Austin Half Marathon

This past weekend, I headed to Austin with 4 others to run in the Half Marathon that was happening on Sunday morning. We headed out from school on Friday afternoon, and arrived in Austin at almost 11pm. The drive is close to 7 hours! I did some outlet shopping on Saturday (had lots of success at Banana Republic!) and got to visit some of the stores I'd been hearing about from my new-found American friends (REI = American equivalent of MEC and Whole Foods, which yes, has arrived in Canada, but I had never been).

The race was at 7am on Sunday morning. Both the half marathon and the marathon started at the same time. There were 12,000 runners gathered by 6:30am, in the dark, with a temperature of about 40 degrees farenheit (not warm!). The half and full marathons followed the same course for the first 10 miles. Along the race course were many bands and tons of spectators. The race bibs that were printed with our numbers also had our names printed on them which meant that there were random people in the crowd yelling "Go Ginny!" which was a pleasant surprise when you didn't expect to have anyone cheering for you.

While I had been doing some training to prepare for this race, I really wasn't sure how it was going to. I'd been feeling pretty crappy for the past couple of weeks, with random colds and coughs. I'd also had some trouble with both my new and old pairs of running shoes (both were giving me blisters)... So, I didn't have huge expectations for the race. I was hoping to finish in just under 2 hours, which is something I had accomplished in the past.

At the race expo on Saturday, I found out that the course, being in the USA, was only going to have mile markers instead of kilometer markers. It took me a little while to get my head around this because I am used to pacing myself by the kilometer. I have a good idea of how fast I should be running each km, but I hadn't ever thought of running in terms of miles. I did a little math that night and figured that if I ran 9minute miles, I would finish in approximately 1hour 58 minutes, so that is what I set out to do.

I guess adrenaline and the crowd, and the gorgeous sun that came out gave me a little push because I finished in 1:54:14. I was soooo happy. I can't wait to get emailed the pictures of me crossing the finish line as I'm expecting to see a huge smile across my face. That race time meant I was 387 out of 3006 women, which made me quite proud.

Because the race was so early, we got to enjoy the rest of the day in Austin (had lunch at Whole Foods, played Shuffleboard, went to the Alama movie theatre, where you eat dinner while you are eating, and had the obligatory nap). Austin is definitely a city I can see spending some more time in. It has a very laid-back, unique feel to it. There are many independent stores/restaurants as well as local chains. The city has a river running through it with some great running paths. I was very impressed.

We had opted to take Monday off of work so that we wouldn't have to sit in the car for 7 hours after just running 21km. This was absolutely the right choice. My legs were quite sore on Monday, as well as Tuesday, but feel great today. I'm now trying to pick my next goal race.. There is an upcoming 10k in Monterrey, so perhaps I'll do that.

I'm waiting to get emailed some races pictures from the others who went with me... I'll try to post them when I get them.