Huntsville Half Marathon 2010

First, I have to say Happy Birthday to my Mom and my sweet sister in law Tonia. Although I like consider Tonia more of a sister than an in-law, it makes it easier to like my brother if I think of him as not a blood relative (uh, he's Ben, need I say more) and Tonia as more closely related. Happy birthday, ladies. I love you two! I decided to celebrate their birthday's by making myself sweaty and less attractive, I felt it was the least I could do. I know I have said this before, but I have never thought of myself as a runner. I just don't run long distances very fast, although I'm not half bad at sprinting. I think I confirmed this today as I ran (and I use the term "ran" very loosely) the Huntsville Half Marathon. I am, indeed, a wogger at best, which I can't figure out how I've even kept up with my two running buddies (Shelby and PG) during our training runs as they are significantly faster. I will warn you, since this is the farthest and most I've run in my life I am going to write about the whole 13.1 mile event, so continue reading at your own risk.

Last weekend I missed our 12 mile training run because I was in Oklahoma with some friends, and I was pretty sketchy about this coming race because I felt like I hadn't trained enough. But, my "coach" assured me I'd be OK. I am assuming by OK she meant that I would live through it. This is true. I did live through it, but only barely.

Since the 3 of us are supposed to be training for a marathon, but due to my increasingly large stomach and PG possibly being in another country, this race was going to be our big one together. So we decided the party should start the night before. Huntsville is about a 45 minute drive away, just far enough it was legitimate to get a hotel room and enjoy the pre race pasta dinner and packet pick up. So, we left together and ventured to Huntsville. We spent Friday night laughing, avoiding coming to complete stops at stop signs, talking and watching a movie about an Olympic runner (uh, 4:04 miles anyone?) and then finally falling asleep. It was a great night. Now, let's suffice it to say that when a hotel has a complete breakfast with waffles, eggs, biscuits and gravy, I can't say no. Even though the smart person would tell you the breakfast of champions (or people attempting a half marathon) is NOT a waffle, egg, and biscuits soaked in gravy. But alas, I couldn't resist and stuffed myself silly an hour and a half before the race. Brilliant.

Race time rolled around, and the 3of us started the together, although it didn't take long to separate. There were probably just under 400 runners, and quite a few were doing the 5k. I made the 3 of us work our way to the back of the line. We started behind a cute old guy wearing purple bike shorts and a lei, who we thought was doing the 5k. Bless his heart. The count down started, and we all took off. It immediately climbed a steep hill, followed by a less steep hill, followed by a semi slope. Needless to say I was slightly behind the other 2 by the top, where I decided I'd like to keep breakfast in it's rightful place and slowed my roll. Until I started getting passed by what seemed like everyone, including the old guy with the lei, and an older couple with white hair. This is one of those moments I am so relieved that I am not a competitive person, because let's face it, if I competed against the old people passing me and they still won I would have ran off the track and just gone home. It's like racing a mini van-even if you win it's still a mini van. So, I was pretty content to tell myself, "Slow and steady wins the race... or at least keeps you alive." And then secretly hoped they would trip so I could pass them. By the time I hit mile 2 I had to go to the bathroom. Again. Thankfully the only person in line was a guy who decided he needed a few minutes to himself in the porta potty, which I guess he deserved since he sprinted past me when he saw it. I won't discuss what the seat looked like when he was done but let's just say I think he had corn for dinner, and if I thought I could have made it across the street in the woods without getting seen or wetting my pants, I would have rather gone there. But no sweat, I used the entire roll of toilet paper and got through. Although, when I got out of the john I looked around and realized the disadvantage to a small race. I was the absolute last runner. Dead last. Again, I am thankful I am not competitive and was content to keep my turtle pace.

I kept running, and as the race doubles back quite often I got to run into PG and Shelby again, which was encouraging and brought a smile to my face. I picked up the pace long enough to pass a guy in the Clydesdale group... which, is men 250 pounds or more. I felt good about myself. Until I realized I was still about 100 yards behind the lei man in the purple shorts and another couple my parents age. Nuts. So the four of us kept a pretty steady pace until about mile 6 when the wife got a cramp in her leg and had to stretch, and the husband decided to walk. That's right. They had to actually STOP jogging for me to pass.

I spent a huge portion of the race running alone, which was really different from the Ten for Texas. There were 2,000 runners in that race, and I came in roughly in the middleish. I was relieved I had my Ipod Shuffle (thanks, Whit) and enough songs on there I never had to hear the random Disney love songs that somehow snuck their way in. And, Huntsville is a very pretty little town. It was a beautiful day, and the run had great scenery, even if it was full of hills. We ran past Joe Byrd cemetery where they bury the convicts that don't have family who will pay for a funeral, we ran past some beautiful old houses, fields, old railroad tracks, the Walls unit (if you're not familiar with Huntsville, it's where we execute our convicts.. GO TEXAS), and a warehouse across from the unit full of bats... which made the area WREAK of urine. Picture the warehouse from the movie Batman-and then pretend like you could smell it. That was one area I was able to speed up in, just so my incredible pregnant sense of smell wouldn't make me keel over. I especially enjoyed running past the unit-the guard gave me two thumbs up as I wogged passed him. And, just as I was starting to feel discouraged a smidgen (because of the stench from the bats and the hills.. being the last runner (well, second to the last but I think Clydesdale never finished), I saw Jeff and Chunky at the top of one of the hills. Somehow, that gave me energy to boost my pace and whistle for the dog, who bolted towards me. It was pretty cute and very encouraging.

Now halfway through you pass the start again and do the loop a second time. I am not going to lie, when I saw that big hill again I thought whoever designed this race was cruel. Especially because it took me F O R E V E R to do the first half, but I decided to ignore the pain and make my second lap in less time, which I did by almost 8 minutes. The second time around did seem to go a little faster because I felt like I knew the way and had things to look forward too. Especially when I got to about mile 10 and the guard gave me thumbs up again. And the 68 year old lei man had finally decided to quit taunting me and slow his roll. That's right folks, slow and steady gets you past the old guy. We walked for a few minutes together where he encouraged me saying, "We've got 3 miles left and 45 minutes to complete the race, so as long as we stay at 15 minute pace we'll make it." He was so cute, seriously. But, despite my quads feeling like they'd been run over by a truck, my ankle feeling like I nailed it with a hammer and my hip feeling like it was dislocated, I felt like I could keep my wogging pace. So, with that little "slow and steady" in my head I pushed on. I did change it to, "Slow and steady gets you to the end... " since I wasn't winning any race. And I managed to keep my pace enough that I stayed ahead of the lei man, and passed a few other people who might have been dying. I was just relieved that I wasn't the very last one in, even if it was close. So there you have it. I completed a half marathon. And I was still able to walk at the end, although just barely.

I just gotta say though, I loved having Jeff there to encourage me, it meant a lot... I loved having my running buddies there, they are such an inspiration, and I am so relieved I didn't die!