WE did it, half-marathon done!!

So we are done with the half marathon.

13.1 miles in 3hours21min, 15.13 mph, r/w the first 10 miles , then mostly walked.

Beautiful day. All my apprehensions about running in the sun resolved by the time we reached the site at 7AM. Good arrangements for parking, atleast a 100 portapotties at the start site, you know thats the most important part in the beginning.

Got our packets, nice white t-shirt with the logo, nice white backpack. Kept all that in the car and filled my pocket with the trailmix I had bought yesterday, shared a banana with GB, looked around, some people were actually running around-trying to warmup??, why would you use your energy to warmup before the actual run??, I mean you can warmup during the run, cant you, Some people are just plain crazy- or not , is my conclusion now after the run. We did a few stretches and 15 min before the race took our spot in the 14minmile corral. The fact that there was no 15minmile corral should have told us to change over to the walkers group pronto but one-we were not thinking at this point and two , the walkers had already started off an hour earlier.

Surrounding us were very fit, very lean, very prepared looking runners. We clutched our fanny packs and turned this way and that , trying to look as if we ran half marathons on a monthly basis. The gun went off and so did we.
In the beginning it seemed as if were passing everybody, the lean guy with 10 small water bottles in his fanny belt, the overweight guy with his slim lady friend, the 2 elderly ladies belonging to a running group. GB wanted to do 5 minW/10minR. We did that session once or twice and came down to run till you are out of breath, walk till you can breathe again and then run some more. Not a good strategy.
Later on I realised we had started out too fast so that by mile 7 all the above mentioned people passed us. Around at this time our pace came down from 14minmile to 15min mile. By mile 9 we had lost sight of a running group we were following trying to imitate their walk/run sessions. By mile 10 the only one in front of us was a young couple who had more steam than us yet and a young guy who seemed as if he was strolling in the park. By mile 11 I had given up the R/W sessions and was trying only to walk consistently. By mile 12 I hated this whole world and all this marathon business. By mile 13 GB found her lost stamina and wanted me to push and cross the young couple and an elderly lady before them. I asked her to carry on but she waited for me and then we ran the last 0.1 mile together over the chip mat.
Finish time 3hours 21 min.

We walked over to get the finishers medal, its beautiful, got our water, chocolatechip cookies, subway sandwich, missed the orange flavored popscisles , because believe it or not we were too late!. I just could not stand straight at this point so we took ourselves under a shady tree, GB got a blanket and we flopped on it. Believe me in the whole day, that was the most heavenly moment I had. No major aches and pains, only the top of my feet and the toes are really sore, I am hoping its no stress fractures .

We are not last overall , tho I am last in my age group. GB pointed out that if we had been in the walkers gorup we would have been in the first 100. But I had confirmed that if we were going to be running even a bit we had to be in the runners group. And we did pretty good till mile 8-9, when we ran out of steam. I am sure the lack of the last LSD of 14 miles and low mileage in this last month has something to do with it.

Lessons learnt:
--I need to get in all my runs and XT sessions to build the stamina.
--We need to have a strategy, slow first, R/W at set intervals etc. Tried discussing this with GB this morning and she refuses to even think about the marathon at this point. She did tell me that she had started out too fast because I was mumbling something about being "last" and 'being passed by everybody else" What she forgets each time is that she is the official pace -setter of our group, I have no idea at what speed I am running , so I do what she tells me to-its all her fault.
--Food , pre-run, post-run, during the run, hydration etc was good, so no changes there.

Overall great experience, one day later, feeling good, all set to start the marathon preparation!!