wanderunner

Not gonna lie… I came into this one with high expectations. I trained way harder (longer long runs, missed less days) than I did for SF. Plus, this race was basically all flat (92 ft of elevation gain.. vs some 1400 in SF). And I ended up running 4 minutes SLOWER (4:02) with an initial goal of low 3:40s. I honestly have no idea how that happened. All I know is I hit a major wall around the same part of the race as last time, but it hit me even worse, and it was all I could do to just make it to the finish. Physically I felt fine and like I had so much left in me, like I wanted to go faster, but my legs were just bricks.

I was so confused- I feel like I did everything right! I got in challenging long runs, paced well in the beginning, fueled enough during the race, and even ate a big pasta dinner the night before :D!!!

For more context to see where it all went wrong (LOL), here were my splits:

8:42, 8:33. 8:35, 8:29, 8:40, 8:39, 8:39, 8:38, 8:39, 8:37, 8:42, 8:41, 8:33, 8:44, 9:52, 8:58, 8:52, 9:02, 9:14, 9:39, 10:31, 11:01, 10:59, 10:53, 10:09, 9:24, 2:46 (for the final .36)

Mile 15 I stopped at a bathroom (9:52), and immediately following that I crossed a bridge which was the only hill of the entire race. After that, I think my confidence went way down and the wall came on a lot sooner than my last marathon.

As soon as I saw Jason at the finish line I ran into his arms and started crying. It sucked so much, to be honest. It felt like high school cross country all over again after a bad race. But I couldn’t have my moment for long, because as soon as I started crying, I got a nose bleed (classic) and had to take off my shirt to clean off:

A couple things made this weekend better, though. An older man saw me crying and came up to me to encourage me. He told me I looked great out there and it was all okay, that I was so young and had so many good races ahead of me :). Jason and Brice also both had great races, AND said they wanted to do another half in DC this year, and come back again next year for the full! That made my heart so happy. As for me, I think I’ll take a break for now, but maybe I’ll come back next year with them to conquer this one 🙂

The beer helped too:

I also got a good finish line photo, but to be honest, not sure I want to shell out $40 for a bad race. Maybe next year 😉