[Author’s preface: This blog post was started days after the race. However, due to being a working mom, it has taken 6-ish plus weeks to write so some details are fuzzy and others are just left out entirely for the sake of finally posting this entry!]

I remember being on a training run two years ago in my neighborhood during the morning of the Baltimore Marathon; a neighbor commented as I passed by that I should be in the race. I smiled, thought to myself that I agreed with him and promised myself I’d do the race one day. A year later I was pregnant and training for the Marine Corps Marathon and decided that the 2012 Baltimore Half Marathon would be my first post-baby big race. I stalked the website until registration opened and signed up. Nine plus months later, 10 weeks of base training and 12 weeks of 13.1 training I was at the start line.

 The Week Before

Well, really things get interesting several weeks before. Long story short, I decided to sign-up for a marathon. Timing worked out that I would have 11 weeks to train if I started during the 10th week of half marathon training. So on the weeks I should have been tapering I stuck with what the marathon training plan suggested. My last long run was 12.2 miles instead of 9.

In addition to the non-taper, I was juggling a heavy workload and wedding activities for my best friend. Originally her wedding was to be Oct. 7. Perfect! Well, things happened, and her date changed to Oct. 14, the day after the marathon. Still shouldn’t be too big of a deal. Except that we also decided to throw a shower at my house Friday night, the night before the race. Instead of having a restful day, balanced dinner and heading to bed early, my pre-race night was everything but. And before my best friend reads this and gets upset, I wouldn’t have done it any other way!!

Race Day

One of  my other best friends was in town from Florida for the wedding and agreed to drop me at the Marc train station in Glen Burnie. I spent part of Friday night being super paranoid about how to get to the race and then how to get from the race to my friend’s house for her rehearsal. Long story short–local runners–the train is the way to go!! The half marathon didn’t start until 9:45 and I gave myself plenty of time to get there. I think I was in Baltimore by 7:30 and was the first person at the start line. This gave me plenty of time to go to the porta-pots at least 4 times, cheer on the first marathon runners, do warm-up jogs and generally pep myself up for my first distance race in 9 months.

I was literally one of the first people at the start for the half. One of the things that stumped me was how long it took other runners to line up and finally, by 9:15/9:30, the various corrals of the half marathon start were full. A polite but forceful announcer reinforced that if you didn’t plan to run a 7:30 or faster, you should really be at the back of the first corral. I slowly inched my way backward not wanting to get trampled at the start. While I didn’t lose all my speed during the months of being pregnant, I definitely did not get to do the speed work I would have preferred and knew that best case scenario I’d average an 8:30 pace but even that would be wishful thinking for this race.

 The Race: Baltimore’s Half Marathon

One of the things I love about racing, especially local races, is that I am often running in places that are all of a sudden new to me. Most likely I’ve driven these streets before but running them makes it seem as though I’m experiencing the place for the very first time and I love that.

I had heard, or imagined, that the course for the Baltimore half and full marathon was hilly. Though I slacked on speed work I did incorporate hilly runs in my LSD routes but I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Within the first few miles the first hill came and I found it to be manageable. For the half marathon, I think all the hills were manageable. However, considering where those hills fell on the course, had I been running the full marathon I would likely have been miserable.

The course was a mix of Baltimore’s best and not-so-best plus many areas I’d never seen before. The hardest part of the half course was through a park where we ran around a center lake. Entering the park it seemed for some reason that this section would be ‘doable,’ a reprieve of some sort but we were all wrong. I could tell from the mood and posture around me that my fellow runners were miserable and listening to them afterward, we all agreed that this lake loop was a challenge. Maybe because it was so flat, or so open, or so deceiving in distance but either way I was grateful to be out of that park.

I had planned to take my Clif Shot Bloks around mile 8 and stuck with that plan. Timing ended up being perfect as my energy was just beginning to slump and mentally I was toward the end of my pep talks. I needed actual fuel. And whether it was the fuel, or the change in scenery, or the crowd support, or just being toward the end, I was lifted. We had one bridge to go over and I was watching the mile markers get closer and closer to 13. I felt fresh and invigorated.

And then amazingly, we started running downhill. The crowd was shouting about it being downhill to the finish. I’ve heard this ‘cheer’ before in other races and it has sometimes been more of a metaphor than fact. But let me tell you, in this case it was fact. Nearly the entire last two miles of this race were downhill or flat. I was cruising! My last two miles (I think) were sub-8!

All I know is that heading into M&T Bank Stadium for the finish most of my thoughts were concentrated on not tripping and falling on the brick walkway. Thankfully I did not. And I finished strong.

I finished with a 1:53:52 time. Amazingly, an 8:34/minute pace! Not a PR but a race I am very proud of.