On Saturday I ran the Rock and Roll Half Marathon in Washington, DC. My friend RuthAnn was unable to run it and generously gave her race bib to me.
This was the first real race I've run since I graduated high school and left behind my cross country team. I've been inconsistently running during the pandemic, but I hadn't really gone for a run for the two weeks before the race. Not great preparation.
Luckily, the excitement of the race (and some wonderful friends cheering along the way) powered me through it all! Some 16,000 people ran in this weekend's half marathon and the excitement with inching closer to a post-pandemic world was palpable. For some people, the race was more post-pandemic than it was for me - I can't say I was entirely thrilled about milling around in a crowd of unmasked people for the 30 minutes between when the race started and when I finally got my turn to begin the course.
Despite minimal preparation, I was pretty happy with my first ever half marathon result! I averaged 8:23 minutes per mile and ran sub-8:00 minute miles for the first five miles of the race.
According to the official results, I finished the course in one hour, fifty-one minutes (1:50:53) and my friend RuthAnn will forever have that time tied to her name on the Internet!
RuthAnn and Jon hosted a few racers over for a scrumptious brunch just as it began to rain.
