13.1

Saturday I ran the farthest and longest I have ever run in my life- 13.1 miles! I ran the Charlottesville Half Marathon at an obtrusively early time- 6:30 AM- and somehow not only finished, but exceeded my goal time! I usually run at a 10 min/mi pace, so I expected to finish at about 2:10. My actual chip time was 2:01:44! Booyah! That is a 9:29 pace!

Admittedly this isn't too impressive to a lot of runners, but I'm pretty amateur, and I feel great about it. Matt wasn't expecting me to come through the finish line so quickly, so he wasn't prepared with the camera, hence these awkward finishing pictures:

Here is the thing- when I think about actually running it, even though I know it was really hard, I mostly just remember a groove. One foot in front of the other, zoning in on a person to pace with (because I am terrible at pacing myself), keeping moving.

It's a race! I hope I win!

Ok, so I really had no chance of winning the 8k we ran on July 2nd, but I can't help but think of my sister Erin quoting that line from "Rat Race" every time I think about or talk about a race. Its just one of those things.

(I couldn't find the exact clip I was thinking of, but come on, this is funny)