Halloween Half Marathon

So I did it!  I've completed my first half marathon.  I have a lot of positive and negative emotions about my first half.  I trained for my half for about two months.  The race was downhill so I set a goal of 3 hrs, but now looking back at my training a 3 hr finish was really pushing it.

I woke up the morning of the half marathon not feeling that great.  I felt the beginnings of a sinus infection coming on.  I woke up nauseous mainly because of the infection.  I really wasn't that nervous.  The thought of food just made me feel blah.  I threw a banana in my bag along w/ some extra hammer gels.  I started getting a little bit of an appetite once we got up to the race start so I ate a banana and one packet of hammer gel.

Once the race started, I was feeling pretty good until I hit mile 5.  I started gagging really bad.  I thought it was weird since this has never happened during any of my training runs.  I figured it was probably just drainage from my sinus infection.  I had it for 2 miles and then it relaxed a bit.  I started to get really sore by mile 8.  There were times I thought about calling my husband to have him come get me...lol!  When I hit mile 10, I just plan HURT, especially in my right foot.  I physically couldn't run after mile 11.  I was so disappointed, but I couldn't do it.  Plus I started gagging once again.  Stupid sinus infection!  Somewhere between mile 12-13 I started running again.

I was so glad to see that finish line!  For some reason, I just wanted to cry because I was finally there but I didn't.  My official time was  3:28:57.  Not even close to 3 hrs, but I'll take it!  To make myself feel better, there were 6 people behind me.

My thoughts during this race was I'm never running another half marathon!  Thats not true since I'm already signed up for one in May!  I'm sure it will be better since it won't be as bad as a downhill.  Those first 5 miles were the hardest!!!  Plus I have 6 months to train for the next one.