I am certain that after I ran my last half-marathon (City of Oaks 2008) I never planned to run another one. Fast forward five years and for some reason, I decided I wanted to challenge myself. In particular, I wanted to challenge the me from 2008 that didn’t do everything that I thought he could on race day. So I found a race that looked like fun – recruited a couple of people to run it at the same time and started training. In February of this year, my average mile time was far north of 12 minutes and my average distance was under 2 miles. A long way from where I wanted to be if I was going to run a faster time and feel better afterward. By October I had finished my first 10K in under an hour and felt ready to tackle the half-marathon distance. I still didn’t know until I crossed the finish line how things would really go. I was chasing a ghost and was probably more ready than I should have been to feel the way I did in 2008.
So much so I stopped posting times and confided in very few people what I hoped to accomplish. Now that the race is done I can safely say I made it, plan to run at least one more (Disney Half 2014) and am glad I took the challenge. I would highly recommend the Space Coast Race for beginners or experienced runners. And yes – just like I won the Super Bowl – I went to Disney World immediately afterward and may have walked another half-marathon in the process.
And yes – that was 4:39AM when we were up and ready to go to the starting line – a temporary tattoo of my goal times on my arm – scared to death about what the morning was going to look like.
Congrats to BobG and CaraDMc the lucky folks who ran the same race. I saw Cara on the course – somehow Bob and I missed each other.
P.S. – No walking Galloway runners were harmed in this race. Nearly harmed? Yes. But fortunately, I have good brakes and knew what the beeps meant.
Dude, you worked hard and earned a great race day! Very proud of you in your quest for your second half. I tod you that you’d do better than you thought you would. Now, on to #3!!!