice because there was lots of room for vendors, parking, and my absolute favorite: REAL bathrooms and not port a potties. Oh how I loathe port a potties! 

I went to the bathroom about 30 minutes before the start, and headed down next to the start line to watch the start of the 1 mile kids fun run. They announced that the half marathon would be starting in two minutes. And I immediately had to pee again. I didn't think that there would be time to go back up to the stadium and back to the starting line before the actual start of the race, so I just held it. Running 13.1 miles while having to pee sucked big time. I really should have just gone, but, I REALLY hate port a potties and my pace was AWESOME so I didn't want to stop and use the port a potties they had set up along the race course. I think next race, I really need to wait until the last minute to use the bathroom and not go so early. Anyway, that's enough about my having to pee :) 

Like I mentioned earlier, I had an awesome pace. For me anyways. I kept about an 11 - 12:30 minute mile pace for the race. My last half marathon's average pace was 13:15. This time, I didn't even dip into the 13 minute mile pace once. How cool is that?? As I also mentioned, it was pretty darn hot. I'm talking in the 80's around the start of the race. Or at least close to. Plus humidity. For the half marathon, they had 15 water stations. I took water at each station just because I was worried about dehydration due to the high temps. They also provided towels dipped in water to wash your face off or put on the back of your neck. That made a huge difference in my body's core temperature. They were supposed to have gels at mile 7, but I didn't see any of those. Luckily, I had crammed about 4 gels in my SPIbelt and was able to just use my own gels for the race. 

Another cool feature was pace groups. They had a nice range of pace groups as well. I started out with the 2 hour pace group (knowing that I would not be able to keep up), and was passed by the 2:30 pace group. But guess what? I was NOT passed by the 2:45 group. My goal was to finish this race around 2:45. I did 2:38:55. How AWESOME is that???? This is yet another PR for me and I could not be happier. I'm already signed up for my next half marthon - The Hottest Half in August. The heat will definitely be a challenge at this race and I am trying to mentally and physically prepare for it by running outside more and more. Actually completely since I no longer have a gym membership. For that race, I'm hoping to be around 2:35 for a race completion. I'm thinking the heat (and my general lack of running the last three weeks) will affect my time, but we'll see. I love racing! In fact, I already signed up for the 2013 Patriot Half Marathon for next Memorial Day. I hope next year I can totally rock that race and manage a much better time. Each race shows a slight improvement. Can't wait to see how far I've come next year!!