Half Marathon Highlights

I questioned whether or not it was appropriate to put half marathon and highlights in the same sentence. This was hard and I didn't do as well as I had hoped for, but I did better than expected. In training one day I did 8 miles in 80 minutes, something I had never thought possible, but that day I thought that I may actually reach my goal of running the 13.1 miles in 2 hours 15 minutes. Thursday night I got the stomach bug and could not stop throwing up. Friday night Cooper had symptoms of croup that kept me up all night. Saturday I felt nauseous all day and I didn't know if it was from the flu, the lack of sleep, or race nerves; regardless of what it was it was not how I hoped my pre-race day would feel. But Sunday morning I felt good. I felt pretty good up until mile 7, then I started to feel not good. I spent 2.5 miles debating whether or not to keep running in misery, or to take it easy and enjoy myself. I chose to take it easy and I slowed down, I stopped and stretched when I wanted to and I even walked some. So I didn't finish in my goal time, and I didn't run the entire distance, but when I crossed the finish line I almost cried because I felt great, like a winner and I didn't want to die or pass out, I was just happy! Happy that I did it, and happy it was over.
Afterwards my sister and I were talking about some of the things we liked most during the race. Here are my Half Highlights.
5. As we were waiting to start the race we looked around at all the people from their hotel balconies watching the crowd, then we started laughing because one guy was up there in his undies watching us. It was funny!
4. I saw a real sweet looking old man, like really old and wrinkly with glasses and an old man hat on, he was cheering us on and holding a sign. The sign said I LOVE FAST WOMEN it was super funny.
3. Just after mile 5 I heard some one yelling "come on Lindsey, you can do it! Looking good!" it felt so nice to hear someone cheering for me! I just ignored the girl to the right of me waving to him.
2. I didn't see this girl but my sister told me she was running behind someone wearing a shirt that said "does this shirt make my butt look fast" Clever, I love it!
1. Crossing that finish line! With 30,000 runners even this late in the race the finish line was crammed so it wasn't as fun as the Moab 1/2 that I had done before, but I was so emotional for some reason and it just felt great!
I am glad I slowed down and as much as I would like to say it was because of the stomach bug, the biggest part was that my body just wasn't ready for 13 miles. I am getting old and I hadn't trained as well as I needed to, but it was a good experience. I don't know if I will do a 1/2 marathon again, but I do love running and look forward to running for fun and not for fear!