McDonald’s Half Marathon Recap – Richmond VA

Race 11 of 12

Weather – 37 at starting time – clear and sunny; light winds

Miles ran this year – 949 (goal 1050)

 

Local races have not been kind to us this year.  Traffic was bad, of course, going down to Richmond and what should have been a 1.5 hour drive turned into 2.5 hours.  We headed right to packet pick up and made a quick loop around the expo before heading to the hotel.  I had forgotten I put “For My Mom” on the name part of my bib so seeing that was a nice surprise! 

The hotels for this race have been a bit of an issue.  The first hotel I booked for Saturday night instead of Friday night – oops – and of course, they were now sold out for Friday night.  After a bit of panicking I found another hotel downtown Richmond that was available – at twice the price!  Sigh.   But I wanted to be by the start/finish so I booked it.  Last weekend Kris noticed the hotel had been charged to the credit card – strange.  I called them to get the scoop – it was for a no show charge.  How could that be?!  Somehow they had keyed in the dates for Nov 1-2 instead of Nov 12-13.  Double sigh.  At that point, I had noticed the Omni now had availability which is where I had wanted to stay the whole time so I grabbed a room.  So after 2.5 hours in traffic and a race thru the expo we were really ready to check in – and eat!  We got our keys from the very nice front desk lady and headed up to the 19th floor to find our room.  We found it – two big double doors labeled Presidential Suite.  Hmm?!  Maybe booking at the last minute this was all they had left so in we went.  After a couple loops around the suite we noticed something missing – a bed!  However, there was a tiny one person cot set up in the corner of the room.  While I was on the phone calling the front desk Kris had to use the restroom.  He came running out stating “there’s someone’s stuff in there!” I promptly hung up on the front desk and we got the heck out of there.  The very nice front desk lady was suddenly not to nice stating “well that’s the room they booked you in”.  No – pretty sure I booked a room with a BED!  After a bit of a discussion we were moved to “the only room left” – another suite – this one complete with a pull out sofa.  I was not happy at this point, but I was also starving so we decided to make the best of our pull out sofa and go get dinner.  Dinner was great and I was hoping the spaghetti and meatballs would fuel a good run the next morning.  As far as a good night’s sleep – well that was not to be had. 

Our alarms went off at a very early 6am!  After getting dressed and stretching I figured it was time to eat something.  A bit of the conversation that followed:  Me to Kris – “where is the bagel/banana/peanut butter I brought?”  Kris – “I don’t know, didn’t you bring it in?”  Me to Kris – “No, you emptied the car while I was checking in”.  Kris – “well it’s not here”.  Sigh – no bagel/banana/peanut butter.  Luckily Kris was able to run run down to the Starbucks in the lobby and find a bagel and banana.

So finally the run!  We headed down to the start line which was a couple blocks from our hotel.  We met up with Kris’s co worker Val who was running her 1st half marathon!  She did awesome – beating her goal time by 15 minutes!  There were 4 waves to the start and I was in #2.  At 733am we were off.  The first 5 miles were pretty good.  I kept telling myself that nothing hurt and asking my mom to look down and give me speed   About mile 5.5 we entered Joseph Bryan Park.  I did not like the park.  The first part was a cobblestone’ish path that wasn’t pleasant to run on.  Each step was sending shooting pains thru my hips and legs.  The park was also where most of the hills were found.  Although they weren’t major hills at all I was mentally prepared for a pretty flat course so they were a bit discouraging.  Coming out of the park I was beat and my legs/hips were hurting. 

One of the funny signs on the course.

Kris was meeting me at mile 10 to run the last few miles with me so I just kept telling myself to get to 10.  Finally Mile 10 – and Kris!  He said I didn’t even smile when I saw him but I was happy in my head  

He had a little cup of Gatorade.  Yeah!!  By the way – I was still trying to finish in the ever elusive 2:00 mark.  I was spot on until the park and by the time I got to 10 miles I figured I was about 1:30 minutes off.  So Kris ran a bit ahead of me to try to push me and would circle back and tell me about the course ahead.  Actually I only head about 20% of what he was saying as I still had my iPod on.  He was entertaining though and doing his best to be encouraging.  I really tried to push it the last 1.5 miles and thought at the 12 mile mark we had made up enough time to make the 2:00 hour mark.  The last .25 was all downhill and Kris was running and yelling (in a nice way of course) for me to push it.  I swear I felt like my hips were going to snap in half but I was doing my desk to push it to the finish.  So are you ready for it – the finish time was………2 hours……..24 seconds. 

Not the goal time, but still a PR for me and I’ll take it.  I haven’t had a PR since May so it was nice and to have one at Race #11 of this year was extra nice.  Vegas is the next race and I’m going to totally relax on that one and have fun! 

I do want to wish Kris’s Aunt Letha a Very Very Happy 80th Birthday today!!  I hope I can still be as active as Letha when I’m 80 – she’s quite a remarkable woman. 

Michelle