The Capital City Half Marathon Race Recap

The Capital City Half Marathon
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Start Time: 8:00am

Warning:  This post is LONG

Ok, I won’t bore you with talking about the expo… I’ll just say, I did end up going by myself which is fine because I got in and out without any problems… and J ended up calling me as I was leaving to see if I wanted to meet up in the morning… AND… before the expo I ate this awesome cookie which was sure to make me fast the next morning! ;)  (yes, it says “Fast Eddie”)

RACE MORNING, I had set my alarm to go off at 5:30am, but ended up waking up around 4:45am to the power being out! I was seriously a little skeptical on how I was going to get ready for my race in complete darkness… but it came back on around 5am so all was well!!  I ate a piece of peanut butter toast and water for breakfast and hopped in the shower to warm up a little because it was cold!!

Getting Ready 

Sidenote:  Yes, I, Zaneta (AKA: the not so girly girl) bought a running skirt!! surprise!!
Another surprise… I LOVE IT!!  Now I understand everyone’s need to buy a
different running skirt for each race ;)

I drove the 1 hour trek to Columbus and was immediately SO glad I had prepaid to park at a specific location!!  Seriously… if you have the option to prepay for parking for a race… DO IT!!!Streets were closed everywhere and traffic was backed up majorly!  While I was at a stand still I was texting back and forth with my fiancé before he had to go to work.  So by the time I parked and walked to the starting location I had about 15 minutes before go time!! lol… nothing like cutting it short! ;)  BTW, I had to pee so bad!! lol…

Well I stopped at the first port-a-pot because I thought that if I just got in a line quickly, it would be my best bet… well after waiting for about 6 minutes I decided enough was enough and started walking towards my corral… funny thing… the lines for the port-a-pots by Corral C were empty! haha… lesson learned! ;) 

I got to my corral and actually found J and her boyfriend which was surprising due to the amount of people that were there!  This was the biggest race I’ve EVER been to!  It was quite exciting!  I squeezed in beside them just in time for the national anthem and then they started each corral 30 seconds apart… 3-2-1… GO!!

We started out and it was pretty crowded still even though we had a tapered start.  It did end up spacing out quite a bit after mile 4 or so… I don’t really remember anything specific for each mile or anything like that so I’ll just post some things in general…

I ran with J and her boyfriend for about the first 5 miles BUT we started out faster than I wanted to go… I didn’t want to die before mile 6 and I wanted to have fun during this race…I ran my first half marathon last September with an average pace of 10:10 and this race so far, we had been running 8 something miles lol… um… all I kept thinking was “my 5k splits are 8 something miles!! haha… SLOOOOOOWWWW DOWWWNNNNNNN!!!”  Remember how I told you all, that due to my lack of training because of my crazy busy life right now I was forgoing my goal of a sub 2 hour half marathon?  yes… it’s sad, but I was happy with myself that I realized this and knew not to push too hard and end up hurting myself.  I told J to go on ahead because I was pulling up a little… I wanted to just run for fun and I couldn’t do that if I was constantly worrying about burning out or hurting myself.

I don’t remember exactly when I took my GUs but I remember that I took 3 of them along the course of the race and I grabbed water at EVERY water station and whatever endurance drink they had at about 3 stations… it had warmed up quite a bit and the rain was holding off. 

I had brought my IPod along but never ended up turning it on… there were so many bands and DJs and spectators along the course that I was having a blast without it and I didn’t realize it til about 1 mile left to go because it was cutting the circulation off in my arm so I took it off and held it the last mile. I loved giving all the little kids high fives because they thought this was the most exciting thing ever to watch and cheer for!

… I saw a banana with a “Don’t Poop…. out” sign lol…(the pic is taken from the capcityhalf fb page) and I saw a charlie sheen poster that said “everyone’s a winner!”  (or something like that) and also one of my faves  “humpty dumpty had wall issues too” lol

 

I don’t ever remember having any negative thoughts during this race at all… I remember thinking that I felt really good for the lack of training I’d had and thinking to myself that I would definitely PR this race… and then as I got closer to the finish line I realized that I was going to be really close to my goal time without really trying for it! lol… I was very surprised at myself… there were a few miles that I felt like slowing down but I took inventory on how everything was feeling… how my chest/heart were feeling because I didn’t want to have a repeat of last September, and everything felt good, so I made myself keep a somewhat steady pace those last 3 miles… although they were slower than the previous miles…

Right before the finish line was a hill… but after the hill it was all down hill to the finish!  I LOVED that!!  I had such a fun time… and I ran most of it by myself… no family there to cheer me on… and that was perfectly ok!  I never ended up meeting back up with J… I ended up being able to see them ahead of me for most of the race… til about 3 miles left… anyways… I sprinted down that incline to the finish because I was so proud of myself and my time!!  I was so close to my goal… but it didn’t bother me like I thought it would… I HAD A BLAST!!!

Official Time:  2:03:57
Average Pace:  9:28
Overall Place:  2453/6005
Gender Place:  1010/3502
AG (20-24) Place:  168/462

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After crossing the finish line and receiving my most favoritest medal EVER… I grabbed a bagel, water, muscle milk (i had never tried it before and it was better than i had thought it would be) and then after I cooled down a little bit, I grabbed some donatos pizza and headed over to the Brooks Cavalcade of Curiosities to get my gait analyzed… I guess I’m a moderate pronator and have a med-high arch… anyone want to kind of explain what this means and how to fix it? lol…  I guess I’ll have to do my research…

After all that fun stuff I went back up to the top of the hill before the downhill finish to cheer people on and that was so much fun… just the look on people’s faces when I cheered for them by name and told them they could do it, finish strong, it’s really all downhill from here… it was awesome!  After I cheered for a good 20 minutes, I walked back to my car and found that I hadn’t been alone at all… My fiancé and family were all cheering for me by text messages during my race!!  I have awesome support and I’m so blessed… The text from my fiancé made me tear up…

He basically just told me to keep going strong, that I was almost finished, and that he loved me… so simple, but meant the world to me!

I loved every single moment of this race!!  It was rather emotional for me too… I don’t really understand why… watching all the people after me finish… how emotional they were… I DID PR by 10 minutes, so that was awesome… and being by myself kinda did get to me a little bit, I’m not gonna lie… so I guess that all wraps up into one emotional race… Registration for the Capital City Half Marathon opens June 1st… and you better believe I will be registering for this race again!