2017 Rite Aid Cleveland HALF Marathon

It's here folks! My first half marathon race report on this blog! I started this blog on May 25, 2012 and did not write a "race report" for the half marathon that year. It wasn't a good race at all and I was focused on blogging about my full marathon training.

Yesterday was a very emotional day for me. I was actually starting to get really emotional leading up to Sunday. I started looking at the weather forecast as soon as I could. I was worried (of course) because they were calling for HOT and HUMID and potential thunderstorms. The race in 2012 was hot and humid to a degree that I heard rumors about them red-flagging the race by the time I was done (not sure if it was actually red-flagged or not).

I started to worry the most that they would actually have to end up canceling the event due to lightening. I know that the last thing race directors want to do is cancel a race; but I also know they want to keep us all safe.

Now to wait!

So Saturday I tried to go to bed early knowing I'd have to get up around 4 AM Sunday. I failed and ended up see the clock every hour until about 1 AM. Oddly enough, the next time I looked at the clock it was 4:04 AM and I decided to just get out of bed and not wait for my alarm to go off at 4:15. I looked at the weather one last time and watched the radar. It looked like the rain was going to hold off until about 9:30 and it looked to me like the lightening might hold off all together. This definitely put me more at ease.

I picked Leslie up and we were downtown and in a parking spot by about 5:50. We walked to the starting area and ended up hanging out inside the Q (Quicken Loans Arena) while we waited the hour+ for the start. My sister was running the 10k with her husband and amazingly they found us. Leslie and I were walking around in the Q and all of the sudden I heard my name. I turned and saw my brother in law.

We then all walked around the Q for a while until we decided to head out to the corrals. It was kind of crazy because we were heading towards our corral and the national anthem started. I have NEVER not been already in my starting corral when they play the national anthem! After the national anthem ended we made our way into our corral. We actually ended up being a little farther up than I had originally planned, but the crowd had started moving forward so we just jumped in.

Look at all the people!!! 

In 2011 I believe it took me about 10+ minutes to actually cross the start line from when they started the clock. In 2012 it took me more like 20 minutes. I was shocked this year that it was only about 7:08 when we were crossing that start line! And then we were off!

The start felt really good. I felt like I was moving at a pretty good pace and those first 2 minutes of running just flew by. It is ALWAYS  hard to stop to walk after only 2 minutes in a race, but I knew that if I just kept running I would struggle (even more) in the second half of the race. I am always careful to know my surroundings though and since the course is still pretty congested at this time I make sure I'm off to the side and no one is directly behind me before I walk. There were a couple times we had to run a few seconds extra to be sure we didn't trip anyone.

My watch beeped to let me know we hit mile 1 and I noticed

Starting line selfie! (complete with photo bomber)

that we hadn't actually crossed the 1 mile flag so I knew my Garmin was going to be off. By the end of the race my Garmin read 13.6 miles instead of 13.1. No biggie, but it just means that I like the pace my Garmin says I ran better than my official results! Miles 1-4 were AMAZING! Every time my watch beeped I would look at my wrist and would see we were not only maintaining an awesome pace, but we were pretty darn consistent. Mile 5 was slower because there was a pretty decent hill at some point between miles 4 and 5. We were able to speed back up a little after that hill, but our pace was definitely getting consistently SLOWER starting with mile 5. I believe that I finished 5 miles slightly faster than I did during the Towpath 5 miler in April.

The struggling really started between miles 8 and 9. I had to talk myself through the rest of the miles. Every time we hit a new mile marker I would tell myself I'm just looking for the next mile.

One of these days I'll negative split a race!

Prior to race day I was not feeling overly confident about my finishing time. I knew I could do it. Even when we had a horrible 14 mile run, we still covered the distance. I always want to at least beat my slowest half marathon time. Obviously getting a PR every time I race is amazing. That's what happened in 2011. I did the Cleveland Half in May and PR'd by 24 minutes (that's a LOT). I then did another half marathon in November and took off another 14 minutes. Not only was I PRing every time, but I was taking significant chunks of time off. Of course I know that even the best runners don't get better every single time they go out there. My half in 2012 was the 2nd worst time I've ever gotten and as much as that sucked I was just happy to finish. So, I wanted better than 3:20 and wasn't feeling confident about that. Of course I REALLY wanted less than 3 hours, but I thought there was NO WAY that was happening.

The good and bad of having my Garmin is that I knew how close I was to finishing in under 3 hours. I have no idea if I would have pushed myself more if I didn't know. I do know that I got to a certain point around mile 12 when I knew I wasn't going to break 3 hours, but I knew I was going to be way closer than I ever thought so it was OK to not push quite as hard. My official finishing time was 3:05.00.

There is that nasty part of myself that is upset that I was SO CLOSE to breaking 3 hours and I didn't push myself a little harder. But, I am quieting that mean person and listening to the more reasonable person who tells me that my time doesn't matter! This has been 5 YEARS in the making. Crohn's Disease tried to beat me. It worked really hard for 3 years fighting my efforts to quiet it. Crohn's may have slowed me down for a few years, but I never stopped fighting. I fought every step of the way even when I didn't feel like it. And now I'm back. Screw you, Crohn's. You WILL not beat me.

Sweaty, Salty, but still SMILING! 

I have told her many times, but I'm not sure that Leslie will ever realize the role she played in my comeback. I can guarantee you that without her I would not be writing this post. I am so thankful that our boys became friends and that we ended up connecting the way we do. Not only did she start running with me back in November 2016, but she stayed with me every step of the way yesterday. She was never more than a few steps in front of me and didn't even seem annoyed when I needed to take extra walk breaks. I have such a hard time believing that she doesn't care about going slow; but perhaps I'm starting to believe her.

And I think one of the coolest things was while watching Fox 8 News this morning I happened to look up from my computer when they mentioned the marathon. As I'm watching the clip I see ME about to cross the finish line! How cool is that!?!?!? And, it might be hard to tell in the pic, but I look SO HAPPY! I was. And I am.