13.1

Mission accomplished! I completed the half marathon!

My main goal was to finish. Check. I had several time goals: ambitious, realistic, and easily achievable. The ambitious goal went out the window pretty quickly because the heat was rough. The race started at a Yellow event alert level, but that was bumped up to Red less than an hour in to the race. I definitely could have met or beat the realistic goal, but I was running with two women from my training group and one of them was really struggling in the heat. Between mile 4 and mile 5 she needed to slow down, so we changed our game plan to stick with her through the race. We shifted to 3:3 intervals, but even that was a challenge after a while, so we did a lot of walking and ran when she felt like she could. We stopped at every first aid station for ice and had a few other stops as well. But we completed the race, and we did it together.

Here are the splits. That was probably a slightly faster start than it should have been, but in the moment I felt good that I was not going out too fast. In fact, the beginning of the race felt so good, I came up with an on-the-spot mantra for the race: "I could do this all day." I really felt like I could and kept telling myself that throughout the race.

mi	Pace (min/mi)
1	13:03
2	12:48
3	13:34
4	14:23
5	15:22
6	15:40
7	15:49
8	15:41
9	18:10
10	17:51
11	16:53
12	17:17
13	18:03
14	10:05

One of the coaches from our training group gave us our medals, and I admit that I got a bit choked up in that moment.

I'm not sure if I'll do another one. It's not highly likely, but never say never. Plus, I have to admit that I would love to do one in cooler temps to see what I could do time-wise.

I'm feeling surprisingly good post-race. I think some of that came from not pushing as hard as I could, but also from good training and lots of hydrating.

Here's a picture of me with my medal after the race!