#43: run a half marathon

In January I decided to do something a little crazy--I registered for a half-marathon in my city even though I had not been consistently running (or running at all, really) for months. You might notice that in my 101 Tasks in 1001 Days challenge, many of the tasks under improve are related to health and/or fitness. Despite challenging myself to complete each of these goals though, I have not made a whole lot of progress in the past year. I am the type of person who is generally unmotivated to do something unless I have invested time/money/effort into it--which is particularly why I decided to register for the half-marathon. I knew that I wanted to get back to consistently working out, and I figured that the best way to do that was to put money towards my half-marathon registration fee. Then I COULDN'T let myself back out.

Even though I registered in January, I did not start officially training until mid-February because the race was at the beginning of May and my training program lasted 12 weeks. (I did spend January working my way back up to comfortably running 3 miles without stopping.) I used the Hal Higdon Novice 2 Training Program as a guide while training, and really liked it. If I do a half-marathon again, I will most definitely be using this guide.

Training went really well, and I actually began to enjoy running. Weird, right? When the day of the half-marathon rolled around, it was ridiculously HOT. If I had to change one thing that I did, I would have lied about my anticipated finish time when registering (I picked the 12:00min/mile or above category) so that I could have finished earlier. The heat definitely impacted my performance, and even though I completed the race, I did it much slower than I anticipated or wanted.

Despite the heat, the experience of running in the Lincoln National Guard Half Marathon was terrific. The community came out in full force and lined the streets as nearly 12,500 people ran between 13.1 and 26.2 miles. Let me just say--the signs that the community members held up were AWESOME! Some of them made me laugh out loud, and others just made me shake my head because they were ridiculous. My son and husband were waiting for me around the 6.5/7 mile mark since it was near our house. Hearing them cheer me on and getting a high five from my little guy made my day!

My mom ran the half-marathon too and she ROCKED it. (She's over 50!)
This was us pre-race.

The CS@CBA team showed up in full-force.
Having the support of these wonderful co-worker/friends while training was so important!

My mom and I after the race in our Lincoln marathon shirts and with our medals.
WE DID IT!
#finishers

Family picture after the race.
(Yes, Hayden did steal my mom's medal.)

Overall, the half marathon was a great experience, and I could see myself doing it again. I am considering registering for the Lincoln Halfsy in November... so we'll see!