Angela, Keith & I accomplished our goal! All of us finished the Fayetteville Half Marathon! I gotta say, I was a little intimidated... A cold front blew through the night before and winds were about 30mph... not necessarily a big deal... However, the temperature during the race was a BRISK 18 degrees!!! And yes... the winds were still blowing 30mph during the race!!! It was FREAKIN' cold! The Gatorade and water at the aid stations during the race were frozen. I was bundled up like Kenny in South Park, and I ran like that the whole race. I sweat like crazy, but I wasn't cold ;-)
We had a nice treat as well... Angela's parents flew out to cheer us on. We really enjoyed having them there and had a blast the entire time!
Keith paced the field... his goal was to finish in less than 2 and a half hours, which he did. His final time was 2 hours 19 minutes 52 seconds. Angela finished in 2 hours 38 minutes 11 seconds. My goal was simply to finish... with a secondary goal of not finishing last... I accomplished both :-) I finished in 2 hours 40 minutes 21 seconds. The full results can be found here.
The course we ran was 13.1 miles in length. Here's a map:
We started on the University of Arkansas campus (bottom left of the map) then worked our way North through town, back South, then did a loop and repeated part of the course before returning back to the University of Arkansas campus to finish on their outdoor track. The course had some pretty steep hills on it (see the course profile at the bottom of the map) and ranged from some really busy streets to a bicycle path. All in all, it was more fun than I expected, and I had a much better run than I expected! The first 5 miles seemed to fly by, and I was pretty comfortable up until about 11 miles. After that, my right knee really started tightening up. I usually finish pretty strong but it simply wasn't happening this time. If I wanted to finish, I was gonna have to take it easy so I did. The end result... Mission Accomplished!!!
Oh... and to answer the most commonly asked question since the race...
No, I'm not running a marathon next! In fact... I'm going back to weight training.
Running sucks...
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