That's right, I completed my FIRST Half Marathon on Sunday. I know it's been a couple days, but we've had some friends visiting so I haven't had much time to sit down and write this up.
This whole adventure started just after the New Year when I got an e-mail from my Squadron Commander throwing down a challenge to compete in the Seaside School Half Marathon. This is an event to help raise money for the town of Seaside Heights School (where they shot the movie "The Truman Show"). I'm a proponent of schools, so I figured it'd be my charity event of the year.
So the original plan was that I had a little over 60 days to train for this race. Things started out well. I got a couple 3-4 mile runs in, but Florida was going through some unseasonably cold snaps through much of January and February. This made training just a bit unbearable. So to shorten the story up, the only training that I really got done was my PFT training for the last week of January.
The day before race day, we packed up the Venza and drove out to Seaside Heights to pick up my race pack, bib, and chip. Being my first time racing, this was a bit of a learning experience but Malinda and I muddled our way through it. We then spent an hour or so getting our bearings around the town of Seaside Heights. It's a quaint little seaside town (hence the name). Each house is named just like a ship would be and they also have your name and your hometown our front, just like some Air Force Bases do. It was kind of cool to see the names some people named their house, like Just In Time.
On race day we woke up at 4:15am to get there by 6:00am. It was a good plan, but the only problem was that it was 35 ℉ right up until race start time. Most races along with Malinda and Caroline huddled in a small coffee shop to keep warm.
Things started out great for me. My plan was to run an easy 10 min mile for the duration of the race. That plan worked out well for the first few miles. I was enjoying the scenery and even having a couple conversations with some random people. Matter of fact, things went excellently right up until mile 5 1/2. Right about then started a mile of about 4 hills. Then the turn around point in which I had to do those for hills AGAIN. That is when my pace went from about 10:35 per mile to almost 11:00 per mile and stayed there for the remainder of the race. Needless to say, I didn't plan on there being any hills here in Florida. Another thing I didn't plan for is people taking forever at the Port-O-Potties. So I had to either A) wait over 5min to use one or B) Hold it. I decided to hold it until mile 7 when their was no line.
The rest of the race was pretty uneventful. I finished with a time of 2:28:38. In the grand scheme of things I know that's slow, but for someone who didn't really train I think that's pretty good. My only goal was to finish. That is so I can get a medal and Malinda can get her Vera Bradley bag (the main reason she agreed to let me run). Below are some pictures taken during the race.
This is me at the beginning. It was about 35 degrees and I was itching to run!
This is me about 200 yards from the finish.
Enjoying the fruits of a job well done!
Also, to catch you up on some general Billings news, Malinda is doing just fine with her pregnancy. We are just under 2 months away from our Baby Boy being born. Malinda is nesting big time. Caroline has reached quite a few milestones. She is walking on her own pretty well at this point. She is starting to talk. She is getting really good about telling us when she has "Poo Pooed" so we can change her. She is also eating with a fork all by herself too!
We are also in the process of selling our house too. So you can imagine that Malinda has me working overtime to get things painted and fix before mid-April.
Also, we just had a visit from our close friends Jeremy and Samantha. For those of you keeping track, Samantha was Malinda's Matron of Honor in our wedding. They only stayed a couple days and we made it to the beach only once.
