After last year's injury a month before I was supposed to run the Phoenix Marathon, I was really excited to run it this year! I decided to run the half with a couple of my friends, so we have been training together for a couple of months. The big day arrived, bright and early! Erin, Rachel and Anna picked me up at 4 am. The drive was supposed to take us an hour. Which it did, until we got to the exit. It seemed that most of the racers decided to arrive at the same time as we did, so the freeway was backed up for about a mile. It took us an hour to get off the exit and get parked. At this point, we were stressing about how late we were going to be! By the time the shuttle dropped us off at the starting line, we had about ten minutes to turn in our gear bags, go to the bathroom and stretch. So of course the lines for the port-a-potties had hundreds of people waiting. We were still waiting when the starting gun fired. Finally the line cleared out, we did our business, turned in our bags and got started about ten minutes late. It was not a big deal since we had timing chips in our bibs. The crowds had pretty well cleared out when we started, but then we were behind all the slow people, so we had a bit of fun running slalom style around people for the first mile or two.
The race was fun. We enjoyed a couple of aid stations that were being manned by missionaries from the Phoenix mission! At about mile 10, we decided that if some of us had more energy than others at the end, they would split off and go as fast as they could. We usually stick together, but we didn't want to slow each other down. At mile 11, I told my friends to go ahead and ditch me, I wasn't sure I could finish. I was mad at myself for not making up the 12 mile training run that I had missed two weeks earlier when we went to Utah. I hadn't done a long run in three weeks and I could feel it. I was losing power. When I got to the next aid station, I drank three cups of water and Gatorade while I walked. Then I told myself to get moving and finish the race! I started running again and only stopped to get a drink of water (I'm not talented enough to drink and run), and I decided that I could push through. By mile 12 I was feeling strong and determined. That last 1.1 mile seemed a lot longer than it really was! I pushed through though and finished the race! My final time was 2:07:39, which is ten minutes faster than my last half, which was six years ago!
My friends Anna, Erin, and Rachel. Between the four of us we have 22 children!
You can tell by this graph where I stopped for a drink. This makes me laugh.
And here are my splits. Strava clocked me at a 9:40 average pace, so I'm going with that! Other than my mental/physical breakdown at mile 12, I am happy with how consistent we were with our pace. It's really hard to run a consistent race when there are so many thousands of runners!
It was lots of fun and I'm ready to sign up again for next year! Who's going to join us?
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