Monumental Half-Marathon

Well, folks, I did it! I finished my first ever half-marathon! In case you're curious, here's the story:
The day before the race was as hectic as all get out (that's very hectic!). My husband, Pete, had been staying late at work every night that week. I had to pack our clothes and get us ready to check into our hotel Friday night. After I picked Pete up from work (after taking time to hang out with the kiddos), we drove up to Indianapolis. We quickly checked into our hotel in the heart of the city. We put our stuff away and headed to the Convention Center to pick up our race packets. My race bib was quite stylish, don't you think?

We shopped for a while at the race expo, then went to dinner. Luckily, our hotel was connected to the Circle Centre Mall. We went there to eat, then made our way back our hotel to rest up for the race. I also organized our race snacks:



Can you tell we like "Gu"?



The next morning, we got up early to eat, get dressed, and stretch before the race. We watched the local news and found out that it was super cold outside. That made me nervous because I am not a cold weather kind of girl. After I got over that, we bundled up and went to the starting line. We got there just in time to say hi to some other runners, then it was time to run!

I think it was 30-something degrees at the start of the race. I was so very cold and had a hard time breathing at first. Once my lungs warmed up, I was much more comfortable. The sun came up and the temperature rose a little. We chugged right along until mile 7. At that mile marker, we stopped to potty and stretch. The race organizers did a great job of having water and Gatorade available for us. We kept on keeping on until close to Mile 10. That's when my knee began to protest the race. It hurt before that, but I was able to keep running. At Mile 10, I thought maybe I should quit the whole race. At that point, I heard my dear friend, Melissa's voice. She reminded me that I had less than 5K left. I thought I could handle it, so we ran a little bit more. At Mile 11, my knee went on strike. We saw our other dear friend (and Melissa's husband), Rick who had finished the race. He provided some more encouragement, but I couldn't run anymore on my knee. We were forced to walk the last 2 miles. My dear husband was kind enough to stay with me and not run ahead.

The finish line was such a blessing! We were both so sore and so ready to be done running. We got our medals and scooped up lots of snacks for later. We had to walk back to our hotel, but we didn't mind because we had accomplished our goal and finished the race! Unfortunately, I had forgotten to pack pain medicine and muscle cream, so we were in pain for a while. We took a long nap, then hit the mall for some shopping therapy. I'm sure we looked hilarious as we tried to walk around. We were so sore that we had to walk very slowly and each step was painful. It was a small price to pay for my first race medal!

After the race, I said that I didn't want to ever do that again. It was physically painful and very time-consuming. Now that I've had time to recover, I'm still planning to run the Disney Princess half-marathon in February and I'm thinking of doing another one in May. The jury is still out on the May race, but I'm certainly thinking about it. In the end, I'm so happy that I did this. I can proudly say that I finished a half marathon and that feels great!