DRC Half Marathon

I had a GREAT WEEKEND (except Saturday morning). I took a nice nap on Saturday and got in bed early. The time change and the extra hour of sleep really helped. I kept having dreams that I overslept and I just up out of bed Sunday morning and said, "Oh no it is 6:30am!" I then checked my watch and realized my phone has not updated and it was 5:30am. We had to leave the house by 6am because it was a 45 drive and there is no parking at the race location so we had to take a shuttle from a remote parking lot. We got to the race with just enough time for me to get in the huge line for the restroom. As soon as I got over to the starting area the race started so I threw my hoodie to Ellen and tried to get in with my pace group. The first 4 miles went by quickly and around mile 5 there was a big hill and my left knee started hurting. I kept going and ate a GU pack. It was very hilly until mile 7. I passed the halfway mark at 1:00:07 so I knew I was right on my goal. Hall & Oates started playing on my headphones and I need something faster tempo so I switched to James Brown. When I crossed the 8mi marked I realized I had paused my watch for a quarter mile. Mile 8-10 was a mental battle and I took my 3rd energy goo. I was able to get back to a 9:15-9:30 pace after mile ten and people were slowing down right and left. There was a nice breeze coming across the lake and I found a group to keep pace with for a while. With less than a quarter mile left to go my group started walking so I decided to give it all my effort until the end. I crossed the finish line around 2:03 gun time and kept going pass the finish line. My official chip time was 2:01:50. Today I am sore all over and I am lucky enough to have a boss pre-approve me for taking the first half of the day off.

Here is the log from my GPS watch. You can see on the bottom tip of the map at the corner of winstead and garland road where I accidentally stopped my watch reaching for the MP3 play in my belt.