2nd half marathon

Back on September 3rd I ran my second half marathon. You can read about my first one here. I felt I didn't do the first one quite right. I wanted another shot at it. Since I knew I was moving to Salt Lake City I looked up halfs in the area and found the Salt Lake City Marathon and Relay. I didn't think to look up the course since it was called the Salt Lake City Marathon, so one would assume it would be in the city. So after I moved to Utah I started my training. Actually, I started it just before we left Idaho. I was kicking butt and getting faster. Then I moved. Utah was higher in elevation, the area where we live is all hilly, it was hotter than heck, and they were having an abnormally humid summer. Those conditions were all foreign to me, and my body did not like it. My training hit a snag. But I had already signed up for this race so I kept at it. After what seemed like forever (but was actually a little over a month of frustration) I started to finally get used to these new conditions and was getting back into my groove. But my time had slowed down a little. Oh well. What can you do?

A few weeks before the race I was getting ready to run my 12 mile run and figured I should probably check out the race course and just run it on there. For my first half I didn't check out the main part of the course beforehand so I wasn't as prepared as I should have been. This time around I was going to do things different. As a family we decided to drive the course. I looked up the info and we started to drive there. But we were leaving the city and going into the mountains. What the? We got to where the starting line was going to be and I just had to laugh. The whole first 4 miles were straight uphill. That's right, uphill. I was going to die. The rest of the race was basically all downhill, but those first 4 were going to be killer. Thank goodness I decided to run the last 12 miles of it 2 weeks before the race because that definitely helped to prepare me. I ran it in less than 2 hours with no problem. I had Jeff meet me part way through to give me a new bottle of water, I had my little pack with me loaded with my ipod and gels, so I was good to go. I felt great! The next couple of days my legs were totally sore, but not because of the beginning uphill, it was due to the 8 miles or so of constant downhill at the end. Going downstairs was brutal for a few days.

The week before the race I ran a simple 6 miles on the race course again. Thank goodness I ran the race course before race day because on race day the course was a cinch. I felt confident. I ran the half in 2:08:43, which was 10 minutes faster than my first half marathon. Go me! My legs didn't hurt from all the downhill because I had prepared for it. The course was beautiful, the weather perfect, the people were great, and I set a new PR - what a good day! Now I just need to break the 2 hour mark. Hopefully I can do that sometime next year :) I have definitely learned a lot more this time around, but I know there is plenty more to learn. I feel so accomplished and powerful having done this. I still never plan on running a full marathon though. Running 13.1 miles is plenty for me :)

Post race pic. Me with my biggest fans! The picture of me running up to the finish line was, shall we say, less than flattering, so this is the only picture you're going to see, ha ha.