Haunted Half Marathon

Yes, it is nearly mid-November, and I am finally getting around to blogging about something that happened October 26th...the Haunted Half.  I know, bad blogger.

This was my third half marathon this year.  I had a PR in the Dino Half back in May (1:56:49), and it was HARD.  I am just not that fast, and I was a-sufferin' the last 3 miles of that race.  Since I don't like to suffer, I am thinking that time might stand as my all-time PR forever and ever.  I was planning on just having a good time at this race, and trotting along at a comfortable pace and who cares how fast I went.

My dad and my sister Val signed up to do the race with me.  I liked the fact that this race didn't start until 9 a.m., so we just had to catch the bus by 7:30 a.m.  It still seemed early when my dad came down to carpool to the start.  My mom came too, and took this picture of us at my house pre-race:

It was a Halloween race, so we were encouraged to dress up.  I decided to be Wonder Woman!  I found a t-shirt with an attached cape that I thought would be fun, and actually found a running skirt with stars on it too.  I even found some awesome Wonder Woman socks that each had their own little cape.  My dad had a Halloween shirt (which was more than I expected) so we were pretty festive as we headed off to meet Val at the bus.

The race started up Emigration Canyon. It was COLD at the starting line!  We found Val (who wore devil horns for her costume) pretty quickly and it was nice to have her and my dad to talk to while we waited the hour or so for the race to start:

It was fun to see all of the different costumes, and there was even a guy riding around dressed up as the Headless Horseman on an actual horse!  Once it was nearly race time, I had to put my sweatshirt in the bag drop to make the trip down to the finish line, and then I was REALLY cold.  I was trying to get my iPod going and I was shivering so hard I was having a hard time pushing the buttons.

By the time the race actually started, I decided I would start running at a pretty good pace to ward off hypothermia.  Plus, the beginning of the race was a gradual downhill down the canyon, and I likes me some down hill.  Weeeee!

After a mile or two I finally started to get warmed up.  Also, my competitive juices started flowing and I started playing the "who can I pass next" game.  The canyon was beautiful and the weather was perfection. I noticed as I went along that there were quite a few other Wonder Womans (Wonder Women?) in the race.  However, not very many had 3 capes like me!  (My nephew informed me at our Halloween party that the real Wonder Woman doesn't actually wear a cape.  Cuz really, where is she going to attach it while wearing her bustier?  Good point, but back to the story).

I was bopping along pretty good, and when I was around mile 5 I checked my watch, and my pace was around 8:30 per mile.  I started thinking....Well.....I might as well try to see if I can finish in less than 2 hours. It sounded like a good idea until mile 7 when the UP-hills started.  There were a couple of brutal hills around mile 8 (and 9 and 10) when running around research park and the avenues.  I HATE running up hills more than I like running down hills, so pretty much any hill is brutal for me.  A couple of them were so steep that I had to pull out my "I am not trying to kill myself" mantra and walk for a bit.  The last couple of miles were through Memory Grove park, and that was my favorite part of the race.  The leaves were so beautiful, the sun was shining, and I was going downhill again!  Yay!

The finish line looked like a great big Jack O' Lantern, and we ran through the mouth.  My official chip time was 1:58:28.  It was a minute or two slower than my PR, but I felt MUCH better during and after this race, so I call it a win.  I couldn't stick around and watch Val and my dad cross the finish line since I had three back-to-back soccer games to get to, but they both had good races too.  It was a fun race!  

Now I am going to take it easy for a couple months...my next half marathon isn't until mid-May.  I am going to run the Ogden Half Marathon.  Should I try to beat that PR??

Hmmmmm...