In case you haven’t heard, I’m trying to convince pretty much everyone I know (including strangers) to do a half marathon. Whenever I actually get someone to complete one, I’m very nicely going to ask them to blog about it, if they would be so kind. I will put said entries here in the “My First Half Marathon” series on the blog – which officially starts today!
Without further ado, I give you my guest blogger, Johannah:
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Hey! My name is Johannah, and I just want to say that meeting Aurora and running my first half marathon was certainly interesting.
First, at the Tour de Palm Springs (also my first bike ride), I was standing there with my mom, getting ready to take off. We looked over and see this lady in pajama bottoms and a “Bad” hat. She looked kinda like she just rolled out of bed.
She started talking to us, and she said this was her first bike race. When she said “I killed it in cycling class”, we both assumed she meant a “How to ride your bike class” like they have at REI. When she asked what the little numbers on the handle bars were, my mom asked her if she meant a Spin Class. Yeah… figured this was NOT going to end well, and thought we had better start in front of the wreck that was about to happen. There were HUNDREDS of bikes behind her.
We got to talking about the run the next day, and Aurora said she was doing the half marathon. I was planning to do the 5k, but we had plans to do a half in April. Aurora told me it was not too late to change.
Well, the ride started, and we hoped we would see Aurora (alive) at the finish.
Note the info on the ride was VERY clear that this was a ride, NOT A RACE. Well, I decided to turn it into a race, as did a few others. I managed to finish second.
After the ride, still feeling the adrenaline, I asked my mom to take me to change to the half marathon. I didn’t start freaking out until we got there the next morning and I saw people running to warm up. What had I done!
Not far into the race, I began to run with a very nice woman. I probably would not have done as good if she had not run with me all the way to mile nine. We talked about a lot of things. When I finished, I could not wait to find out my time and get my “Brick”. I somehow managed to get first place for my age division, in two hours and eight minutes. It was really fun.
My mom did her first 5k. I am really happy that she is running now. She did really good.
Meeting Aurora was fun, and I hope to see her at another half marathon!!!
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Aurora’s response: I enjoyed meeting both of these lovely women – Johannah and her mother. I cracked up when I read Johannah’s posting. I love it!
I don’t know what possessed me to wear pajama pants. A five-mile bike ride just seemed like such a silly, small thing to do that I thought I should just dress in something “fun” as opposed to “real” workout attire [she says before ripping her pants at the ride].
Also, yeah, I am the worst about calling spin class cycling class. Now that I know they’re actually two different things, I will try to speak correctly.
I had no idea until I read Jo’s entry that there are classes you could take to learn how to ride a bike! Good to know…
Also, just so the world (and Johannah) knows, I stayed to the side of the starting corral until basically everyone had gone by me. I’d realized that bicycling may possibly be a bit harder than I originally imagined. I did my best to be respectful of other riders and not get in anyone’s way during the ride. (And I didn’t cause any accidents! (Yay!))
Super huge congrats to Johannah for winning her age group on the first time out!