13.1

Thirteen miles is a long way to run. I ran a half marathon last Sunday (Yes, I also called my father!). I ended up finishing much better than I thought, at 2:30. For some reason, I had it in my head that it would take me 3 hours to finish. I did walk about a quarter of a mile of the race because I got a bit overheated, but overall I'm pretty happy with how I did.

This particular race has only been around for about 4 years, so while there was also a full marathon and a four-person relay marathon going on, it didn't attract athletes as competitive as in the 10-mile race I did earlier this year. The fastest marathoner came in at 2:50.

I ran with another couple from work. AG was there, but he didn't get to run because of a knee injury (healing well, but too soon to test it). Our race packets got mixed up, so I ended up accidentally running with his number and chip timer. When I crossed the finish line, they read off his name, took one look at me, and then tried pronouncing his first name a different way to make it sound more feminine! He was a great asset-- doing all the driving, calming my nerves, and just being great moral support.

While running the race, I decided that I would have to be crazy to attempt a full marathon at this point in my life. The running schedule for just a half marathon pretty much sucked up the majority of my free time these past couple of months. And to be honest, I didn't even run as much as I should have. So now with multi-hour runs off my schedule, I am once again a free woman... or at least free to focus on my academic projects, and doing stuff around the house. I would like to not completely blow off running entirely and do a couple 10-mile runs a month, but we'll see how well I maintain it.