Living an EXTRAordinary Life

It was a dark and stormy night.  Okay, not stormy, but it was dark and cold and night when I woke up on the first day of this November, to run this race.  Oh, I was so tempted to stay in bed.  The temperature:  37.  Brrr …. really, that’s too cold even for early November.

But I got up anyway, and prepared for the race.  We were not supplied with timing chip tags, so I had to figure out how to put my chip on my shoe via the laces and this was not the kind of thing I can figure out easily at 5:30 in the morning.

We left later than we wanted to, of course, but were early and beat the road closings.  We had the good fortune of the starting line being near Matt’s office, so we used that parking lot and stayed in the car where it was warm.  And I had access to indoor plumbing … no outhouses for me.

When it was time, we made our way over to the start line, and Matt found the 2:00 pace team and I went to the back.  The slowest pace team was 2:30, despite the fact that we had 3:15 to finish.

There were supposedly 4,500 signed up for this race.  That is a small race to begin with, and looking around, there was nowhere near that.  Oh no.  I hate these small races, I feel so slow!

The race began through the South Side of Pittsburgh and as we begin, 80% of the people participating break away.  I start to have a meltdown and must have given off some meltdown vibes, cause there are others around who start to talk to me and I express my sincere fear that I will not finish in time.  An older woman says that I will and she will finish too, even on the sidewalk.  The younger woman, whose name was also Jennifer was super supportive and we ran together all the way through South Side to the West End Bridge.  I had to stop to tie my shoe (of course) and she said that she was going to keep moving and I told her that I would catch up.  I never did.  I did see her a few times looking back for me, but I had lost too much ground, between tying the shoe and then having to go UPHILL to get onto the bridge.

Around the corner from the bridge, mile 4, my leg started to twinge.  For a moment, I panicked and thought that at least the relay station was only 2.5 miles ahead and if I had to stop that was a good place to do so.  But then I said “My leg doesn’t hurt, there is nothing wrong with it” and it was indeed fine after that.  I must have just stepped funny.

I ran/walked, ran/walked, all through the North Side.  There were few people behind me.  It was very surreal, I was practically alone, feeling like I was merely trudging along on a practice run, except that the streets of Pittsburgh were open just for me.

The prettiest part of the trip was a part of Northside that I had only seen once, at night, during a Halloween 5K.  There is a park somewhere nearby and a walking trail to the right.  But we were on the road, of course, and the trees were still holding on to their leaves.  This was essentially the “turnaround”.  One more uphill ramp, to the 31st street bridge, and down into town and back to Southside and we are done.

Along the way, two girls taking a walk break said that they were surprised that the race was so competitive.  They didn’t think running was so big in Pittsburgh and didn’t think they would be all the way in the back all alone.  They were there for fun, not for speed.  At this point we were all averaging somewhere around a 12:00 mile, so we weren’t exactly going slow.  But we felt like it, as it was so isolated back there.

Around mile 7.5, 8, somewhere in there, I knew I was probably done running, or at least trying to run for any length of time, and I was also nauseated.  At this point, I looked over and saw someone who looked like she was struggling too.   She was also not feeling well, so we helped each other by walking together.  She was walking faster than me, so I had to keep up.  Then she slowed down, and I sped up so she had to keep up with me.  Mile 10 went really fast, but the rest of them seemed to go on forever.

Eventually, my nausea did pass, so I was happy about that and Rachel and I did get to the finish, and I did run across the finish line.   In pretty much 3:00.  That is my third slowest half marathon time.

I would not have done nearly as well had it not been for the kindness of strangers and the support of Jennifer and Rachel.  I finished 138th out 139th in my age group, and I actually think that is a bit funny.  There were not even 2,100 finishers in total.

One thing I was surprised about was that they did have water until the end. I hear about the people at the end who don’t get any because the race runs out.  There was no sport drink after awhile though, but I don’t know if its cause we were late, or if they didn’t pass them out.

The pros of the race:
*The course was nice
*Our goodies … this HUGE reusable shopping bag from Dick’s, a reusable water bottle, a towel, a finisher’s hat (which we got at  the expo) and a long sleeved technical tee
*Plenty of water and food at the finish (although could that be because half of the registrants didn’t show?)

The bad:
*Not enough participants
*There were not time clocks at every mile and I don’t think all of the miles were even marked
*The medals don’t have the year on them
*Not a lot of crowd support