mama's first half marathon

i have been training for a half marathon since march.  i really enjoy running as part of my regular work out routine, but before training i considered a "long" run to be 4-5 miles!  the longest i'd ever run in my life was 7 miles, and that was by accident.  david thought he'd help me conquer running beyond 5 miles with a 6 mile run...turned out his 6-mile loop was really 7.  so it was hard work to increase my mileage, and now 5-7 miles i consider a short run!    

so i set my sights on the provo river trail half--you start up south fork canyon, and run down to the riverwoods shopping center, just outside the canyon.  it seemed like a pretty course to me, and i could visualize the whole route, so i figured i could run it pretty easily.  a couple friends trained with me and we headed up the canyon on the busses early, early.  david actually rode his bike up the canyon as we were starting and met us at vivian park and continued to ride throughout the canyon to take photos.  everyone thought he was the official photographer for the race, and so lots of people waved at him or smiled for "their picture" as they passed him.  this race wasn't very well advertised this year, and they only had 200 or so runners (in years passed they have 2000+).  so there wasn't a real photographer, and there weren't too many feed stations.  good thing david was there to hand me a granola bar when i needed it!  oh, and he was also there to make cat calls at me as he was passing me on the trail.  that was the best part.  

at the bottom of south fork canyon, after the first four miles (they were all downhill, and were actually pretty hard to do at the beginning of the race!)  it was nice to have david there to hand off my jacket!

coming up on bridal veil falls.  we actually backtracked back up the canyon for a bit and passed the falls three times.  we were halfway after backtracking and coming back down the trail.

i think this was about mile 10 or 11.  i was still feeling great at this point.  i started dealing with tendonitis along the tibial tendon while training, and never ran more than 11 miles while training.  about a month before the event i had to start tapering off on my running to try and let my tendons relax, so for four weeks i never ran more than 7-8 miles.  so during the race i felt awesome through 11.5 miles.  and then i felt it...and those last 1.5 miles were a killer!

at the finish line--some friends came to cheer us on at the finish line, and i spied them!

and then i started thinking--ok, where is it?!  where is the finish line?!  phew!  that was pretty hard!  oh--finish time 2:15ish.  2:18 officially?  i'm not a super fast runner, but at least i'm consistent!  i am definitely going to do more!