More | Fitness 1/2 marathon Race Report

I'm a winner!

Finding my corral at the start

Sending my last tweets and gettting my music together - i look a little nervous, right? :)

Sunday I participated in the More | Fitness magazine 1/2 marathon. I signed up for this race almost 4 months ago, on a whim. I've always wanted to see if I could run a 1/2 marathon or full marathon and my coworkers said I could totally do it - so I did. As I wrote in my cheer me on post, it's been quite a journey up to this point and moving forward, I can honestly say I'm quite hooked and I feel like my fitness/health have made a complete 180 degrees (ok, maybe more like 150 - i still like sweets!) from the training experience. So how was the day? Interesting to say the least.. :)

I'm ready to race but it's so warm!

The course consisted of 2 laps (clockwise) through central park. As you'll read in older posts, central park is HILLY and the one major one near the top of the loop is especially brutal if you're going counterclockwise (which is how I run) so I lucked out in that aspect.

On race morning, I woke up at 630am to a temperature of 71 degrees. It's NEW YORK in SPRING. 71?! How do you even dress for that? I've ran in snow, in 10 degree ice mornings, in drizzle, in 40mph wind gusts across bridges - but summer heat? I didn't even have the clothes for this! lol. I wanted to wear these little puma boy shorts but P advised against it - reminded me of possible chafing - so I stuck with the NB tights and a new top I picked up at the race expo that I'll have to write about in the future.

Left the house late but made it to the start with 10+ minutes to stretch. Upon arrival, an announcement was made that due to the unforseen weather (heat), the marathon portion was cancelled and the race is now officially untimed and unscored so we were to race "in celebration" wth?! I wanted a damn time! LOL I felt slighted but whatever - I had trained for this and the day was here. It was packed. I was in the 3rd or 4th corral (yay not so near the back!). After stretching and last minute twittering I was off.

Mile 1 down!

The game plan was simple: start slow and pace myself so I could finish strong. Slow was right - I think my first mile was in 12 min or so. Hitting the first few hills were challenging but kept repeating BK bridge to myself haha.. kinda random but it worked. It was hot. I was sweating almost immediately. The sun was BLAZING. I had left my water belt at home and decided I would hydrate at the fluid stations (probably not the best idea) but with the unusual heatwave going on I did do this. Even when I wasn't thirsty I drank gatorade and splashed myself with water at EVERY fluid station. They had water hoses sprayign down runners - I didn't dodge it. The first half felt steady and I felt totally fine. I didn't start at the 0:00 mark but the clock at the half/finish line (after Mile 6) said 1:12 so I decided I needed to keep steady and make sure I didn't slow down during the second half. The hills felt tougher but I pushed through them and tried to make up for time on the downhills.


Around mile 10 I felt so hot and sweaty and uncomfortable. I was also getting cramps so I didn'tfeel great. I wasn't exhausted nor was my breathing difficult it was just so hot to me! The cheering definitely helped in those last 2 miles and I pushed through to the end to finish around 2:08! I wish I had the breakdown of my miles but I knew my iphone wouldn't last for the entire race so I didn't use any of my tracking apps (just the ipod).

Is this over yet? mile 11...

Funny moments:

• Feeling like I was on the set of TRL (a lot of wooooooo! woooooooo!)
• this lady singing out loud as she was running (it was kind of funny)
• wondering how i was always passing walkers (how early did they start?)
• Three ladies wearing cheesehead caps
• Trying to find P at specific points along the route (he was insane! ran back and forth through central park to catch me at different points)
• Finding my dad in a sea of people then somehow smile for the camera

• My ipod mix was bomb diggity (put songs you haven't heard in a while for amazing pick-me-ups)

• Twittering at the half-way point. Really - i did - send a tweet "i'm ok - hot! - halfway done"
• Talking to Marfa (accidently called her) as I was running in the middle of mile 11 and trying to hold a normal conversation (she reminded me to hydrate and calmly asked how I was feeling - um.. girl, I'm running! I'll talk to you when i finish!)
• Passing gigi and the girls on mile 12 - they were my cheering squad and it was so great to see them

these girls are amazing!

It's now 3 days after the race and I feel well. Soreness is pretty much gone. I even went for an "easy" 3 miler with my dog, Dallas this morning. I think i'm hooked with the morning run - it just seems to start my day off on the right foot. Since I went easy with mileage, I upped my mini workout session (I'm like 3 weeks into adding these into my runs). I do 3 sets of 15-15-20 pushups, jumps onto bench, and tricep dips. Today I did 3 sets: 25-25-25 of the same excercises but added 3 sets of 20 lunge + kick (10 on each leg). I usually also do these ab twist exercises KP showed me in bootcamp a few weeks ago but didn't do that ast week.

And onto new news: I signed up for the Brooklyn half for May 30th. So finally I will have an official time :) I hear a good part of the course is flat so HOPEFULLY I can keep to staying under my 2:10 goal.

Thank you to everyone for the well wishes. and big thanks to my dad who flew up from florida to cheer me on and take awesome photos and to P who ran all over the park to film and take photos. without them, my race report wouldn't be so awesome lol.

with dad!