Wicked awesome half

Today I ran the Wicked half-marathon through Salem and Marblehead.  It was a great day for a run, not too sunny, not too hot, even though the weather said 95% humidity.  Didn't feel like it though.  Plus, we ran down by the beach in Marblehead and got a great sea breeze.  The goal for today was to break a 2 hour half.  If you recall, the time of my last official half, the run to remember, was 2:01.  Just one minute OVER my goal.  Ugh, I know, lame right?  So, today I was really hoping for that 2:00 or under.  Now, we've been running this Marblehead route as part of our training runs, and there are a lot of rolling hills.  The scenery is nice but it doesn't offer enough distraction from the uphill battles.  So our first three miles started off great, under 9 minutes, and we even picked up Holly at mile 4.  She ran for a few with us, which was lovely.   But these hills are killer.  As it figured, we had to stay at a 9:10 or lower pace in order to come in under 2 hours.  Unfortunately on the hills, we hit a 9:22 for one mile.  Later, I hit a 9:11 and another over 9:10 pace, but I'm not sure exactly what it was.  Overall though, we managed to keep the pace right where it needed to be.  By mile 7 I wasn't really feeling it anymore.  Then I grabbed a double latte gu from one of the race volunteers.  At first I kind of thought it was gross, but halfway through sucking it down, I changed my mind.  It's actually an ok taste, sort of like super melted coffee ice cream, except a bit thicker.  Whatever the taste though, it definitely helped.  I got through those last 6.1 miles no problem.  Well, ok, maybe not NO problem, but I was able to make it.  According to the timing chip, when I crossed the finish line, my final time was 1:58:49.  YES! Almost 2 minutes under two hours, and 3 minutes off my previous best half.  Talk about a PR.  Needless to say, I'm feeling pretty great today.  Of course, I'm sure the boxing classes have something to do with my overall endurance, as well as the summer runs in Lynn Woods, but I'm pretty sure it's the longer runs that are making the 13 easier.  Suddenly 13.1 seems so do-able, when you know in just 5 weeks, you have to add on another whole 13.1 to that.  Here's a map of my run, just for fun and a picture too.  I'll try to get some more up later.  Keep an eye out for the porta-potty shot!

Oh btw, my Garmin was about .10 off from the race time/miles, which is why it says 1:59 at 13.1.  I'm going with the race time on this one though!