My First 1/2 Marathon!

Lourdes and I after finishing our 1st 1/2 marathon, yay us!


Us with our awesome and dedicated little fan club (minus mom that was taking the picture) that walked for 45 minutes in the cold wind and rain to get to the finish line. Love you guys!!!


I completed my first 1/2 marathon a few days ago on sunday and am so happy that I did! I started training for it back in september when convinced to by one of my friends. I signed up with Fort Bend Fit, a marathon training group, here in Sugar Land and did my long runs with them very early on saturday morning. My sweet sister in law Lourdes also decided to start training for the 1/2 with me. We had lots of fun running at 5 am together and talking and talking for 2 hours at a time. By the time January 16th came around we both felt ready for the race and were very excited about it! On surnday morning I got up at 4:30 a.m. so that I could have breakfast and get all ready for the race. We were supposed to be parked at the race by 5:30 a.m. and then the race was to start at 7:00 a.m. Unfortunately that morning it was raining, a lot. The radar showed a huge green area where the rain was which just happened to be right over us for the next several hours! Boo! So, after being parked in our car since about 5:45 and patiently waiting to use the porta-potty before the race at 6:45, we found out the race had been delayed until 7:15. Oh man! We were both so ready to start running and had even gone to use the bathroom in the disgusting porta pottys with only soaking wet toilet paper and everything! Oh well, better just not drink any-thing else before the race starts! So then, at about 7:10 we saw a big group of people walking away from the race. Oh no, did they just cancel the race?! Sure enough they had postponed the race again until 7:45! Apparently people were really backed up on the road trying to get to the race becausae of all the rain, so they needed to wait and let everyone get there. Plus, they needed all of the cars off of the road so that we could run! Finally, we hopped out of the car to head to the starting line with only about 30 seconds to spare. We got in line and they said ready, set, go, and we were off! Woo hoo! We started out strong and I was so pumped to actually start the race. Lourdes and I both ran with our headphones so we had music to listen to which was really good. The first mile felt good, but I started getting really hot and ended up tossing my jacket down at the 3 mile marker. Then, because it was raining so much my pants were getting completely wet and slowing me down a lot! I was getting SO frustrated with myself because I had decided to wear pants. So around mile 4 I pulled them way up so that it was like I was running in shorts. Never again will I run a race in long pants, never! Then, I dropped my hat and water bottle off with our little fan club (Jacob, Jayda, Sydney, my mom, my dad, and Justin)at the 5 mile marker where they had come out to cheer us on. Thank you guys SOOOO much for coming out to see us! It meant the world to me that y'all were all out there in the rain and wind just to cheer for us! I could not have been happier to see you all when I ran by, even if I did just chunk some stuff down at ya and keep running. Hey, I was in the zone! So, once I finally got my jacket off, pants hiked up, hat off and got rid of my water bottle I felt so light and great! I took off at mile 5 and felt amazing until mile 9. I had one of my power shot gels at mile 5.5 and another one at mile 9. After mile 9 I started feeling a little heavy, but kept the pace up. I ran about an 8:04-8:07 mile pace for the first 10 miles, and then around an 8:10 mile pace for the last couple of miles. Anywho, the last few miles got pretty rough and it was just mind over matter at that point. I knew I could do it, but it sure wasn't the easiest thing I'd ever done. I made it to mile 12, but that last 1.1 miles seemed like it took for-ever-and-ever! I had apparently tied my left shoe too tight and it hadn't bothered me until the last 2 miles, and then it started hurting really bad! Thinking back I totally could of stopped and unlaced my shoe so that it didn't hurt so bad, but at the time it was not an option, I wanted to finish in the best possible time that I could! So, I finally finished, hallelujah in a time of 1:47! My goal was to finish under 2 hours, so I definitely reached my goal and was super, super excited about that! After I finished the first thing I did was take my shoes off, ahhhh, thank goodness! Then I went to get my finishers shirt and realized I should start looking for the fan club (since I hadn't seen them when I finished) and for Lourdes. I found both my family and saw Lourdes finish at the same time so that was pretty cool. After reuniting with Lourdes and chatting about how the race went we went and got the boys some food that they had at the post race party since neither one of us could even think about eating, anything! At that point it was still raining, cold and windy and quite miserable! Lourdes and I were both freezing cold and soaking wet, but were just trying to enjoy the moment. My parents took Sydney under a covering by a building while me, Lourdes, and Jayda walked around for a while getting more food and a little post race massage. The boys had headed off to get the cars that were parked several miles away, thank you boys! Jayda was such a trooper out there in the yucky weather and wanted to stay with me the entire time. She was so sweet to come with me for all of the post race festivities considering the cold rain. I sure do LOVE that little girl with all my heart and soul, sweet thing! At some point we went over to the race result tent to see if they had the results out for the 1/2 marathon yet. I could not believe it when they told me I had gotten 2nd place in my age group! WOW!! I was super excited and couldn't believe I had done so well. During the race I really had no idea where I was in relation to other people and was really just trying to get the best time I personally could get. I never imagined I would have placed in my age group! It was an overall amazing experience, even though it was raining and disgusting outside! I totally felt like that is what I was supposed to do and definitely want to do more! Yay for us!