Half Marathon!

If you don't count the cold weather and 20 mph winds, Saturday's half marathon was everything I hoped it would be. We ran with a pace group that was shooting for a 2 hour finishing time. Running with a pace group was SO awesome! It was just nice to be able to follow the little balloons held by our leaders and know that if I kept them in sight I'd finish right around my goal.

In this picture you can see the little yellow balloon that was my guiding light throughout the race. When we first kicked off the pace leaders got a little excited and started running too fast. We were doing around an 8:40 minute mile and I'll admit, I got nervous. I hadn't warmed up very well and I started to wonder if I should've ran with the 2:15 group. After our leader realized his error we pulled back a little and kept to a pretty solid 9 minute mile pace. It was perfect and I really felt good! The race really seemed to fly by and I felt strong the whole time.



The course was pretty diverse. We ran on main roads, neighborhood streets and on trails. Here's Taber heading into one of the prettier sections on the trails. Those were definitely my favorite.
Here's another favorite trail. It wraps around Rice Lake and has such a pretty view. I wish we could've stayed on it longer but with so many people running I'm sure the streets were easier to avoid congestion.

And here we are back in the neighborhoods coming up on mile 11. At this point my legs were getting tired but I felt good! I knew I had more left in me and as we ran through the last water station with just over a mile to go our pace leaders said, "If you feel like you've got more in you then go for it! Push it in hard!" So Taber and I left the pace group and starting pushing it in. It felt good to pass people as we made our last effort to cross the finish line. Taber was 7 seconds ahead of me but I still finished under my time goal in 1:59:10!!!! WOO!

Here are the official results:
Becca:
1:59:10 time/9:06 minutes per mile/28th out of 80 for my age division/76th out of 315 women/
202nd out of 569 runners total.

Taber: 1:59:03 time/ 9:06 minutes per mile/50th out of 104 for his age division/124th out of 255 Men/ 197th out of 569 runners total.