First, I just want to give a big kudos to all of our amazing SweatPink ‘ers for a fantastically fit weekend – from all the runners, racers, yoga’ers, and everyone else who was out there giving it their all this weekend. You all inspire me day in and day out and I could not be more proud to #SweatPink.
This weekend I decided to do something a little out of character; I ran a trail half marathon on Saturday (which was also my 31st birthday, thank you very much). The thing is, I’m not much a half marathoner. It’s a distance I don’t do very often. It’s a distance that kind of scares me, in all honesty. For me, it’s not quite long enough to feel like a long run and it’s not quite short enough to feel like a short run so I almost don’t know what to do with it. I always feel like I’m either going to go out too fast and then burn out or too slow and not challenge myself enough. To honor all the amazing SweatPink ladies who were also running, racing, yoga-ing it up, I decided to put my anxiety aside and go out there and give it my all, whatever that meant.
The course started with a nice flat mile, just long enough to get the legs warmed up before we hit our first uphill climb. The climbs were pretty decent (and not entirely runnable) but I decided I’d run all the hills with the exception of the stairs. The stairs weren’t a big portion of the race so I decided I’d power walk those to save my quads a little for the downhill I’d be able to cruise on at the end. By the time I’d made it to the halfway point, I noticed I’d only seen three guys in front of me at the turnaround. I was getting pretty excited as I cruised along the last half of the race. I was keeping a pretty steady pace and enjoying some of the downhill sections of the course. I started passing some of the ten milers on one of the bigger climbs with about 3 miles to go and felt even more energized. I crossed the finish line at 2:01 and change – 1st female, 4th overall – happy birthday to me.
Casey and I took a quick post race photo and headed back to the city for our pre Nike Women’s Marathon Yoga Event where I led a fun, high energy yoga flow class for my fellow SweatPink ladies.
I’ll let the photos do the talking…but we sure had a lot of fun!
Great job, and happy belated birthday!