We did it! (And looked like big dorks, too!)

02 May We did it! (And looked like big dorks, too!)

That’s right. You guessed it. We actually finished the Half Marathon! For the last few weeks, I’ve been longing for the day when the race would be behind me. Now that day is here and I’m a little sad. The actual event turned out to be a lot more fun than I had anticipated. My long(ish) training runs of 8 miles, 10 miles, 11 miles, and 12 miles all resulted in several days of aching knees as well as black and blue toenails! I’m not very proud of my attitude about it. I wondered if I might be getting too old for this kind of thing. I just wanted the race to be over so I could fully recover. On the flip side, as the race approached, I was very happy to notice that I was getting faster. I am still not a fast runner by any stretch of the imagination, middle-to-back-of-the-pack-ish, but it’s just nice to know my body is in better condition than it was. At least in a muscular and cardiovascular way. Joints? Eh, not so much. But I am determined to continue running more often than once a week. I’d like to run three times a week and get to the gym for some kind of strength training twice a week, but I still have to figure out exactly how that’s going to work out with the rest of life. As I looked around at all the older women (and men) competing in the race, I wondered how on earth they continue running without killing their joints? I’m thinking about investing in some Vibrams to see if they help. Also, Todd tore his hamstring about five weeks before the race and he discovered the healing power of Kinesio tape. So, Saturday night I asked him to help me tape my knees. I think it helped. I definitely still have pain, but I think it would be much worse if we’d skipped the tape.

And why do I think it would be so much worse? Because we totally rocked that Half Marathon! Ariana and I set new PRs (Personal Records), averaging 10:13 minutes per mile. Our pace for the twelve mile training run was 10:40, so I was very happy with my time. I was also surprised to see that my final time of 2:13:50 was a full minute faster than my time in the same race eight years ago. Hey, maybe you can run a six minute mile, but let me rest on my laurels for a second, okay?

All right, I’m done. Now, a word about photos. I can’t believe that none of my adoring fans came to the race to cheer me on and take pictures of us crossing the finish line. However, Ariana’s husband, Jake, did not race. So he snapped the following shots. And I have been rolling on the floor for the past half hour laughing at how hilarious we look!

Todd with less than a mile to go!

I am imagining something like the Star Wars theme to accompany this photo of Todd. But he did awesome, especially considering his recent hamstring tear. His overall time was 1:39:16.

Where’s Waldo, right? We’re the weirdos who don’t even look like we’re running.

Yes, that’s Ariana in red and Alison in blue. If we quit gabbing and ran like normal people we might have run even faster . . . but we wouldn’t have had so much fun!

So there you have it. Three months of training–done. We ran the race and felt great doing it. Maybe a triathlon next? Stay tuned . . . and I’ll try not to bore you with too many training posts.