Race Recap – Hollywood Half Marathon

Saturday morning, I ran the Hollywood Half Marathon/10K/5K.

My sister signed up to run the 10K this year. I was so happy that she came with me! Last year, the 10K was my first race. And now it was her first race, too!

Here we are at 5:30am:

My goal for this race was to finish in 2.5 hours. I didn’t quite make it.

However, that’s an improvement from my first half marathon in November.

Here’s the breakdown:

The main route was on Hollywood Blvd. After the first flat mile, the route went up and down side streets. Let me emphasis: UP side streets. They weren’t hills, but boy, could I feel those inclines. I tried to run intervals – Run 10 minutes, Walk 1 minute – but it didn’t really work out very well. I wasn’t going to waste a walk on the down slope, so my schedule got kind of messed up.

Mile 10 was particularly difficult – I felt a bathroom emergency looming so I searched in vain for a restroom. No such luck. I told myself – suck it up, buttercup! and I attempted to carry on. But as you can see from my times, I slowed way down after that. I feel like I walked nearly all of Miles 12 and 13 – even the cheering crowds and high fives from supporters couldn’t speed me up.

My sister ran her best ever. The crowds definitely pump you up and combined with actually training on the street rather than a cushy treadmill in our air-conditioned ladies’ gym with fastidious housekeeping staff like I do, well, that really made a difference for her.

Here we are at the finish line:

Here we are showing off our medals:

Look at us! We’re runners!

The day of the race, I was pretty stiff and sore. I should have taken an ice bath, but I didn’t. The next day, though, I was fine with just a little bit of soreness in my quads. Nothing uncomfortable, though. Yay me! My next half is the New Year’s race…but maybe I’ll find another one to run sooner.

How was your weekend?

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