City of Oaks Half Marathon 2009

Or, we could call this post Racing in the Rain.

Rain, it did. It rained cats and dogs. It rained 'til the cows came home. It rained a monsoon. It did not rain men though. Too bad about that.

5 a.m. Sunday morning didn't come too early seeing as we got an extra hour of sleep after falling back on Halloween night. However, it was still early and the weather was crazy.

For those of you who were still sleeping off your late Halloween night out, at 5 a.m. Sunday morning it was 69 degrees. About 5:20 a.m. it started pouring and by 6:00 when we left for the City of Oaks Half Marathon, it had dropped seven degrees.

And, the temperature continued to drop and the rain continued to pour.

Keri, Becki and I were the runners plus Mark who is a gazelle and runs 13 miles in less than 90 minutes and had to wait a hour for us at the finish. He is beyond out of control. I keep trying to talk him into running a marathon. Maybe one day.

Here we are near Cameron Village between Miles 5&6. We had some awesome spectators that included Andrew (Keri's fiancee!), Andrew's parents (Keri's future in-laws!), Lisa and Kristine. They were such an encouragement to us and it was so awesome that they woke up early to stand in the freezing rain and cheer us on!

See this dude. Yea, he's hard core. He was running along side of us in the beginning with combat boots, the backpack, the flag, the whole kit-and-caboodle. I think we cheered for him just as loud as the spectators did.

Keri and Becki around Mile 10. Where's Ashely you ask?

Oh, there she is!

I'm the one who always keeps up until Mile 7/8ish and then starts slowing down. I'm thankful though that my friends aren't those friends. Like the girl I came up on around Mile 8 who was LITERALLY every two seconds was saying to her struggling friend 'come on,' 'you can do it,' 'it's only five more miles,' 'you can do it.' She was driving ME nuts and I didn't even know her. A Care Bear Stare was quickly given to her. It was all I could do to not tell her to shut up and leave her friend alone before she ruined the whole experience for her resulting into a lifelong ban of all running activites.

Please do notice that my shirt is caught up in my fuel belt. Apparently, it was like that for most of the race. So, not cool.

These guys here are the 2 hour 30 minute pace leaders. Pace leaders are normally found in larger races and their purpose is to help you pace yourself so that you can meet your race goal. My goal was to stay in front of them as my best so far has been 2:30 and I would love to beat that. I did stay in front of them until about Mile 7 when I started tireing (is that a word?) down and then they passed me around Mile 10 and I just never could catch back up. They finished about 100 yards in front of me. I'm not sure what my final time was because the site's down and I wasn't paying attention. Fingers crossed that we were early, but I doubt it.

Here's Keri coming into the finish. One day I'll finish with her. One day. I could see her and Becki in front of me on Western at Mile 12.5ish. So close they were.

Yay Becki! Becki was a blast to train with! It was her first half marathon and first race more than 5K so it was fun after every long run to hear her say 'I've never run that far before!'

And, last but not least, here I come! Do please notice the rain. In fact, you have probably noticed it in all of the photographs. And, as you notice the rain, notice that we're all still smiles!

I've come to realize that I'll never be a fast runner and finish with the serious faces. But, I don't care. It's so awesome to run slower, have a blast and say 'good mornin' ya'll' to everyone I pass. Being in the back is where it's at!

Finishers! Happy to be done and eating yummy snacks! So ready for the heat in the car!

And, yes. I am a dork who wears her race shirt to work the next day and proudly looks at everyone with a snot-ball look on her face that says 'I ran 13.1 miles yesterday with sheets of rain plowing into me. What did you do?'

*Please note that the pictures that are not of my group were borrowed from the City of Oaks website 2009 candid shots. Hopefully, they will not mind.