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