Diary of a 1/2 Marathon Mommy! I DID IT!!

 The evening before the race I was a nervous wreck! My stomach hurt so bad due to a nice case of nerves. This is my go to friend when I know I won't be able to sleep and ridden with anxiety. All I need is two pills of Tylenol PM. at 9:00 pm and I was out like a light! I don't know about you but when I need to wake up early for something important like a race or an airplane flight I would have a hard time sleeping so the Tylenol PM helps me get through the night. 

I like to have everything for a big day set up ahead of time so I made sure my bib, shoes and all the gear I was bringing was set up and ready to go. One less thing to stress about!

I woke up before my alarm at 5:00 am. I am happy to say I was able to take care of bathroom business (come on runners you know that this is a critical part of having a successful run). I don't normally eat before I run but I knew I would need fuel so I had a peanut butter toast sandwich (and of course I was stuck with the two ends of the bread because my kids had most of the loaf yesterday). It did the trick in helping any nervous acid in my stomach. I also knew I would need to finish waking up and would be a little groggy so I took a nice morning soak in the tub. 

Today was really important to me so I am not embarrassed to say I put a few curls in my bed head fine hair ponytail and put on some (okay my normal make up routine). Yes, I don't put on my make up during the week some days, but yes I decided to put on make up to go sweat. It may not make sense to you but for me it made me feel good. And on a 13.1 day whatever makes you feel good is key.

I am happy I had my husband and a running friend buddy with me today. We got to the race in plenty of time (it helps when it is a local race and so close to the house). After a quick double gear check I was debating too sunglass or not? I am so glad I brought them with and had them because it was a beautiful 55 degree sunny morning. 

The Fox Valley 1/2 Marathon has a picturesque course winding around the Fox River, through the woods, and through St. Charles, Geneva and Batavia. I am glad I did some practice runs with the group because the course was oddly familiar and I felt very comfortable.



My buddy and I had planned on having a few warm up miles of 10 minutes each. To our surprise our splits were much faster than we anticipated. 

The funny thing was we felt like we were running slow so it really was a fine warm up pace. It's ironic when you try to go slow you go fast and when you want to fast (like at the end of the race when I had nothing left) you go slower than you want. We were around the 9 minute 30 second mile group but we ended up going much faster. 

I am amazed at how wonderful I felt (especially because of the chest cold, ear infections, myself included that we suffered two weeks before). I felt strong, healthy and appreciative of life. 

One thing that really got me through was my amazing playlist I put together. It was just the right mix of new and older songs. There are a few I will delete for my next race (gulp) because they just didn't give me the oomph I needed when I needed it. 

Another thing that got me through was being confident in the training I had done over the last four months. I knew I did everything I could do to prepare myself for this moment. It was so important to me that I kept thinking in my head that I really wanted to crush this and this was the time to give it my all.

My group did amazing on their race. Check out my results below. I couldn't be happy with finishing under 2 hours.

Stay tuned for my post 1/2 marathon recovery plan and my training tips.