I dreamed. I trained. I strategized. I worried.
I RAN.
13.1 Miles… Done! I am so pleased with my first half marathon. I feel as though I prepared adequately, had a realistic goal and strategy, and I worked as hard as I could on race day.
Race Highlights:
- Feeling strong and never losing focus
- Always believing that I would run to the finish, and that I was going to make my time goal
- Seeing the comraderie of other women runners on the course
- Beautiful race weather
- The satisfaction of completing an extremely challenging course
- Having a woman tell me that I pulled her up a hill because she decided to stick with me and I kept on running
- Finding out that fellow race participants thought Greg was a professional photographer and kept posing for him at mile 9 where he was waiting to see me (see more race photos here)
Race Lows:
Late Start = Hungry Runners! This was the first year that Run Like a Diva took place in D.C.’s Wine Country, and there were some major growing pains for the race directors. The course started and finished at Tarara Winery, and there’s basically only one major road coming into the winery. With thousands of race participants all trying to get to the same place at the same time, we were stuck in stop and go traffic for FIFTEEN MILES on the morning of the race. We left an hour before we needed to be in the parking area, figuring that Google Maps said it should take us 25 minutes, so that gave us over twice the amount of time needed. We barely made it, and only because Greg looked at a map and found a back way into the winery that cut off four miles of bumper to bumper cars.
Because there were so many cars backed up trying to get to the start line, they couldn’t shut the roads down to start the race, even if they were willing to upset all the race participants who had been stuck in traffic for miles by commencing without them.
They delayed the race by 30 minutes, then 45, then just kept saying they’d let us know when it was going to start. The race finally started 90 minutes after start time. Guess what? We’d all eaten breakfast at 5:30 a.m. – and we were hungry! Even those of us with food weren’t sure how much we should eat and when, because right up until five minutes prior to start time, we didn’t know it was going to start! I was in the bathrooms when the National Anthem started, and I booked it to the start line. The lines for the porta-potties were so long and so noisy that we hadn’t heard the announcer say they were about to begin – for most of us, the anthem was our only warning. Yikes.
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Long lines at the porta-potties are typical at any big race – but a 90 minute delay made things worse!
We waited half an hour. |
Not only was I hungry on the course (thank goodness I had extra Gu packets) because I’d eaten breakfast 3.5 hours before the start, I was also deliriously hungry at the finish. I took a cookie, banana, and half a bagel, but it wasn’t nearly enough and we weren’t allowed back into the race finish area to get additional food. We sat for half an hour getting out of the parking lot, and didn’t get lunch until 8 hours after I’d eaten breakfast. By the time we made it somewhere for lunch, un-showered thanks to the race delay and the urgency that we get food, I was pale in the face, my hands were shaking, and it took ten minutes of slow eating before my stomach settled and color returned to my face. Not the fun lunch in historic Leesburg I was expecting!
Frantic start meant that people weren’t properly seeded: The late start and disorganized beginning meant that people didn’t self-seed properly in their pace corrals at the start line. There were people walking in the first mile who started in the 10 minute pace group, and the rest of us were tripping around them because of the intense crowding during the first few miles. The pace groups should have been much further apart for such a large race, and people should have had more warning that the race delay was over and we needed to line up the right way!
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Elevation map from my Garmin.
Up and down and up and down and up and down…. |
Unexpectedly hilly course with large, unpaved sections: The course was a lot hillier than I’d anticipated! In the original course description online, Run Like a Diva advertised “only 2 areas of uphill running where you will gain less than 90 feet over 2 miles in each of these two sections”.
Ok, so I took that to mean that the elevation gain would be pretty minimal. Instead, I discovered that the entire middle section of the course was hills. Steep uphill, steep downhill, repeat. Every time we rounded another corner, we had to go uphill. From the top of every hill, we could see another hill. IT WAS BRUTAL.
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| The hilliest sections are highlighted in blue – you can see my corresponding pace drop. |
Clearly the course description was wrong, because In mile 6 alone I gained 127 feet of elevation. That’s not 90 feet over two miles, that’s 127 in ONE mile. The mile before that I gained 69, the mile after, 79. The overall course gained 690 feet of elevation, and lost 674. My calves hurt, and then my knees hurt, for a large percentage of the course.
My husband Greg, who has run 9 half marathons, has never run a hillier course than this one. His largest elevation gain in a half marathon course comes in fifty feet shy of this one.
I had to throw my original race strategy out the window. No longer could I plan to take a 90 second walking break at about each 3 miles or the water stations. I had to save all my walking breaks for the steepest uphill sections. I walked on sections of hill where it was so steep that I was speed walking past runners who were too stubborn to take a walking break. The hills were that bad.
In a way, it was nice, because I felt incredibly accomplished at the finish, and because I just stopped worrying about race strategy. I just survived each moment the best I could, put my feet in front of each other as quickly as possible, and never gave up for that entire 13.1 miles.
Enough complaints! The bigger the challenge, the more pride you feel in completion.
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| Great spectators! |
So, it was hilly, we started late, it was crowded… some of these things are just part of a big race experience. I think one of the reasons most of us run is that we enjoy facing a challenge and conquering it. These were just unexpected challenges. If I’d known how hilly the course was, I wouldn’t have chosen it for my first half marathon. That being said, I’m really proud of myself for completing it, and in the time goal I’d originally set for myself. It was incredibly difficult, and every hill made me long for a flat stretch of road so I could just RUN instead of climb, but I did it.
For future events with a large number of participants, I’ll be sure to leave even earlier, pack extra snacks and liquids in case of delays, and make sure I have something to eat after the race, too.
I’m really lucky that I had Greg with me, so I didn’t gear check my bag with all my warm clothes in it and then stand around in the cold waiting to find out when the start was. No one had time to gear check after learning when the race would actually start, and there were a lot of cold runners.
But I did it. The weather was gorgeous, and it was very powerful to run an event with so many women. Having something extra in common with your fellow runners increases camaraderie, and I felt like I was part of something.
I’m not necessarily a huge fan of the “diva” concept (seems to value individualism over teamwork, and imply high maintenance over hard working), but I liked how many people I saw running in groups, with friends, mother/daughter pairs, etc. It was much more conducive to that than a normal race might be, and I’m glad I ran it once!
What’s Next:
I’ve had a few readers post that they’re hoping I will continue my blog after the completion of this half marathon – you better believe it! I’m going to keep running, and keep writing.
I even have another half marathon in my near future, the Chilly Half Marathon in Newton, MA this November. It’s another hilly course… but this time, I’m planning on it.
I’ll be working on getting faster now that I’ve spent time focusing on running longer – I’m excited to try intervals and hill repeats and see if I can drop my pace down for my next 10k in October. (Not much time, eek!)
I’ll also be writing my normal, motivational, running thoughts that relate to all things life and running… the type that you can relate to whether you’re in week 3 of Couch to 5k or you’ve completed marathons. (I’ve gotten e-mails from runners of all experience levels!)
I hope you’ll keep checking back 🙂
