That's me! I love my husband. He (graciously despite being told numbers of times that he didn't actually need to come to the race) came out to the Boston's Run to Remember. He cheered me on at the beginning (and took the pictures and carefully pulled highlighted me in the pack) and then cheered me on at the end.
The race takes place relatively early in the day (hey, what do I know, it was my first half marathon) with a gun time start of 8:15 a.m. I had positioned myself near the 11 min mile pace group.
Oops, my pace was off from the beginning. By mile 3, it became apparent that I had inadvertently found myself in the 10 minute mile pace group. That was hard!
The route was mostly flat, but even slight hills are more hills than I had in most of my training runs. Some of the slight hills were kicking my butt so hard, especially in the middle third of the race. Eventually, I got my walk-run together and finished in a respectable time of 2:30:42 (chip time). It was my first time doing race longer than 5K, using a Champion Chip, and well, pretty much everything. I have only been training since the beginning of January, so I feel terrific.
And here is the visual proof! My honey positioned himself near the front of the finish line, and took a few shots as I neared and passed the finish! Taking pictures of people moving (though by the end calling what I was doing moving was a bit of an overstatement) is hard. It was a great thing to do, and now I'm looking for another half marathon to do. The fall is supposed to be a good time for these races (rather than August... I'd rather not die of humidity poisoning), but this is the year of the wedding. There aren't a lot of weekend days free for this kind of thing.
The next race I've signed up for is much shorter than this. I normally do the Corporate Challenge through work, and this will be the first year where I can legitimately say I've run it. The Corporate Challenge is a 5K (ish, I think the Boston one is a little over 3.1 miles), usually held on a week night after work. A lot of people in the firm walk it, which is great too. The past times I've done it there has been a great comraderie for people in the event. This time there will be that, but I'll show that these legs are made for running!
