Belated Race Recap: Evansville YMCA Half Marathon

I've discovered that I write blog posts like I wrote papers in college, procrastination is the key.  I've done a few races this month, so I thought I should eventually write about them!

The YMCA Evansville Half Marathon was on October 7th and is probably one of my favorite races to do.  Part of the reason is I like the training program leading up to it, but I also know the course very well, it is pretty flat and usually runs pretty fast in my opinion.

Ahh, early morning.  Bring on the caffeine!

It turned out to be a good race for a lot of people, several of my friends (and myself) got PR's at this race or completely kicked some A at their first half.  I was completely not expecting to come anywhere near PR for this because my training kind of lamed out the few weeks coming up to the race.  I had that "just try not to suck" mentality going in and the first couple of miles were a little rough, but after mile 5 I started feeling better.  I kept trying to do that "running math" in my head, since I don't have a GPS I  judge my pace by my overall time on my stopwatch and I knew I was going to end up pretty good.

At mile 11 I had an "oh crap I could get a PR if I really try these last two miles" moment and so I really pushed myself to finish strong (and my hands were really really cold and I couldn't wait to warm them up). I did and I got a PR by about a minute over last year...yay me!

The Stats:

bib number:	1886
age:	26
gender:	F
location:	Evansville, IN
overall place:	912 out of 1922
division place:	59 out of 148
gender place:	355 out of 1105
time:	2:09:35
pace:	9:54
5k:	30:17
10k:	1:01:35
15k:	1:33:08

Nothing like a porta-potty with attitude.

One of my favorite parts, running the warning track at Bosse Field.

So...not as good as I was hoping for at the beginning of training, but muuuch better than I expected when I started the race.  Unfortunately, I didn't stretch my quads like I should have, and it was very hard to stand, or sit, or look like a normal person while walking (according to my loving co-worker) for a few days.  I should listen to the stretching police my husband more often.

We did it!  Lauren was so full of awesome, finishing her first half in  2:06:53.

Has anyone got a new PR this year on a big (or not so big) race?