Hershey Half Marathon Relay

I signed up for the Hershey Half Relay months ago. The goal was to use this race as a motivator to get back into running after having a baby. Long story short, it didn't work because it didn't force me to find the time/motivation to train. But we ran the race anyways.
 
This race comes with two free tickets per registrant to Hershey Park in the Dark. Originally we had a big sized group going but some of the group didn't end up going for various reasons. We still ended up with two relay teams (so 4 of us including me) who ran the race, and Dave and Neil were there as well.
 
We enjoyed Saturday in Hershey and Dave and I went to bed (tried to) fairly early because we knew it was going to be an early morning to go to the race start. They closed the roads around the starting point about half an hour before the race and I didn't want Dave to get stuck there waiting for a few hours. Neil was sleeping in the same room as us and it was a rough night- he cried three times during the night and in general I didn't sleep well. That didn't seem to have any effect on me during the race though.
 
Since we had two relay teams, two of us ran the 1st half together and the other two ran the 2nd half together. The race had a shuttle that went from the start to the midway point, and cars were not allowed around the midway point (although if you know where it is you could park on the streets around there). As it turned out, though, the motel we stayed at was really close to the relay exchange point so we didn't have to use the shuttles at all. That also meant that Laura and John, who were running the 2nd half (Laura was on my relay team) didn't have to get up really early to get to the start line and the shuttle buses. They wanted people on the shuttles before the race even started.
 
The timing at the beginning worked out really well. Dave, Tim, Neil and I drove to the beginning of the race, which was at Hershey Stadium. I nursed Neil in the car (so we were nice and warm- it was about 44 degrees out according to my phone) and then Dave took off to try to leave before the roads around there closed. Tim and I walked around the stadium and we were able to use the bathrooms in the stadium instead of porta potties, which they also had lined up outside. Then we went to bag check because we both had sweatshirts on and Tim also had on sweatpants over his shorts. When we were done with bag check, we literally walked to the 12:00ish minute pace point and the race started right then. I haven't had that happen before but it was nice! No time to just stand around feeling cold.
 
I should mention that security was interesting. After the bombing in Boston they didn't want any bags in the runner area. We apparently walked the backwards way around the stadium and didn't get questioned even though we had sweatshirts on, covering our race bibs. When we got to where the bag check was, it was on the other side of the stadium and people were standing there checking for bib numbers and saying no bags allowed beyond this point. We didn't see anything like that coming from the other side.
 
It took us about 4-5 minutes to cross the start line and we were off. We had decided ahead of time, due to the lack of training, to use the Jeff Galloway method but in 3:1 intervals. I should make a separate post about the Jeff Galloway method and why it works so well. With the intervals we ran for 3 minutes and then walked for 1 minute. It was chilly out though so I said to Tim that I wanted to run through the first walk interval and he said that was fine. The race was pretty crowded- there were about 4500 runners. The race itself kind of just ticked by- normally I'm thinking more about how far I've gone and how far I have left but I was talking to Tim and looking to the next interval of run or walk and all of a sudden we were a couple of miles in. I still can't believe that. Usually the 1st mile is rough. But our pace was pretty slow and we were warming up. My hands were freezing until we hit around mile marker 2.
 
The first few miles are around the hockey arena, Giant Arena, and probably would have been pretty boring if it wasn't for talking to Tim and the adrenaline of the race start. Around mile 3 (I think, still wasn't completely paying attention to the markers) we entered Hershey Park itself which was really cool to run through. The crowd hadn't really thinned as I expected it would. I thought ahead of time that we would be towards the end, everyone would be passing us, and it would be easy to find John and Laura at the exchange. It never really did thin out (for us at least, running the 1st half). This made it somewhat crowded in Hershey Park. Note to anyone running this race in the future; some people had a good idea to use the restrooms in the park. I would never have thought to do that.
 
After looping for about a mile in the park, we were on the roads of Hershey, which were more hilly than I was expecting. And since the crowd hadn't thinned out, the hills were hard. I need to attack the hills and push through them. If I can't go at my own pace because someone in front of me is slower, it's mentally hard for me and I end up walking. After leaving the park, one of the first hills I asked Tim if we could walk and he said sure. I had to walk because it felt like I wasn't moving fast enough up the hill. Later on towards the end of our part of the relay, I pushed up a hill and left Tim a little bit behind but it felt much better to just push and be done with the hill. I really don't like hills but I'm finding that the Pittsburgh area (and my neighborhood in particular) is teaching me how to push through them.
 
For the most part we kept with the 3:1 intervals. It happened to work out that the 1st two water stops (at 2.5 miles and 5 miles I think but I'm not sure) fell at the start of our walk interval. But there were a few times (at a hill, either up or down- up if we wanted to walk early or down if we wanted to run through) that we adjusted the intervals but in general kept the same overall amount of walk and run time.
 
I think it was probably around 4.5-5 miles, I started to feel my energy go down a little bit realizing we still had 2 miles to go. The race felt very easy compared to how I thought it was going to be. I was so nervous about not really training leading up to it. But the intervals made it manageable, and we weren't trying for a speedy time. Our goal was to keep around a 12:00 pace overall. But when we hit a few miles left, that was the furthest I have run since the Pittsburgh Half Marathon in May of 2012, and I think I had a little mental block to overcome there. Tim didn't seem to mind that we slowed down a bit, either. The "worst" hill was a long slope somewhere in the 5th mile and we actually switched to 2:2 for that slope. But then we were getting close to the end and my mood picked up and I wanted to run faster again. It was great that Tim was pretty flexible and willing to shift around- it was really nice to have someone to run with and talk to, in general.
 
We turned onto McKinley and I knew we were really close! The halfway point was right on the intersection of McKinley and Chocolate Ave, and our motel was on Chocolate Ave. It was a great feeling to know that I did this. And once we turned onto McKinley it felt like no time at all before we crossed the finish mats. I raised my hands in the air and yelled at Tim to raise his arms, and I think he did. I saw an event photographer there and was hoping he would get that but seeing the pictures on the web site there isn't one of us with arms raised. In fact, even though I saw the photographer with the camera up and I thought he was taking pictures, there isn't one of me crossing the line. Bummer!
 
The exchange point was interesting. I've never done a relay before and a lady was yelling through a megaphone our bib numbers for the next person. I guess they're just allowed to leave and don’t have to tag up or anything like that. We didn't see Laura and John right away and slowed down, looking. One of the race people told us to keep going, that a lot of people were further down. So we started to run again, looking. We did see them a little after, and they were about to go but I yelled out to Laura to wait and ran over and gave her a high five. I was just so excited, pumped, and did feel like I could have kept running at that point (but would not have made the full 13.1).
 
Tim and I went to get our medals for finishing, and put them on. But all these runners were still going and I realized they were only halfway and I felt guilty for standing there with my medal so I took it off and kinda put it down by my side so it wasn't as obvious.
 
Also, Tim and I were looking down the street to go back to the motel (to see how far it was) and all of a sudden Dave was standing there with Neil in the stroller. Apparently he was standing right next to John and Laura, and not only that but he yelled "Good job, Jen" as I ran up to Laura. But I didn't notice him at all and walked away. Oops! Sorry about that one, Dave!
 
I was able to go back to the motel and nurse Neil, who was hungry of course. All in all this worked out really well. The weather was awesome. It was chilly, but that's great for actual running. The timing worked well. I didn't feel dead at the end. I am happy with my time (which is actually unusual; I'm usually kicking myself later for not trying harder). I know I probably could have tried harder but honestly I'm happy with what we did. We beat our pace goal. We ran almost 6.7 miles.
 
After I nursed Neil, we drove to meet John and Laura. There was a Chocolate Aid station (handing out candy with the water) at around mile 11.5 but we missed when they would have run by so we just headed to the finish. We were able to see both of them finish- they ended up splitting off and John finished about 5 minutes ahead of Laura.
 

Tim, me, Laura, and John at the finish

These are the splits for my run:

Mile	Mile Time	Total
1	10:56	10:56
2	11:16	22:12
3	11:26	33:38
4	11:47	45:25
5	11:17	56:42
6	12:01	1:08:43
6.63	07:05	1:15:48

Laura and I ended up with a finish time of: 2:40:18
Tim and John ended up with a finish time of: 2:36:18

Pregnancy and Infancy Loss Awareness Day

Once again this year I will be lighting a candle in honor of those babies lost during pregnancy or infancy. Here is my post about it last year. My intention is to light a candle every year at 7pm even if I don't explain why. I'm not sure if we will explain to Neil. Regardless of what gets said though, I will never forget.

My thoughts and prayers are with every one of you who have experienced this.

Since this didn't post as I meant to first thing this morning, I'd also like to pass on an article that really expresses how I feel about our losses and worded things a lot better than what I've attempted (and not posted).

A Mother With a Candle to Light

Pirates Playoffs

Neil has been to quite a few professional sporting events in the Pittsburgh area already. Friends and family have told us he's not even a year old and he's already been to more events than they have. Those are the perks though when it's free to go under the age of 2 (Pirates and Penguins).

On our way into the game, on the Roberto Clemente bridge

I wanted to make sure he got to a playoff game, and we got tickets to the 2nd home game (4th game) of the divisional series where we played the St. Louis Cardinals. This game also happened to be scheduled for a 3:07pm start which is great for taking Neil with us! So we both took vacation from work (I took a partial day) and headed to the game.

At our seats before the game started

The forecast originally called for lots of rain so we bought ponchos and of course that means by Murphy's Law that it isn't going to rain, which was just fine with me. It did rain the night before and that morning though and the clouds were just beautiful.

Neil is actually making this face for the camera.
Sometimes I really wonder what's going on in his mind.

It also cooled down so Neil had a Pirates onesie on but it was covered up by his sweatshirt.

The Pirates lost the game, 2-1. It was a pitcher's duel and there were only 3 hits total (1 Pirates hit by Pedro Alvarez, a home run). I really thought in the bottom of the 9th they could pull it out but it didn't end up happening. It was still a fun game and a great day.

Sitting in one of the seats

Neil fell asleep in my ring sling the whole walk to the car. He didn't sleep at all at the game although he seemed pretty tired. It was too noisy.

6.6K Run and Family Walk

Mario Lemieux played for the Pittsburgh Penguins (great hockey player) and does a lot for the Pittsburgh community. He/the Penguins sponsored a 6.6k run and family walk. The reason for the unique distance is that 66 was his number as a Pittsburgh Penguin. It comes out to about 4.1 miles.

I didn't sign up for this ahead of time, but had said when I first saw it was coming out that if I couldn't do this there is no way a few weeks later I would be able to run 6.7 miles for the Hershey Half Relay. So I thought it would be a good race to run. I kept putting off actually registering though and it closed unless you registered the day of the race before I actually registered.

Dave is really the reason I ran this race. He knows I really need to get out there to run and I've been having a hard time getting motivated and finding the time to do it. I said I was going to run every other day even if it was just a mile and I haven't been doing that either. We set the alarm for 5:00am that morning, and when it went off I just wanted to roll over. This is my day to "slightly" sleep in if you can call it that. ;) But Dave said we can do this and he got up and got ready as I kinda laid in bed still and glared. (And of course finally got up.)

My friend Jenny was also running this and it was her first official race- she did do a 1 mile race earlier but it was with her daughter and stuff. This was her first one by herself. She's part of the motivation to go as well. At least I would know someone there.

Before the race

We got there super early to register and make sure we were going to get our shirts. The swag for this race was nice- a long sleeved tech t-shirt, and a finisher's medal at the end. No bag with coupons or anything but that was fine with me. They also had free parking and opened the parking lots around the Consol Energy Center. Dave signed up for the 1 mile walk and got a regular long sleeved t-shirt.

Finisher's medal - Dave got one too for the walk

We had a lot of time to kill but I'm also still nursing Neil so I nursed him in the car about 45 minutes before the race. Nursing him is getting a LOT faster so I had a lot of time even with that, to run into the Marriott hotel and use a real bathroom. The lines for the porta potties were kinda insane.

There were corrals and the walkers were at the very end, so about 15 minutes before the race started, Dave and I walked to the start and split up, telling each other good luck. (Dave took Neil in the jogging stroller.)

My goal was to run/walk intervals because I know I just don't have the endurance right now to run the whole way. I haven't run further than a 5K since May of 2012 before I got pregnant with Neil!

I ran the first half mile and felt like I could keep going. The key to run/walk intervals is to start the walk before you're tired or else it's too late and you'll just be slow overall. So I did that right. However, looking at my Garmin, I was running way too fast. At one point I was at an 8:00 pace and I was figuring I was going to be more along the lines of 11:00-12:00 pace overall. I kept trying to slow it down during my run intervals but just couldn't do it.

There were enough people that almost the entire race I was weaving, but it was definitely worse the 1st mile. And surprisingly there were others walking fairly early too. I don't think they were doing intervals though because the ones who walked really early, I never saw them again. I think everyone just got caught up in the energy and went out waaay too fast.

Once I hit .5 miles, I started intervals. My watch is set to beep/lap every .25 miles. So when I got to .5 miles, I walked for .1 miles, ran the rest of that lap (.15 miles) and all of the next lap (.25 miles). So the intervals I started with were based on miles and not time- walk .1 miles and run .4 miles.

I also was extremely thirsty. Ever since having Neil I have had some bladder type issues so I tried not to drink anything before the race. It's actually what I would normally do to avoid having to pee (I pee a LOT normally, even before Neil). But with nursing it's not really a good idea because it can affect my supply.

The first water stop was at 1.5 miles. That coincided with my walk interval and I was so so thirsty that I actually got water. I almost never stop at the first 1-2 water stops, not even when I ran the Pittsburgh half marathon.  Shortly after that we ran over the 16th street bridge. The view was just amazing- some low lying clouds, fog and the sky was just beautiful.

When I hit 2 miles I knew I was around 20:00 and I was getting worried that I had started out too quickly. I was doing run/walk but my run intervals were just too fast. I was aiming for an 11:00/12:00 overall pace, which would make my run pace around 10:00. I was trying to slow my run pace down, but every time I looked down at my watch I was under 10:00 pace which was not good.

Maybe this is what started it but I felt myself struggling mentally. I really need to work on the mental aspect of a race. I started playing games and making my run intervals shorter to try to pep myself. And I tried to slow down my run even more. It felt seriously like I was moving through water because I was trying to slow down and when I looked at my Garmin, I was STILL running at under a 10:00 pace. Not good at all.

The 2nd water stop was at 2.75 miles and I walked there too. I had a really hard time even getting the cup up to my lips and I felt really parched. This is when it all really went bad for me.

Most of the last mile was uphill. The first mile was downhill (nice) but what goes downhill must come uphill when the start and finish are at the same place. It wasn't a huge slope but it was enough. I kept running when I could but that wasn't much. I just kept looking at it sloping up ahead and groaning in my head. I had hit the 5K mark around 33 something, so I improved that time, which was probably another bad sign right there.

When I was by the Consol Energy Center I stared running again and determined in my head that I was going to run the rest of the way. It was right about there that I saw Dave and Neil on the side. I raised both hands in my air- not in triumph but flailing to wave hi, haha.

After the race we met up with Jenny and her family. She did great! I never did see her during the race; she lined up at the 10:00 pace mark and I was behind at the 12:00 pace mark. (The marks were just in the corrals, they didn't have pacers.)

I'm kicking myself for that last mile but I tend to do that. Somehow I need to boost up my mental game. I think part of that is probably forcing myself to just go out and run every other day. There's also a huge hill in our neighborhood that I hate to tackle so just forcing that should help as well.

My official time was 46:42 and my watch measured short of 4.1 miles (4.06)

I forgot to turn my watch off at the end but these are the mile splits. So I did not do well at having negative splits and at the Hershey Half (relay) I really need to try to slow it down early on.

Distance	Mile	Total
1	09:34	09:34
2	10:32	20:06
3	12:02	32:07
4	14:10	46:17
4.06	00:49	47:06

After the race they invited race participants and volunteers to watch the Penguins practice in the Consol Energy Center. Neil actually paid attention some, although he was hungry and tired. I nursed him in one of the loges and that seemed to perk him back to his normal smiley self. It was also really fun to watch the Penguins even if we didn't stay the whole time. I definitely want to run this again next year (this was the inaugural year for this race.)

Here are some pictures from the practice in Consol Energy Center after the game.

Tybee Island

Neil's first time in the ocean was at Tybee Island when we went to Savannah, GA to visit my sister.

We went to the ocean/beach twice. The first time was with some friends from Fort Lauderdale who ended up visiting the same weekend. That was on the north side of the beach and was a bit more sheltered. Neil was tentative at first but our friends have 2 kids who are 3 and slightly over 1. I think that Neil seeing those kids helped. He didn't seem to like the waves but once we got in the water with him he actually splashed a little bit and seemed to enjoy himself.

Getting in the water with Daddy

Family time

Neil with my sister

We were able to borrow this tent which helped keep Neil out of the sun at least for a little bit.

Reaching for the sand from the tent

The second time was a couple of days later, on the ocean side of the island. Neil was much more tentative and clung to whoever was holding him. The waves were stronger though and he didn't like the waves the first day either. We also weren't in bathing suits so we just stood in the water and didn't actually really get in.

Very tentative with my sister

It was really windy

Another family picture. Dave's shoes got wet - oops!

Neil's first flight

We traveled to Savannah, GA to visit my sister. This was the first time Neil flew and I have to admit I was very nervous about it. It turned out he was at a great age. Active enough to be looking around, playing with toys, etc. but since he's not really mobile and likes to cuddle he seemed to really enjoy just being in our arms the entire time.

We had a connecting flight through Charlotte both ways, so it was 3 flights total. On 3 of the 4 flights we got compliments about Neil and how good he was. On the 4th everyone just wanted to get home (it was our last flight) so I think that's why nobody said anything.

Neil really liked looking out the window.

On the first flight, as we were getting off the plane, when the couple in front of us stood and saw Neil they said they had no idea there was even a baby behind them. And on the 3rd flight, the flight attendant asked us if he travels a lot. When I said no, this was his first trip, she said that he seems like a seasoned traveler. I'm sure some of this has to do with his laid back personality but I do think some of it was his age as well. We'd like to go to Disney sometime slightly before his 2nd birthday, which will be another plane flight, and I'm sure that will be interesting!

I tried to nurse Neil at least on takeoff or landing. In general, I nursed during takeoff (all 4 flights), he fell asleep in my arms for awhile, then he woke up and looked around/played a little, and was awake for most of the landings. We tried at first to hand him a pacifier for the landings to get his ears to popped but he pushed it away so we gave up on that pretty fast. We figured he'd complain if it was a problem and he never did.

Fascinated with the tray in front of Dave

We also found that getting an extra cup from the flight attendant when they brought around drinks turned out to be a great toy for Neil. He also enjoyed looking out the window and kept trying to play with the tray in front of us.

Playing with a cup. So much better than his actual toys.