I finished the Arizona half marathon!

Second tour of duty to port-oh-john w/ Ingrid from TNT. Cold that morning so we piled on the clothes and then added them to the trail of the discarded gloves, old shirts, sweats on the course.

Took forever to get from my corral (22) to the start-- actually took nearly an hour to get to the start.
I was in corral 14-- would have been my pre-stress fracture pace, but I moved down to corral 22-- oops. Another lesson learned. Coral 22 was for walkers- I just arbitrarily picked it. Here's what I learned: don't go out w/ the elites who will stampede over you or make you fly so fast you can't go more than a half mile w/out collapsing. BUT don't also go out with people much slower than you or you will be running much further than a half marathon as your run in zig-zag fashion from one slow moving road block to another. I felt like my feet were bushwhacking their way through a dense forest of legs and torsos. I got so sick of moving from one side of the field to the other that I just ran straight and yelled out "on your right" or "excuse me. Can go between you?" People appreciated that- "Thank you for at least asking" one lady said good naturedly-- apparently someone who made the same corral mistake as me just barreled into her moments before.

My dad noted on line (miracle of computers) when I passed the 5K mark at 41 minutes and called my mom to tell her. When I called him, he said "You really picked it up after the first 3 miles"! What? HOw did you know that!!!? Then he explained that the Arizona website had it all in real time! And every time my chip passed a mat the time got registered on the website so my dad back in Michigan could virtual watch my progress in Arizona. Yeah, I really picked it up after 3 miles-- I had mostly bushwhacked my way through the lines of slow moving people blocks and got to coral 17 with the jog/runners. This was when it got fun and I think I just grinned the whole way from there on out!!

Okay--gots to go to PT--- will feel very good today!
My finish time was 2 hours and 47 minutes and some seconds. Much better than my goal--which, w/ my just healed leg, was anything under 4 hours. I never stopped running-- not even through water stations-- just grabbed two cups-- as I ran by== one to drink/spill down my shirt and one to toss water on my back and legs and still running.

I had ear to ear grin-- so beautiful Arizona is!!! I took some photos as I ran-- kept the camera in my water bottle pouch. Will post those soon.

My favorite moment (there were many but this saved me): the part of my body that killed the whole time were my feet-- I stupidly, nostolgically wore the same shoes I had for Bayshore in May and my feet felt every pound of the pavement until it was like that psycho from Misery was hammering the bottoms of my feet with a hobbling sledge hammer. As I ran up one of the bridges around mile ten and my feet pulsed with pain, I saw a man with a huge sign. I ran to my left to read it--anything to keep my mind off the bottoms of my feet.

His sign read: IF YOUR FEET KILL, THEN YOU ARE KICKING BUTT!
Oh what an angel God sent me. What an angel. What a perfect message for that moment of pain. I laughed out loud and suddenly each throb became part of the delightful message on the angel's sign.

I love rock-n-roll marathons-- over 25,000 in the half marathon alone (reason for the wave starts) and 9000 for the full marathon. Cheerleaders-- really, never thought I would say this, but the cheerleaders also go me through my race! Something about someone cheering for you to keep running actually helps you keep running.

When I rounded the corner for the last .1 miles almost to the finish, ACDC was playing--don't even remember what but I loved it. I was sprinting at this point, having speeded up my pace in planned increments the whole race so I could finish at a sprint--knowing I didn't need to reserve any more energy.
Gramen says:
miles 0-4 13.48 pace
miles 4-10 12.38 pace
miles 10-12 11.41 pace
miles 12-13 all out sprint-- registered 5.57 as my fastest time (that could be one second and probably was a second as I sprinted down a hill that last mile) But I think I averaged a 7 minute mile for the last mile.

Had so much fun and can't wait for the next race-- Tracy, Lou, and Jacqueline and I are already planning the next three races to do together!!!