Haunted Half 2016

 My alarm blaring at 5:45am on a Saturday morning can only mean one thing: race day!  I got up, dressed, made an almond butter toast sandwich and drove about 30 minutes to Sugar House where we were to load onto buses to the top of the race.  
 It felt veeeeery cold standing in the 30 or 40 minute line waiting to get on a bus.  It was fun listening to the excited groups around me, and then I started chatting with a woman who was by herself like me.  We were seated on the bus together, so it was fun getting to know her on the drive up.
 After the bus ride, it was time to get out in the cold again (this time it felt even colder as it was up in the canyon!).  I got to stand in the long port-a-potty line. ;)  This is definitely my least favorite part of running races!


 Finally after almost 3 hours of being awake, I was genuinely excited to be there!  I HATE waking up super early, so it takes me awhile to realize I'm happy ;) 
 I loved all of the couple costumes I saw.  I'm still working on my husband to run with me- not sure if it will ever happen- but I'm still hoping!
 And then we were off!  I purposely waited a few minutes to start since I didn't want to be in the huge cluster.  There were 2,000 runners which is a pretty big group to start all at once!
My strategy is always play podcasts for the first 2/3 of running and then start my playlist.  That way the music can give me a mental uplift!  I was pretty excited about my podcasts though. I specifically saved two for the race: the Friday News Roundup episode of On Point (my favorite hour of radio during the week!) and an episode of Entertainment Weekly's Binge that is all about Harry Potter this season.  So good!


 I spy a headless horseman!

 Around mile 3 my phone turned off!  I wondered if it was too cold?  But pretty much from mile 3-7 it was mostly off.  Sometimes I would be able to turn it back on, I would take a picture, and then it would automatically turn back off.  It was super annoying.  Then I decided to switch to music, so when I would turn back on, I turned on my running playlist and it would play for about 5 seconds and then turn off!  It seemed like the moment my phone connected to my wireless earbuds is the moment the phone would turn off.  It made it pretty awkward when a song from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (that doesn't have the cleanest language) kept blaring for 5 seconds before shutting off.  Anyway, I did bring a back up pair of cheap earbuds and when I plugged those in at miles 7 my phone stayed on.  I'm still not sure if this phone problem was a phone problem (and then it finally warmed up enough?) or if it was a wireless earbud problem. It was all very weird and annoying, and I know it ate up time when I kept fiddling with everything.  
 The race provided free pictures which is great!  However, I only noticed two photographers the whole 13 miles, so obviously there weren't a ton of options for my free photos ;) 
At the last minute, I decided to take my water backpack, and I'm really glad I did.  It was nice having so much room for kleenex, gloves, extra earbuds, my keys, and fuel!



 I loved running through these pretty tree lined streets once we were in downtown Salt Lake.  We also ran right by the zoo which was fun, because its one of my favorite places to take the kids :) 

 With about 1/2 mile to go, we ran through a tunnel :)  There were lots of cute spooky signs too.


 And then I crossed the finish line!  It really was a great race.  One of my favorite half marathons I've done.  Oh, and this brought my lifetime total of halfs to 8! :) 
my stats.  My garmin said I ran it in 1:20:03, but that's pretty close.


The splits don't look that great (I don't like it when my fastest miles are the first ones, but that's what happens on a downhill race!)


Also, after my sad, depressing training post a while back, I'm happy to report that I'm in a pretty good mental place running wise.  During the race, I just kept thinking how grateful I was to be able to run.  I love the way I feel after running, and I sure hope I can continue to do it for a long, long time!






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Big Cottonwood Canyon Half Marathon September 2015

Image
Last Friday it was packet pick up day!  They had a fun backdrop to take pictures in front.  These great ladies are why I signed up for this race to being with!  It's been fun running with them. And then sure enough, dark and early, it was time to run my race!  I got picked up at 4:15am (ouch!).  We drove over to where the buses would drive us up the canyon and then wrapped in our mylar blankets and throw away sweats we waited for the race to begin! It was a super weird beginning.  There was no one on a bullhorn or no starting sound.  All of a sudden we realized that people way ahead had started running and the race was underway haha It was a beautiful course.  This is from the website, " Runners are set to experience an elevation drop of more than 3,000 feet as they descend through Big Cottonwood Canyon on their way from the mountains into the city  ."   Finished! Since it was so downhill, I had no troub...
Read more

Herriman Days 5K

Image
I finally had a new race on the schedule!  Since my last race was the Princess Half back in February, I was itching for a new one!  I had originally signed up for a race down in Provo.  It was a 5K for the refugee effort.  Jackson was going to run the 5K with me and we were going to join my sister, brother, and nieces.  However, I later learned that our Herriman Days fell on the same day.  I love supporting the local town races, so I chalked up the Refugee race fee as a donation to the cause, and I signed for the Fort Herriman Days 5K.  I also signed up all three kids for the mile race. I love when races are so close that I can leave my house 10 minutes before it starts!   The course was downhill for the first mile and I flew down (well for me 8:26 pace is flying haha).  Then the uphill started, and I was trying to maintain a 10:00 pace (which was my goal for the race).  Because I have been doing walk/run intervals and I've been t...
Read more

Battlefield Half Marathon November 2014

Image
When I first found out that Winchester was hosting it's first half marathon, I was so happy!  Especially because it was at the perfect time of year (early November).  However, life and seminary got in the way of a good, consistent training schedule and so I was not as prepared as I would have liked.   I was very happy to have Amanda to run with me!  She is seriously the best running partner.  I'm sure I slowed her a down, but being able to talk with her made the miles go by so much faster!      Along with Amanda, my super awesome playlist kept me going.  I was overjoyed when I'll Make a Man Out of You shuffled on during the last mile!  The perfect pick-me-up   Always feels good to get that medal! :)   And I was pretty excited to end my day with a new menu from the Alamo!     Half marathon means lots of steps!  
Read more