My First Half Marathon

I ran my very first half marathon, the inaugural Women’s Half Marathon Nashville, completely on accident.

My mom had signed up to run the race but was injured, so she invited me to walk it with her. Did you catch that? We were going to WALK it. Except things didn’t quite go as planned. I had just completed Week 5 Day 3 of Couch to 5K, the 20 minute run with no walk breaks. I was even nervous about walking the half marathon. A lot can go wrong in that long amount of time – stomach problems, blisters, chafing, etc.

Fortunately, it was a beautiful day, and Jo Dee Messina sang the National Anthem as we lined up in our corral. Then, we were off. In order to get in front of a few people, we jogged for a bit, weaving past some slower walkers. But instead of slowing to a walk, we just kept running at a sustainable pace, stopping every now and again to walk up a hill. Thinking we would come in around 3:30, we were shocked to pass the 3:15 pacer and then the 3:00 pacer. At mile 5, I felt great. At mile 10, I couldn’t believe I was still moving. It was the most I had ever run in my life. My knees were creaky and tired. When we hit the last bridge, I made the misguided decision to try to run the rest of the way to the finish line. The uphill plus my tired legs quickly put a stop to that, but we crossed the line in 2:32, nearly an hour faster than we thought we would be.

So even though I have *run* the Women’s Half Marathon Nashville before, this is my first time to actually train for it.

Next up: The half marathon I actually *did* train for

Have you run a Women’s Half Marathon before?