Komarnicki Kids

If you told me a year ago that I would participate in a half marathon, I would've said you were crazy. But, this past weekend, I did one and I actually had fun! Don't get me wrong - it was very hard and sometimes painful, but I felt very proud and accomplished as soon as I crossed the finish line! And, within a few hours, Kathy (who flew down from Ohio to do it with me!) and I were already looking for another half marathon to do.

When we decided several months ago to sign up for this half marathon, I printed off a 14 week training schedule. For the first 4-5 weeks, I really stuck to it and did great with my training. After that, life sort of got in the way and my training slacked off... we went on vacation, I came close to breaking my toe, Scott was traveling a lot, and Addison and Fischer weren't big on the idea of being in their stroller for 2 hours at a time in the heat, among other things. I still managed to walk and/or run some each week, but nowhere near what the schedule suggested.

Because of that, I was very nervous about how the half marathon would go. Kathy and I wanted to keep up a good pace, and try to run a good bit, but our main goal was to finish.  I was also nervous once I realized that the race weather was going to be very cold - it the low 30s.

Anyway, Kathy and I met in Raleigh (my parents live near there, so that worked out nicely) and there was no turning back! We picked up our packets Saturday evening, then headed to a hotel for some relaxation and sleep. Then, it was up at 5 am to get ready for the race!

We got there a little after 6 and it was SO cold! We were ready to get started, but unfortunately had to wait around for about 45 minutes in the cold before the race actually started.  As soon as the race started, we realized that the course description of "moderately hilly" was probably an understatement. We were hit with a giant hill right at the beginning, which made our pace quite a bit slower than we'd planned. Oh well...we had to keep going! We ended up walking more than running, but that's ok. Neither of us ever had the goal to run the whole thing... I don't think I'll ever want to run the entire thing.

So, 13.1 miles and 3.5 hours later, we crossed the finish line (we made sure to run the last tenth of a mile so we could jog across the finish line).

Scott, Addison, Fischer, and my parents were there waiting on us, which was really exciting!

We're already looking at options for another half marathon to do. We will most likely meet up somewhere and make a vacation out of it! Our goal this time will be to better our time...hopefully we'll find a flatter race, so beating our time should be easy! :) We also learned a lot about the whole process, so we'll be more prepared next time!

My soreness is almost gone, so hopefully I'll feel like walking/running again soon!