new PR for evie

This last weekend was the Sioux Falls Half Marathon race, and I have been planning to run this race as a great prelude to Nike. Plus, this was my first half marathon I have ever run (only last year...can you believe that?), so I will most likely run this one every year.

I have not been feeling my best lately, so wasn't sure if I should even run on Saturday night. There is a stomach bug running rampant through my community, so on Saturday when I started feeling queasy, I was worried about how it was going to go. I'm sure we can all agree that it's not a good thing to be in the middle of a run and have stomach issues in the best of times, nevermind having a gastric illness. I went to bed early, set my alarm, and the next morning decided to go ahead and run.

One thing that helped me make the decision was that I was running the race with my buddy, Rachel, who is also going to Nike with me.  We have only run together once since summer hit, so it was an awesome chance to spend some time together, and also see how fast she has gotten. I picked her up at 5:45am, and we headed over to the stadium where the race was starting.

The place was packed. There is always an amazing turnout for this event, and this year was not exception. We decided to line up fairly close to the front of the pack, since we didn't want to take the chance of getting stuck behind a bunch of people. This happened to me last year, and it really affected my time. We sang the anthem, lined up, and pretty soon we were off!

Our first few miles we were running pretty fast, like 7 minute miles. We both knew we couldn't sustain it for the whole race, but it was feeling good, so we kept going for it.  At mile 5 my stomach started getting funky, so I decided to slow down a bit and let Rachel go ahead of me. We were well on our way to getting PR's, so I certainly didn't want my tummy troubles to be the reason she missed it.

Turns out, it was no problem at all. I managed to get a PR at 1:44! That makes my split times less than 8 minutes. I think that is pretty awesome considering it is a half marathon. My buddy Rachel rocked hers out at 1:41, placing third in her division.
Go girl!

Today I am horribly achy, so I do think I still have a bit of a bug. I plan to take the next few days easy and then get one last long run in before Nike.  After this time, I'm pumped!