"I Didn't Taper"

 Today I woke up a year older.  I actually protest that thought, technically I woke up a DAY older, on the anniversary of my birth.  So.  As I was saying, TODAY I rocked the Rock Your Socks Half Marathon.

Happy 34th Birthday to me.  

Some people choose to sleep in, I choose to run.

ok, can I just say how awesome this photo makes me look, and that I love P90X?  I'm on week TWO.  

Any of you who are doubters, let me say that again, WEEK 2.

TMB & I started at an easy pace, chatting comfortably.  At some point I said I was a little worried about tanking during the race.  Three weeks ago I had a ba-ad experience with some GU that resulted in an emergency key hand off/car return to get me on the course.  The run was a 12 miler, and I was nervous about reaching mile 12 with nothing in me.  And T says, "Well, if you don't do well, no big deal, can always say, 'I didn't taper'."

At mile 5, the unthinkable happened, I found myself at the front of the pack!  Leading a Half Marathon!  I think I would be remiss if I failed to mention that the actual leaders were so far ahead of us that they had time to stop & use the restroom, visit with some spectators, and step back onto the course a few seconds after we passed them... within 2 minutes, the moment was passed and I was back in the middle of the pack.

Kudos to the race director for choosing a pleasant course.  There were enough gentle hills to make it interesting, but not so many to make you hate it.  It was a mix of big roads that gave way to neighborhoods that lead us to country lanes that wound through scenic Glen Allen, VA.  The spring air was fragrant and the trees shaded our run with a glorious canopy of green.  Tall grass puffed in the breeze, waving their full seed heads at knee height.

It was lovely, the roads were generally free of traffic except for a few touchy spots and, ... "GET OF THE EFFIN' ROAD!!!"  Yea, well, no really good race report would be complete without an angry redneck, right?

Seriously though, we ran the first "half" at an easy conversation pace and we picked up our friends for the finish, so the 2nd Half was a 10K.  Other than the hairy moment of sprinting over a set of train tracks just as the lights started to flash, it was not exciting, and as expected T pulled away.  Not a huge surprise there.  She's a strong runner.

At mile 9/10ish *I don't know where, I decided to crank on the speed and catch up to T.  She was pretty close looking.  Yea, at that point she must've decided the same thing about the ladies ahead of her, because I turned up the speed, and she was just gone.  Then at around 11 Cookie arrived beside me to "catch T", which we gave some good effort on, but again, no.  Cookie did leave me though, and suddenly I realized, "hey, I'm at mile 12.85!  Wow, I REALLY should have put a little more speed on because I feel GREAT."  So I checked my watch and realized that... I could get a PR.  No seriously, an "easy run" suddenly was going to be a knuckle biter down to the wire race against the second hand (figuratively, of course) on my watch.  And I did.  I hit Garmin 13.1 at 2:06:23, a whopping 15 seconds faster than my previous Half record.

2:06:23 (PR !!!!) ... and I didn't even taper!