See Jane Run Half Marathon

Today I ran my sixth half marathon.  This training period has been super smooth, even with being so worn out through student teaching.  My training runs were right on track and sometimes even faster than goal pace. My goal was to maintain an 8:45 pace. Friday night, Thomas and I headed to downtown Boise for packet pick up at the See Jane Run Store. Afterwards we went to the park where the race would be at and played ladder ball for about an hour.  Thomas had surprised me with it as a gift for finishing up student teaching.  We played it once while we were dating and have wanted it ever since.  I am loving lawn games.

After ladder ball we headed to The Old Spaghetti Factory.  I had been to one before for a state track meet in Seattle but it was super small and squished.  This Spaghetti Factory was spacious and even had a train on the inside with booths.  We were seated in the caboose.  When our waitress came to introduce herself I realized it was one of my old friends from elementary school! It was so fun seeing her and chatting. We did some yummy carb loading and then headed home for a night in relaxing by watching Justin Bieber's movie. Both Thomas and I liked it :) It inspired me to download some of his music for my half the next morning.  We also popped open some mango lemonade martinelli's to celebrate.

The first 10K of the race I was feeling REALLY great.  I was looking down at my garmin and seeing 8:30 pace a lot. 

At first it concerned me because I have a tendency to go out too fast. But I figured since I was maintaining that pace I'd just go with it. 

At the halfway point I started passing people which was a mental boost.  Normally I'll take some Clif Shotblocks at mile six but I wasn't feeling it at that point in the race so I held off.  At mile 9 I got a bad sideache on my right side.  I tried breathing deeply for a few minutes with no luck.  So I got out the shotblocks and chewed on those and that actually seemed to help.  At 10.5 miles I took a cup of water.  My plan was to go all out the last mile and do an under 8 minute mile.  At mile 12 I had another sideache that was killing.

I saw Thomas at this point and told him I was dying :) He ran across the park to meet me at the finish line.  I had a few goals this race my first being to get under 1:56:30 which was my former personal best.  The second was to get under 1:53 and the third was to get under 1:50.  At the halfway point I was feeling like I was going to accomplish at least the second goal but after the sideaches it messed up those plans.  I finished in 1:54:38! I came in 5th out of 36 in my age group and 40th overall out of 529.  I'm proud of that time and I saw my potential and see an under 1:50 half marathon in my future :)

The race shirts for this race are awesome! They are fitted for women and are a tech fabric.  At the end of the race they had champagne glasses and chocolate for the finishers.

Great race and I'm excited to sign up for the next one.  Next up I think will be a 5K so that both Thomas and I can run it and get PR's.