Hi All!

So glad to hear everyone had a great race day today & yesterday! Congratulations all around!

The weather forecast for Vancouver, WA was for rain all week. But last night I logged on to weather.com and it predicted cloudy but dry. And lo & behold, that's what we got! I was soooooooo glad it didn't rain. I 've not trained much in the rain, and wasn't looking forward to a long wet slog. I might have been a fair bit grumpier about it than indigoiis.

I got up at 6am and made a nice big bowl of steel cut oats with raisins, coconut & sunflower seeds. Also had some cantaloupe. Yum!

Arrived at the race start at 8am. Scored an excellent parking space. Quickly found the other 4 gals I'd suckered into signing up earlier in the year. For 3 of the 5 of us, it would be our 1st half marathon. The most experienced person in the group was my friend Angela. I expected her to do really well, especially after she revealed (after much prodding) that her PR is 1:20.

After 2 waits on the portapotty line (ridiculous, I know), it was time to line up. Angela went off to start near the front, while the rest of us hovered near the 10min/mile sign holder. And away we went!

I spent most of the 1st mile dodging walkers (why don't they start themselves farther back in the pack??) until I could find some breathing room to run a comfortable pace. Around mile 4.5, we started seeing the race leaders coming back towards us on an out & back section of the course. I yelled to my friend Angela that she was in 2nd place!

I felt like I was running in my comfort zone, and yet the first 5-6 miles went by at a 9:30 pace! Zowie, that's much faster than my training pace. I knew that was probably not sustainable, so I tried to dial it back a bit. Good thing too, because by mile 8, I was feeling the effects of going out so quickly. My hips started to ache (this has never happened to me in training) and my quads started getting tight. (This usually happens, but not until 10 miles or so). So, the next few miles were a bit of a struggle, as I tried to concentrate on working through the stiffness.

The only hills on the course came after mile 9. Nothing big, but long enough grades that some folks walked, especially as we got closer to the finish. I managed to run all of them, though not very quickly.

By mile 12, we'd topped out and it was flat all the way to the finish. I checked my watch and realized I'd likely make my 10 min/mile goal. I picked up my pace as much as I could, and managed to cross the line at 2:10:03 (by my watch. haven't seen the "official" results yet.) which put me at 9:55 per mile.

Then, I burst into tears.

Poor Jeff. There he was with a huge bouquet of flowers for me, and there *I* was, bawling like a baby. I couldn't help it. It was such an emotional moment for me. He kept asking what was wrong, and I kept assuring him they were HAPPY tears. Really, it's no wonder men have such a hard time figuring us out sometimes.

It was a very good day. We three newbies all finished with times that made us happy. And my friend Angela was 2nd in 1:30. Oh, and today is her 39th birthday. The crowd sang happy birthday to her when she stepped onto the winner's podium. Very cool. That nearly made *her* cry!

Pictures to follow.

Susan