Race Report: Baltimore Half marathon

Pre-Race

I'm so excited to run!

Since I was not racing this race, I slept like a log. Although I think Jason was nervous and didn't sleep so great. Anyhow, we left our house about 6:15 and made it up to Baltimore in no time at all. Then it was a lot of sitting around before the half started at 9:45. We had to get there early because the full marathon started at 8 and we were then merged into the full marathon at the 13 mile mark. At first I wasn't thrilled about getting there earlier than I had to, but it actually did seem to work out well, food wise. My stomach always seems to act up during a race because I don't think I usually give myself enough time for it to digest. But, this was not the case on Saturday! I had a yogurt on the car ride up, then I had a bagel about 8ish.

 

We left our car about 8:30 and made our way to the bathrooms and meet up with Carly and Suze. It was a short walk of about a half mile to the half marathon start and once there it was a little disorganized and none of the corals were marked.

 

 



About to get our run on!

The Race

Jason and I took off once we crossed the timing mat. He had asked me to pace him for about a 10 minute mile, but I took a look at my watch not even 1 mile into the run and it was dead!!! WTF... this is the third race in the row that my garmin has failed me! This might have really bothered me if I was running my own race, but since I was sticking with my one and only it really wasn't a big deal. Although I could really no longer pace him.

 

The first three miles seemed slow to me and they had all these orange cones in the middle of the road. I almost tripped and face planted over those damn cones I don't know how many times! Jason ran with his headphones on and kept the ear bud out of his ear on his left side so I could talk to him on that side. The entire race I always seemed to be running on his right side though and would have to square dance around him to get back on his talking side.

 

We merged in with the full marathon runners around mile 3 for us and there was a lot of music/crowd support at this point which was so much fun! I saw a guy with a sign that said Jane will you marry me! I'm not sure if this is how I would want to get purposed to! Maybe at the end of a race, but during??

 

The course was pretty hilly and there was a nice big one around mile 5 I think. I would keep looking at Jason to make sure he was doing ok, but he was looking strong. I would sometimes run ahead of him and he yell at my to slow my roll, and then I would drop back and run with him again. It is sometimes really hard to slow yourself down to run with someone else, but I was so glad I was not trying to PR on this course because it was hot, windy, and hilly. I was more than happy to run with Jason in a pressure free, happy go lucky race. I did a lot of looking around the Baltimore neighborhoods enjoying the pretty row houses and the sketchy ones too!

 

To me the worst part of this course is not the hills that is famous for ... it's the loop around the lake. This was my 5th year running and I always hate the part around the lake. Jason agreed with me as we entered the loop at around mile 7. Although this year there was a band on one side of the lake and they also had some food/candy which was nice. I think this is also the point that Jason started to hurt. We had not taken any walk breaks, but took our first one at mile 8 as we exited the lake. I kept telling him each mile from this point on that it's just like our 5 mile loop, or our 4 mile loop and so on. I always like to break up longer runs into shorter segments so that it seems like you are running a shorter distance. I don't know if this really helped him or not?

 

Between mile 9 -10 you ran up a big hill that had lots of crowd support and music. It's actually my favorite little block of the whole race. At the top of the hill, there was beer! And stopping and having a beer was awesome! I'm not sure what our split was for the 10 mile mark, but I was happy to see it and knew we were almost to the finish line. It's about at this point that Jason was really hurting and we decided it would be smart to take walk breaks at the last couple of mile markers.

 

Before we knew it we could see Camden yards in the distance. I think Jason thought it was closer than what it was and started to kick it up. I went with the flow, but we slowed back down after about 2 minutes. We entered Camden yards and the crowd support was great. I liked the sign that said; "don't walk, people can see you". And then the best part of the race came! Jason grabbed my hand about 200 meters from the finish line (which made me get all teary eyed) and we ran across the finish line hand in hand. It was the best feeling in the world to cross the finish line with Jason and I am just so proud of him for running his first half :)

 

Official time: 2:17:14

 

 

Post Race:

I don't have much thoughts on this race besides the fact that I had a lot of fun and I was so glad I was able to run this with my husband and support him the whole run :) I'm not sure though if he is in love with running yet.... maybe I should register him for more races :)

 

Happy Monday All