Detroit Half Marathon!!!

I have officially checked one of my 2013 goals off the list, run a half marathon!

This morning bright and early Liz and I arrived to run the Detroit half marathon. The course was cool in that you got to run across the bridge to Canada, run along the shore, run through the tunnel on the way back to the US, and then wind around Detroit (past my childhood church) and then to the finish line.

I had no idea how this race would go. I have been running sporadically this summer/early fall. I could very comfortably run 3 miles, and occasionally I would run for an hour. Recently at the end of the hour I would feel like I *could* run more, I just never wanted to and always had things to do. Up until today, I had never ran further than 6.2 miles.

Here we are pre-race!

I could not believe how much stuff people threw away along the race! Gloves, hats, mittens, nice fleeces, jackets, pants. It was crazy! My friend said later crews come around and pick all that stuff up for the shelters, but it was crazy to see so much of it. I heard there were 24k runners, wow!

Some people had some really funny signs, my mind is going blank right now, but one I liked was "you run better than our government" Haha, sad.

Other favorite moments were running through the tunnel with Liz and she was wishing for some food and what did we see a few steps later but a granola bar on the ground! She went to pick it up, brand new! Manna from heaven said Liz. It was fun running together we were laughing and joking the whole way.

Liz in the tunnel with her manna.

The halfway mark in the tunnel between Canada and the US. (excuse the bluriness I was taking a pic with the phone whilst it was strapped to my arm)

It was a beautiful day and really fun to run with Liz. She hadn't trained as much so I had a dilemma of did I want to run together, or did I want to go for time? I had mostly decided that I wanted to run just to do it, I wasn't going to win any medals or anything, so we stuck together. That did mean we took a few more walking breaks than I might have wanted to, but I still feel like I earned my 13.1 bumper sticker! At the very end Liz's knees were bothering her and she wanted to walk a lot so I ran the last mile by myself.

During the race I was actually surprised at how good I felt running. I was breathing completely normally, barely sweating, I felt like I could keep going. I had no idea how this would be with not so much training. And when I talked to my marathon runner sister-in-law the other night I told her I'd gotten up to an hour and it was like *cricket cricket* oh.... ummm... yeah you might be able to do it. Haha. So I felt great. But actually the second I crossed over the finish line and stopped running I started feeling really weird. My face felt strange and I felt disorientated. I wrapped up in my little foil blanket and just stood there for a long time. Eventually found Liz and then made our way back to the car.

I put this pic on facebook and then I think some people thought I ran a full marathon, whoops, definitely not!

Then we re-parked somewhere else and walked back another 2 miles into downtown to find this vegan food truck. After we ate and came back I couldn't find my keys in my purse, and as I walked up to the car I saw that I had locked the car and left the keys on the hood for the past 2 hours, in Detroit, whoops! Thank God they were there! I really felt like I was operating on only 80% of a brain after the race.

But it was a great experience. My knees are rocking my world right now, not in a good way, but I really had a great time. Now I keep thinking to myself, could I do the full one??? I've never had the desire to, but now mostly I'm just curious... we'll see...