Akron Half Marathon

Where to begin, and what to say about this whole experience. I guess you can say it began at 2:00 a.m. when I first woke up. I went to bed around 10:00 and for the first 4 hours slept great. After 2:00 I woke up every hour until I decided to finally get out of bed after 5:00. It was a bit of a struggle to get Ky and Keiout of bed but they made it.
We arrived at the race a little after 6:00 a.m. and I was dying to go to the bathroom. When you are trying to hydrate before a race you do nothing but go to the bathroom and after drinking a few more bottles of water that morning, I HAD to go again. Ky thought it would be great to take a pic of me standing in line to the porta potty. As you can see it was still dark and a good indicator that we should still be in bed! In fact when the race first began it was still dark and didn't get light until mile 2.5 or so.

I started the race out slower than I anticipated but it was better than starting too fast. I quickly picked up my pace and felt great. My friend Dulcey came to the race with us and she had the race mapped out and a strategy for seeing me run at several different mile markers. I loved that I saw all of them 6 different times. They were all enjoyable but the last! As you can see I shed my layers early on. I was getting ready to throw Dulcey my clothes and gave Ky the peace sign. I did that several times and I'm not sure why. I guess I didn't know what else to do. This was just before the mile 3 marker and I'm feeling good.

I'm not sure what mile I'm at, but I was still feeling great and I got energized every time I saw those guys cheering me on. Kei came out to the street to give me a high five. He was yelling "Go mom" and the runners next to me would smile and say that he was cute. He is cute.

Where am I now? Who knows, by mile 9 I lost track of where I was in the race. I couldn't believe how good I felt. My feet were starting to get a little sore but overall everything was o.k. Maybe that is why I'm sporting the thumbs up!
This was the last moment they would see me with a smile on my face until after the race was over.

The first 10.5 miles, AWESOME, feeling great. The last 2, pure HELL. Running the last 2 miles really wouldn't have been bad if they weren't completely up hill. Who makes you run up hill for over 2 miles when you've just ran over 10??????? I was not happy. I was thinking that I was going to finish the run around 1:45:00

and then I started up the climb of doom. I tried to remember a tactic my sister in-law Kirsten told me to use and I tried it for the first mile and it helped but after that all I could think about was putting one foot in front of the other. My legs were on fire. My pace was all but a walk, and I'm now mad because I'm not going to finish as quick as I thought I would.

This is when I'm still climbing but almost to the the stadium where FINALLY, I'll be able to go down hill for 150 yards (couldn't we reverse that, 2 miles of down hill and a couple yard up). Kei was running beside me just before this picture and I didn't even know it, I was oblivious to the world. I did look up in time to give Ky this nasty look of death, before heading into the stadium and towards the finish line. No high five'n here. All of them were cheering me on telling me I could do it and it did help. I was so grateful for their support. It made the run more enjoyable and besides the last couple miles I was loving every minute of it. Now that it is over and my legs and feet (I have blisters all over) are recuperating, I'm less upset about the climb at the end compared to when I was suffering through it. Isn't that all trials? They are unbearable when you are in the thick of it but once you persevere, the accomplishment or what you gain from it is far greater than if you hadn't struggled at all. I finished the race at 1:49:55. I was 221 overall out of 1131. Out of 539 women I was 48th and 10th in my age division. Not too bad for my first outing. My girlfriend Dulcey wants me to train for a marathon and try and qualify for Boston (she's ran it a couple of times). I'm not completely ruling it out!

After race, party pictures. I love that these guys got up soooo early to come cheer me on. Ky was so proud, mainly because he wasn't sure how good I was going to do, so he was pleasantly surprised.

Kei and I giving our "double pound" sign. It's a family thing.

You can only appreciate this sign Dulcey is holding

if you read my butt clincher story back in Aug. I ran

by and saw her holding this and started laughing in the

middle of my run. It was a great poster and she is a great friend.