The Big Race

We finally did it, we ran in a half marathon! My sister and her husband told us they were training to run in the Baltimore Half Marathon, so we decided to start training ourselves and run it with them. We've been training for the last 8 weeks (well, Had had to take every third week off cuz of his exam weeks), and although we weren't where we would have liked to be as far as getting ready for it goes, we did it! It was actually pretty fun, as fun as running can be anyways. :) There was 6, 225 people that finished the race, so it was a pretty beasty race. It went all over Baltimore, through neighborhoods, around a lake, up and down hills, and then we finished at the Ravens Stadium (sort of). It was definately hard, and i'd say it was worth it. Everyone did so good. It wasn't so fun for me during miles 5-9. I got the worst side ache ever, that slowed me way down to just about a walking speed. But other than that, the race was good. Had said he felt the best he's ever felt running, so i'm happy for him. I didn't want this to be a torturous thing for him or he wouldn't ever want to go running with me again. We're both glad to be done with it though, and want to do another one some time.

The start to these races are craziness. Everyone has to go so slow at first cuz there is so many people. I didn't want to wait for the steady stream of people to thin out cuz that is waisting precious minutes on my time, so i weaved through everyone. That part was pretty sweet, it made me feel like I was flying passing everyone left and right. :)

This was taken before the race started. Right here we're feeling excited, anxious, nervous, and having to pee. The lines for the portapotty's were so long, and no toiletpaper, so that makes ya feel like you have to go even more. Not fun.

I had about 1/10th of a mile left to go here, and this is where i started to "pour it on". I was very surprised i had any energy left to do anything, but i had a good finish and passed a bunch of peeps here at the end. I liked it a lot. But it was more exciting when i started coming down the stretch to the finish, sprinting past people on the left, when i hear the crowd start yelling and cheering for me, saying yeah, get em! Get em!! Nice finish!! Then the guy that was announcing stuff announced my name as i was coming along. This was exciting to me cuz we were talking about it before the race, saying i wonder how he knows who it is, or if people pay him to announce their names. Out of our whole group that ran, i was the only one to get my name announced, so that was exciting. I'm sad we didn't get a picture of Had finishing cuz he had an awesome finish too. I was waiting for him at the finish so we didn't get lost from each other in the madness of people.


Here's Had all tired out after the race. He did so good, i'm so proud of him. He keeps saying how he's not a runner. Ha, he did a half marathon, so he doesn't get to say that he's not a runner anymore.

So Had wanted to get 2 hours, and his time was 2 hrs 1 min. How awesome is that? I was hoping to get under 2 hours, but i really had no clue what my pace was cuz when i trained for it, i ran pushing Jete in a stroller. But my time was 1 hr 43 min. I was happy with it, especially for running slow for 4 miles due to a side ache from H...E...(you know the rest). But i secretly had another goal, and that was to beat my sister. Wahaha Holl. I didn't make that goal, so that was the craps, but oh well. I was still happy. Out of 6225 people, Had got 1886 place overall and i got 397 overall.

My sister and her husband were quite amazing. Her time was 1 hr 38 min, and 209th place; and he got 1 hr 23 min, and 30th place! It was fun to get to spend time with them and their cute little family.

Here's me and my sister, and all of my sister's friends that ran the race.

Me and Had, riding the tram back to the car after the big race. We were so pooped it was hard to stand, but even harder to walk the next day. Wow! We're good now though, nice and recovered, back at home from our exhausting but fun trip.