Aurora's Blog

Picking up from yesterday –

Mile 4 was where I really started to slow down, which I suppose was okay-ish since we were ahead of a 3-hour pace. I kind of felt bad because no one else in the group was struggling besides me. They were a good group. No one made me feel like the slow one. That was a self-inflicted feeling (but I felt it nonetheless).

As miles passed, I kept myself going, thinking, “Do you want to run Boston someday?” (I do. And if I can’t get faster, it’s not gonna happen. Of course, I can get faster. (And I have to get a lot faster.)) I kept thinking about those great Kanye West lyrics, “Giving up is way harder than trying.”

Side note: Wouldn’t that be a cool name for a blog? – “Giving Up Is Way Harder Than Trying.” I’m still not necessarily on board with the current one – “My Heart Was Stopped, I Cannot Be.” It makes me feel like I think I’m so cool or something. I don’t know why it sounds conceited to me, but it rubs me the wrong way… and I don’t want people to feel annoyed when they see my blog.

The race was out of Gatorade in multiple spots. I do usually enjoy the Rock ‘n’ Roll events overall. And this half marathon was not only one of my favorite Rock ‘n’ Roll events of the year, but one of my favorite half marathons of this year overall. So, I don’t want to complain to heavily about this one thing. But come on, man! I’m dying here. And when I’m with the 3-hour pacer in a race with a 4-hour time limit, I don’t think they should be out of Gatorade yet.

At some point (I think around mile 6), Brandon and Taiwo took off. Brandon ended up finishing somewhere in the 2:30 vicinity. (This from a man who signed up about 2 weeks prior and didn’t train. That’s not embarrassing for me at all that he just laced up his running shoes for fun and totally smoked me.)

As miles go by, and I’m fading, I start to snack on that mini-bagel. People always say, “Don’t try anything new during a race that you didn’t do in training.” I know that that is extremely sound advice. I’m not sure what I was thinking. I just thought I’d want some extra energy to help keep me pushing my pace as the miles went on.

Nothing catastrophic happened. I just had an upset stomach after the race. I had to sit for a couple of minutes after I made it out of the finish chute, ’cause I sort of felt like I might throw up. (Ew, right?) But I didn’t. (Yay!)

I was barely holding on to Joy by mile marker 9. And by barely, I mean, I wasn’t beside her anymore. But I could see her not too many paces in front of me, and I kept trying to run toward her big red 3-hour pace sign. In mile 10, I couldn’t keep the pace. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I slowed way down, but still thought I could pull out maybe a 3:08-ish time. It wouldn’t be too shabby.

As I was getting toward the end of mile 10, almost into mile 11, I saw this huge booth set up and this woman holding a microphone asking people to come over and karaoke! What? I remember mentioning in a previous post (Indiana, maybe?) that one of the acts was getting pretty close to the street. And I thought it’d be funny if it was so they could get runners to sing in the mic as they passed by. I imagined how fun race karaoke would be. Sure enough, they had it here!

Judging by the attitude of the woman holding out the mic, not many runners were stopping. She seemed a little tired of asking people to get onstage, and a little defeated by the fact that everyone kept running on by.

I thought about stopping, but I had to keep going! I had worked too hard to tank my time now…

And this is where I’ll pick up tomorrow.