First Half Marathon

It was a big weekend at the Manning household! Saturday was the day of the Half Marathon!  In April, Brydon and I had decided to participate in this Half Marathon.  For a while we toyed with the idea of running a full and we thought about sending Brydon off to the Air Force Marathon but in the end stuck with the original plan.  We had been training for so long and so it was exciting and nerve wracking for the day to finally arrive. 

It was a really tough race!  All summer we had trained in 100 degree calm weather and the day of the race was chilly and windy.  We had up to 30 mile an hour winds and it was about 55 degrees when we ran.  I was freezing!!  The beginning of the race was the hardest.  We spent the first 5 miles running straight into the wind.  At mile 6, Brydon's knee injury really flared up.  We had hoped it had gotten better but the pain was pretty severe.  He tried to walk for a while but at mile 9 got a ride to the finish line.  I was so glad he stopped because he had trouble walking for the rest of the day and we are hoping it is not a severe injury now.  It was hard to leave him though, and it was hard to run without him.  Fortunately I did find a group of women that I was able to run with.  One girl was a "super marathoner"!  This was just a warm up race for her full marathon next week.  She chatted with me and was a great motivator.  I was grateful to meet up with her.  Brydon made it back to the finish line just in time to cheer for me as crossed the line.  It felt so good to be done!

My goal was to try to finish the 13.1 miles in just under 2 hours.  I finished in 2 hours and 57 secs.  So CLOSE!  But I felt better when the winner of the race was 15 minutes slower than his usual time due to the winds.  I ran at a 9:13 pace and I was really happy about that.  In the end I think I did pretty good.  I placed 6th out of 27 runners in my age group.  Out of 123 total finishers, I was 47th.  Not bad for my first!

We weren't sure if Caleb was going to be able to come to the race.  In the middle of the night he had gotten REALLY SICK!!  Sicker than he had ever been before.  My mom was kind enough to stay with our poor guy and shoo us out the door in the morning.  Caleb cried when we left, because he really wanted to be there for the race.  It broke my heart.  Grandma and Caleb did make it at the end and Caleb was so excited for us.  He helped me stretch afterwards and was such a trooper considering everything his body had just been through.

Although things hadn't turned out like we hoped, it was a great experience to accomplish such a big goal.  Brydon and Caleb were so supportive throughout the whole training process and I sure am lucky to have such great boys.  We were really fortunate to have my mom there so she could help with Caleb and let us both run.  We can't wait to sign up for more races in the future.  It has become quite the family affair!!!