Are we there yet? My first half-marathon!

Are we there yet? My first half-marathon

Wow! Today has been one of the top ten best days of my life, which is an odd thing to say about any day I wake up at 5:30am.

I drove downtown and parked down from Boutwell where the runners were congregating. I felt chilly in my long-sleeved shirt, jacket, gloves, scarf and hat as I walked towards the starting line. The sun was still trying to come out, but from what I could see the weather appeared to be partly cloudy, little wind and temps were in the mid 30’s.

As I got closer and closer to the starting line I encountered more and more people. I was one of thousands of people converging on a couple blocks of downtown Birmingham for a shared, unspoken reason.

At 7:00, the race started! Can’t you smell the excitement?

Around mile 10 I realized my time was pretty good and I hadn’t even stopped running yet.

Mental math is hard when you’re running a mini-marathon. About this time I started to think about walking. I kept running anyway.

At mile 10.5, I decided I needed the cheesy music I had downloaded the night before. So, here came the repeated version of The Eye of the Tiger. (Yes, Auburn fans I have this song downloaded to itunes.)

Somewhere between mile marker 12 and 13 I slowed down because my knee was giving out. As we got within a mile of the finish line the standbys started telling us how much farther we had to go. 1 mile left. 3/4 of a mile left.

I could finally see the finish line. I started running faster. As I kept running and running, the finish line came closer and closer. It was very unexpected…I got very EMO about this time. I couldn’t believe I had actually came to the finish line.

And then I crossed the finish line. I couldn’t believe it was over. No, really, I didn’t quite believe that it was okay to stop running. For the last three miles I felt like I’d be running forever, that the rest of my life would be spent drudging along, trying to finish an endless race.

I really did just run a half-marathon.