Full Half Marathon

I completed my fifth half marathon today. The 'Full Half' name above came from a conversation Kelsey and I had with some colleagues. Feeling as if when asked if we're doing the full or half marathon, our answer is always, 'just the half'. It's not 'just the' anything! I've trained for 13.1 miles and I'm running the FULL amount I've trained for. So, there you have it....I ran my fifth Full-Half marathon today.

Rumor has it there's a bit of a movement in the running world to change the name to the Pakermi, which is the name of the town halfway between Athens and Marathon (hence, the half marathon) but I'm guessing that movement is comprised of Kelsey, me and a few other runners out there.

Either way, it was a great day for a run! After two straight days of non-stop rain, the skies parted and it was chilly (in the 40s) and mostly cloudy. A great day to run in Austin in my opinion. The course is the same as last year's - so still hilly! But I felt so much better during the run than I did last year. This was mostly due to the weather I'm certain. Last year was 70 and muggy and sunny.

To start off the race weekend, while I was volunteering and attending a brunch for all of the runners who raised money for Team LIVESTRONG, Kelsey picked up our race packets. There was clearly some computer or printing error. While my name was right on my race bib. My age and home town weren't. And I wasn't the only one:

Melissa, Age 24 from Chicago, Texas

Kelsey, Age 36 from random town I can't remember, Texas

Jess, age 55, from Elgin, New Jersey

Ken, age 23, from Austin (which is the accurate part)

And many others we heard about from work. They got our genders right and Jim's was accurate as well. So who knows? Someone who was in charge of sorting some columns in Excel screwed up. But it makes for a good laugh.

Bright and early this morning (5am), I got up. Carl agreed to drive myself, Jim, Kelsey, Jess and Ken to the start line. He then parked and hopped on his bike. While we ran, Carl biked around, cheering us on, making us laugh, grabbing extra gear from us and all in all being a great sport. He did also treat himself to some delicious food at Curra's while waiting for us so I'd say it wasn't all a sacrifice for him. But I am so appreciate of the time and support he gave to me. For the second year in a row, he's been a trooper. I'm not sure how many more of these he'll support but I felt pretty lucky to have him by my side a number of times today, especially as we climbed big hills and he played music on his phone loud enough for us to hear.

But back to the run. I am, once again, so happy to have done this with Kelsey. Despite the times we often go mute and don't speak for miles, we always support each other. It was great to see so many familiar faces on the course - colleagues from work including Devon and Anthony, Chris, Missy, Lucie and Audrey and tons of LIVESTRONG gear. We ran the entire time, which was a personal goal of mine and while we slowed a bit toward the end, we even ran up all the hills.

It was great to share this day with Jess and Ken as well who decided to train and run it together. It was Ken's first half marathon and the last time Jess did one was with me in 2005! We all got to have breakfast together after in revel in our success of the day - all before 10 am.

So now I rest for the week. I don't plan to run this week and will enjoy not having a routine. But Kelsey and I already signed up for a 10 miles race on April 15. I figure we can do that and then it'll be time to start swimming!