Get Your Rear in Gear 1/2 Marathon 1/3/09

After talking about doing this race while we were at the condo we finally signed up, me for the 1/2 and Aly & Brooke (our 18 year old daughter) signed up for the 5k.  So we headed back to Greer with a stop at Run-In (our local shoe store).  Jana and Amos had told us to go get ourselves Nike Lunar trainers and talk to Jeff the owner.  Friday evening at  6:00 closing time there we were, Aly, Brooke and myself trying on shoes.  We all got our Nike's and headed for home.  At Run-In I had asked Jeff to hook me up so I could finish the race, he did by selling me Carbo Force drinks and GU packs.  (Told me to drink the Carbo force the night before and take a GU every half hour during the race.)  

Race morning we were up bright and early headed to TR.  It was cool about 45 and a little overcast, great weather for running.  I had only run 1 10k race before in my 30's so I started real slow and had a goal of finishing in 10 minute miles, about 2:10.  I didn't have the Garmin 405 yet so I just started slow like 11 minute miles for the first couple until I met Dennis Locke who had a Garmin.  I ran with him asking him the time and his goals etc... He was trying to finish about like me.  At about 6 miles I left him and took off by myself.  I was really getting tired after we ran through Furman and the miles 9 thru 11 felt like they were 2 each.  Aly and Brooke drove down to cheer me on at about 11 so that felt real good.  Also the cowbell ringers, don't know who they were but every time I saw them I ran over and slapped five to get a little extra energy as I had left my running pouch open and lost all my GU packs after only taking 1. Guess I really am a newbie at this thing.  I saw a few people ahead of me on the Swamp Rabbit Trail section of the run and tried to catch them and did.  (I had started last so I could pass some people my little mind game with myself).  The finish line at TR YMCA looked really good and the clock was at 2:09 something when I could read it so I sprinted in and finished in 2:09:24.  That felt really good and I actually finished 13.1 miles and was still walking, awesome!  I saw Nate Coponen at church the next day and said running a half marathon was like playing 9 holes of golf, you really need to finish the back nine.  So now a marathon is on my mind.

Aly and Brooke finished the 5k race and went down to Starbucks they saw me on their way and cheered me on.  The funny thing is they left before the Trophy presentations.  They tell me Aly tells Brooke "this is our first race so we didn't win anything anyway so lets go".  This turned out to be a joke because when they came back to the finish with me they decided to go look at the finish sheet and Aly had took 2nd in Masters and Brooke 2nd in her age group.  So they got their really nice trophies and we headed home.  Being novice runners during the race Brooke was running to garbage cans to throw out her paper cups, they still came in 2nd.  We all were very excited about this running thing now especially when the first race they had placed so well. Aly organized our family to run a couple races a month for the next five months and now we are really starting to get into this running thing.