Sunday was the 5th annual San Antonio Rock n Roll marathon and 1/2. After 2-3 months of training, the day had arrived for Britt to run her first half marathon. I'd promised her that I would pace her the whole way. So, we were able to run maybe 5 training runs together over the past couple months. The night before the race we got some homemade spaghetti and meatballs. (I did pretty awesome if I do say so myself.) Britt came over and brought her husband, daughter, friend, and our friend James. Everyone took off by 10 and I got in bed a bit before 11. You know I wasn't sleeping. It's the same thing as before karate tournaments. I just get so hyped that I can't sleep much. Maybe not always the best thing for me. I got up around 4:45, I got maybe 4 1/2-5 hours off sleep. After getting my stuff together, well most of it, I headed over to Britt and Pat's.
We got downtown around 630, about an hour before start time. Being all the way back in corral 18, we had to walk a bit to get to our spot. We walked past the long lines for the portapotties knowing we'd be there in a minute. We ended up waiting in those lines for about 30 minutes. Good thing we were in that corral 18, because we just barely caught up to our corral before the start. We saw Pat and Blake at the start and then took off.
Britt was shooting for a 2:20 finish time. To get her there I planned on pacing us at 10:45. Problems started right off the bat. I do not understand what was going on, really. There are corrals for a reason. I don't know whose fault it is, but we spent our first 6 miles just weaving through traffic. There were so many people walking right in the middle of the road and moving in large packs that we probably ran an extra half mile. I was so annoyed/angry. Did people lie on their forms? Or did the marathon just screw up in the corrals. Through 10k we were dead on pace. But, to get there, we probably had to run at about a 9:45 pace. I just don't get how hundreds of people that were walking from mile 1 were placed in front of us. I'm not annoyed that there are slower people than me at a race or that people are walking. Just annoyed that there were literally hundreds there. So, like I said, we were right on pace through 10k, even at 8 miles we were only 30 seconds off pace. Unfortunately, Britt's knee started up around mile 7. She put some gunk on it that made it feel better for a couple miles, but it wasn't enough. We had to slow down. I was so proud of Britt. She kept trucking. Of the whole race, she walked for maybe 3 minutes. She just gritted her teeth, muttered curse words at me, and kept going. We finished in 2:31:12. In 7401 and 7404 out of 16372. Britt sprinted up the last hill to the finish line. I'm so proud of her!
Today started training for the 3M half marathon in Austin on 1/13.
Good job, Brit!
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