March 18, 2013

DC Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon Recap

Let me tell you guys a little lesson I learned this weekend.

Pacing is hard work. You are essentially running a race for two and trying to battle all of your own mental/physical weaknesses while doing so for the person you are pacing.

Ally was having a tough day and I was doing my absolute best to keep her motivated and positive. It became really difficult to do that around Mile 8 when my foot started hurting again and I started panicking about what that meant for my marathon training season and worrying about whether I should drop out.

All Smiles. Clearly this was before the foot pain kicked in.
Ally kept insisting that she could finish alone and I knew she could, but that wasn't what I was there for. My foot pain wasn't as terrible as it has been, so I pushed through. In all honesty though, if I wasn't with Ally, I would have dropped from the race at Mile 10 where we saw The Pilot and Metro'd home.

The race itself was fine. I don't remember much about the the course last year but I remember liking it better. Ally and I had fun reminiscing about all of the races we've run together and had fun out there.

I kind of love this picture of us cruising to the Finish. 
I had a few complaints about the race itself.
- Water Stations: There definitely weren't enough. It looks like the volunteers for the Mile 7 aid station never showed up because there was 1 poor girl there trying to hand out water and gatorade. Then, the next station wasn't until Mile 11.
- The medal: The medal was nice, but seriously? Every Rock 'n' Roll medal I've gotten is exactly the same. It's getting boring.
- The shirt: Identical to the shirt from Philly. These races are close enough together that you would think a number of people would run both, so I wish they would have at least chosen a different color (which is saying a lot since it's my favorite color).

The signs though were awesome. "Due to sequestration, there are no porter potties. Unload at Capitol" and "Run like a Kenyan, drink like you're Irish" were my favorites.

Bests
As far as my foot is feeling...yesterday, I had pain in the morning and felt fine the rest of the day. Today, I feel fine. I'm planning to run after work to see how I'm feeling because, after all, I have another race this weekend.

And a marathon in 7 weeks which I've missed 3 weeks of training for.

I don't want to talk about it.

I do want to talk about how amazing this story is. Runners are truly an amazing bunch of people.

Happy Monday!

9 comments:

  1. Good race ladies, even though you had a tough day! too bad about the glitches but it still sounds like it was a fun (ish!) day :-)

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  2. Love you. So grateful to you dragging my undertrained ass through 13.1 miles. You're the best and I am so lucky to have you in my life!

    xoxox

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  3. Great pics of you girls! Kudos to you for pushing through the pain. Sounds like Ally is lucky to have you :)

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  4. OH no, sorry about the foot pain. I hope your run today went well. I'm not a big fan of RnR races due to the lack of personality. I also think they are kind of pricy. I ran Shamrock yesterday and it was awesome!!

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  5. My favorite sign said "One thing sequestration didn't cut = the length of this race".

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  6. Good luck on your marathon - and your foot pain!!! :) :( (happy face for the marathon, sad face for the foot pain - in case you were wondering). Hang in there.

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  7. That stinks about the pain and the water! No good. But it still sounds like you had a good time and were able to put another race in the books!

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  8. where did you find those pictures online? i can't find mine! check out my DC half recap here: www.runningathousandmiles.com

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  9. all I know is it makes a Huge difference on him and keeping him running and his knees feeling better. 
    http://www.footcentersofnc.com/doctors.html

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