A small group of us has signed up for the Hershey Half Marathon relay, which is in October. We will probably start trying to do smaller races just to get motivated. I know I really need motivation right now; it's hard to run when taking care of an infant! Two of my other friends who will be in Hershey also ran this race. Dave walked it with Neil in the jogging stroller. And two other friends ran it as well. Here's the crew (taken after the race):
This is a very flat race. I ran with my friend Laura, who is also my other half of the relay team for Hershey. We actually were in Chicago for a work conference earlier in the week and had a morning run there. We both said we need to train more than we currently are or Hershey is going to be hard.
All 5 of us (since Dave was walking, they started 2 minutes later) took off at the same time, but the other three ended up ahead fairly quickly. I think the hardest thing about the race is not getting completely absorbed by the energy and starting out way way too fast. I think for the other three it was a good pace but Laura and I hung back.
I told Laura this isn't the most scenic 5k around, and it isn't. I don't really have a lot to say about the route. There were a few people standing outside houses watching, and it was along the river. It's an out and back course so you can see most people either when they are coming back if they're faster or when you're coming back if they're slower. We missed John, so he must not have been too far ahead of us. (Although it was out and back, it's a circle at the end and he was probably around the circle as we entered it.)
We ran straight for probably about .75 miles before walking for the first time. I thought that was really good considering for both of us how little we have been running. From then on it was mostly running with walk breaks. We did run through the turnaround point; there's a place with a traffic light and cops stopping the traffic, and I remember from last year that it seemed like some of the drivers were irritated about having to stop for "some walkers" so I asked Laura if we could run that and she said sure.
They had two water stops, just before 1 mile and just after 2 miles. We walked a bit after we got to the 2nd water stop, and Laura said she was probably going to walk the rest of the way because her foot was feeling kind of weird. So I took off and ran the last .6 or .7 miles by myself. It felt amazing, although after I did it I felt bad and figured I should have stuck with her the rest of the way. I'm sure Dave would just say yep that's typical Jen, gets too competitive and stuff. I just want to go.
I used to be able to gauge my pace but right now I can't, so I was surprised after I took off on my own that I was around a 10:00 pace. So I let myself get comfortable and looked at my watch and was at about a 9:30 pace! I pushed a bit at the end and my pace for my last 0.13 miles was at a 8:46 pace.
Here's the overall mile data:
| Distance | Time | Total |
| 1 | 11:51 | 11:51 |
| 2 | 13:33 | 25:23 |
| 3 | 11:44 | 37:08 |
| 3.13 | 01:11 | 38:18 |
These times are off the official time by just a bit because I started my watch a few seconds late, and when we paused at the 2nd water break my watch auto stopped. I don't have the official time yet but will put that on the recap page when it's posted online. They did post them there but I was talking too much and never looked closely enough.
Dave walked with Neil and beat our time last year. Last year we finished in 54ish minutes and this year he was somewhere around 49 minutes. Neil was awake most of the way (so Dave says) but was sound asleep when he crossed the finish line. His head was cocked to the side (need to prop his head with a towel or something from now on) so I could tell when Dave rounded the corner that Neil was out!
Sounds like a good day for the Drylie family!
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