Nashville, part 4: The Big Race

1st is the worst,
2nd is the best,
10,321 isn't too bad for your first marathon.

Thats right. I am proud to say that I finished the Country Music 1/2 Marathon in 10,321st place. Considering that about 20,000 people ran it, I feel pretty good about it!

Melissa, my cousin Miriam, and I woke up about 5am on Saturday to head downtown for the big race. I started getting nervous about it the night before at dinner. I'm not really sure why - it's not like I didn't know what was going to happen. I knew we would just wake up early and run for a few hours!!



I knew Miriam and Melissa would be running at a much faster pace than me - we were all separated into corrals (I know - herd us all in there, why don't you) based on our estimated finish time. Miriam was in Corral 8 while I was in Corral 26. A little bit of difference there! But they convinced me to start up with them, anyway, so all three of us started together in Corral 10. And literally, I kept up with them for maybe 15 steps! Really I just didn't want them to feel badly about me beating them, so I let them go ahead. Here's Melissa getting after it:



When we started it was gloriously overcast and cool - what a difference that makes! The first few miles really were fun (though not as fun as I make them look in this next picture!) - I couldn't believe how many people were running and how many fans came out to watch.



It's amazing what a difference it makes to see familiar faces cheering you on!! I had a whole crew out to cheer me - literally Adam's whole family came out to cheer for me and Adam's bro-in-law Andy who ran the WHOLE marathon! Go, Andy! They camped out on a whole stretch of sidewalk with strollers, posters, friends, cousins to cheer us on! It was great motivation to look forward to seeing them, or at least great motivation to not walk so I wouldn't be embarrased in front of them! Thank you, thank you for your support and enduring a long and early morning for us!



Things got pretty ugly for me around the 9.5 mile point. The sun came out and the course was through the middle of the city which was tough with little to no shade and a lot more long hills than I had anticipated. I had felt semi-prepared for hills going into the race but as it turns out, the ones I've run here are steeper and quicker as opposed to the really long hills on the course. So overwhelming to look ahead and just see runners going up for as far as you could see! Ugh! Here I am around mile 12, I think, running with what Adam calls my Raptor Arms.



By the end, my main motivation to keep running was just so it would be over quicker! Even at the very end, I could see the 13 mile mark and knew that the finish line (13.1) was just around the corner, but still just wanted to quit even at that point!

So, the happy ending to this story is that I finished and even was under my anticipated time of 2.5 hours, finishing at 2:24:57. My overall pace averaged out to 11 minute miles, which I'm pleased with considering how slowly I felt like I was moving at the end! YAY for crossing the finish line!