Imagine all of Rolla running

Sunday, January 31st, I ran in the ING Half Marathon in Miami, Florida! There were over 18,000 people registered for the race which is about the equivalent of all of Rolla running 13.1 or 26.2 miles! Wouldn't that be a crazy and pretty incredible thing. Races are very inspirational! There are people of all ages and sizes and fitness levels running and you NEVER can guess how well someone can do. Someone who looks overweight and has horrible form and be way faster than you and someone who looks extremely fit can run really slow! If you like people watching, this is a great place for it. There was a group of people who were running for a group called Lifeline. There were lots of charity runners, but the unique thing about many of these girls is that they had long skirts and head coverings on and were running and many faster than me.

I had a fun weekend with cousins and a sweet 5 month old cousin. It was very refreshing to get away for a few day. The warmth felt pretty good too! I missed my family though because I love them and like to share fun things with them!

The run was good. It was very humid through the whole race and there were two small rain showers that felt good. I was trying out the run 5 min, walk 1 min training program for the first time in a race. (Jeff Galloway) I had NOT trained to do my ultimate goal of a 2 hour half marathon. (about 2:05 is the closest that I've come.) I had only trained to finish and had started this 5/1 thing. There were some definite interesting Miami spectacles on the run like the two drag queens. At about mile 12 I caught up with the person that I met in St. Louis waiting for our flight. She was running the whole marathon so it was just in time that I caught up to her.

My end chip time (my time from the start to the finish, not the fun to my finish) was 2:08. I felt good about that. It was a good time...and the bigger deal, it proved the training methodology. I can go just as fast with walking every minute as I can with running the entire time. The biggest benefit to me, is that my recovery is much much better!

Here are some pictures of the race - a lot of me and then some in general.

I left my cousins after the first 1/2 mile because I wanted to go faster than they were wanting to go. It was a very crowded race. I felt like I was jockeying for position all of the time and trying to find some place to run. Not a bad thing except when you have to slow down to find somewhere to go.

Walking the first time - after 5 minutes of running was HARD. It was hard because I was excited. It was hard because I was afraid of what people may think of me walking so soon. I passed all those people in the end so it wasn't that big of a deal. The second walk break wasn't so bad and by the third walk break I was very much in the rhythm.

I'm ready to sign-up for my next race...more discussions will need to happen with the family before that though. I was nice to have a few days away, but vacation really isn't so much fun without my husband.

Anyone ready to join me?