First Half Marathon - Check!

This morning we popped out of bed at 5am and laced up our shoes for the big event.  It felt kind of crazy that it was already race day as it seems like just yesterday that we were planning our training program.  It has been quite the committment to set aside the time for training and over the past two months our miles of runner per month were pretty drastically increased so we were feeling good.

Our goal for the race was to be under two hours... and we felt pretty confident as we stood there under a gorgeous blue sky with a light summer breeze.  It was quite the site to see with 18,000 runners lined up and ready to go for the Chicago Rock and Roll Half Marathon. 

We were cruising along for the first half and then it became a lot of work.  I am pretty sure that the 6:30am start time had something to do with it... we never started running before 9:30am during our training and didn't get to bed until 10:45pm the night before.  At any rate it was a grueling run.  At about mile 9 I was beyond ready for the race to be done.  At least the city looked incredibly beautiful with the morning light as we came up the south end of the lake shore.

The last mile was Tough!  And the last 200 yards was beyond tough... we tried to give it all to finish strong.  I am proud of us for completing the race without stopping or walking.  And as for our goal of under 2 hours...

We just made it! The official finish time was 1 hour 53 minutes and 13 seconds.

It was a great feeling to complete our first half marathon.  It was a lot of work but quite rewarding.  We can now check off that goal!