JC 1010E

This past weekend, I did something that I've been getting ready for over the past year. I ran a half marathon. That's right - 13 miles! It was the Canyon to Canyon Half Marathon.

When I started running just over a year ago, I had no plan to run in any races. In fact, the reason I have really been running is to keep in shape. The first time I decided to run, about a year ago, I couldn't even run for 10 minutes without stopping. Slowly, I've been working up my distance, and for the past few months I have been running a consistent 8 miles, 3 times a week. Ultimately, th reason I was running was to keep in shape. I never had any intention of running a half marathon.

Then my work made an offer to enter us into a race if we were willing to run. Since I was already running, I decided to go for it. The options were for a 10K or a half marathon. Since I typically run further than a 10K regularly, I decided that the half was the way to go. Unfortunately, I didn't prepare as well as I probably could have for the race. The furthest that I'd ever run before Saturday was 9 miles.

Saturday morning, we headed up to the site of the race (East Canyon resort). Here are some of the shots of all of those who decided to run:

Here are a few things I learned about running a half marathon:
- Learn to pace yourself. I tried to pace myself off of a couple of other people and while it worked pretty well, I could have probably done a little bit better if I could do it myself.

- Running up and down hills is a lot different than running on the treadmill. I already knew this, but the course was a lot of up and down.

- Be prepared. The last couple of miles were death. I was seriously thinking that I was going to die. I probably walked at least 3 minutes during the last mile as it was death. My legs still hurt today, 2.5 days after the race (they're almost better).

- Run hard no matter what. In the end it all paid off.

I finished with a time of 1 hour and 43 minutes. I was absolutely shocked at how fast I completed the race and very happy too. I thought that I was going to die afterwards, but I am still here. In fact, that time was good enough for fastest for my age group (25-29). For those wondering, that is just under 8 minute miles.

All in all, it was a good experience, and while I don't have any plans to run a full marathon, I plan to keep up running and will probably run a few more half marathons as well.