45th Annual Birch Bay Marathon/Half Marathon

This race was my first half marathon but not the first time I have run 13.1 mile and I finished with a new PR. My Garmin picked up 13.17 miles in 2:26!!! (2:33 was my previous PR) That is an average of 11:09 per mile. Here are my splits:

Lap 1 - 10:56
Lap 2 - 10:56
Lap 3 - 10:57
Lap 4 - 10:59
Lap 5 - 10:18
Lap 6 - 11:14
Lap 7 - 12:17 (up the killer hill)
Lap 8 - 11:11
Lap 9 - 11:02
Lap 10 - 11:30
Lap 11 - 11:06
Lap 12 - 11:09
Lap 13 - 11:16
Lap 14 - 1:50 (.17 miles)

I don't know how people can do a full blown recap of their races, all I really remember is running. It rained for 9 or so miles before it finally stopped. I ran without my glasses a lot since I could actually see better half blind than with them rainy and fogged up. I hit a Double Latte Power Bar energy gel at mile 5, and another one at about 9.5 Lap 10 was slower because the road was really narrow and I had 4 or 5 cars squeezing me onto the nonexistent shoulder.  I ran like a friggin' machine. I took no walk breaks at all and passed by all of the port-o-potties. Race Day is just different than a training day. I just had no need for either of those things.I  hit a wall at about mile 12.5 but pushed through and ended up passing a guy really close to the end. Andy said the look on his face was priceless and that he tried to catch me but it was obvious he had nothing left in the tank.

I ran so much faster than I predicted my dad missed me at the finish line. Andy was there though, he took these shots on his phone. :)

One thing that surprised me? Andy saw people cheating!! He was at the bottom of the killer hill which was an up and back spur, he saw people come straight across the intersection (walking) instead of turning right up the hill even after the Deputy directing traffic told them to turn. (There was no race official there.) Then later he saw them collect medals at the finish and prance around like they'd done the whole course. In the long run they have to live with knowing they only really completed about 11 miles of a half marathon. It really annoys though me because there's a good chance that one woman in particular he saw was in my division and she'll get credited with a better time than me.

From my experience volunteering for this same race organizer 2 yrs ago I was pretty sure it was going to be a clusterf*ck of disorganization and it was. Only marathon packets were available at the scheduled time for pick up which resulted in me having to make 2 trips to the expo. The packets consisted of nothing more than the t-shirt, the bib, safety pins, a map, and a list of the aid stations. They were still scrambling for volunteers/flaggers Sat afternoon. They cancelled chip timing a couple of weeks ago. They cancelled the early start for slower folks just days prior to the race. I won't be running a race put on by this organizer again.

Did I mention I've been sick all week? Yeah I ran this puppy on the tail end of a cold.

I am super proud of my performance. You can do anything you set your mind too.