Rock the Parkway half, Half number one for the Heartland Series

I have always liked a challenge.  I think that is why I signed up for the Heartland series.  The Heartland series is a series of three half marathons all in the matter of five weeks.  This forces me to keep training, even though I am doing the hospital hill half in June.  This is how the weekend went down:

Friday afternoon we headed to the expo to pick up my bib and to pick up my shirt for the Heartland Series.  I was a bit disappointed in how small the expo was even though they had claimed that they moved it to accommodate more vendors.  I did get some nice very light weight, polarized sun glasses that I now dearly love so I guess there is that.  There were a few vendors that had running gear but mostly all the booths were for races that were upcoming.  I think it is a great way to get your race out there but not being from KC, I can't come up every weekend for a race.  Maybe we should move to KC?  Probably wouldn't have trouble finding a job and i would be back close to my agility trainer and to all of the agility shows.  Hmmm.....Anyway, we found our hotel after getting lost a few times thanks to having both paper directions and very different directions on my phone.  Lesson learned, pick one and stick to it.  The hotel was super nice and we were down in the area called the Plaza.

   Even though we have lived here for years, we have never been on the plaza.  It is a really nice area with tons of cute little quaint (aka expensive) shops and places to eat and big pretty fountains that andrew loved.  Lucky for us, there was a cheesecake factory right near our hotel.  We had pasta and cheesecake for dinner.  I had banana cream cheesecake so according to my BRF, I killed two birds with one stone by eating carbs and fruit.  

I should give a update here.  Tony got the crud that i have had for a month a week or so ago.  He hasn't been dealing with it very well since he has been under a ton of stress at work with the possible promotion.  Long story short, he is a man, he is dying from this cold and he didn't bring any cough medicine because much like the crud I had, it didn't respond to cough meds anyway.  We were up most the night dealing with him hacking, spitting up snot and the fan on the AC not working. I am one of those that has to have a constant noise, especially if someone is snoring, hacking or dying next to me.  I know I got some sleep but not much.  Maybe a couple of hours total.  I was lucky in that I had a friend picking me up to take me to the start line so tony could get some sleep.  Andrew was out at 9ish so he got tons of sleep compared to us two.  I was up at 5:30 am to eat and carb up and then out the door with my friend at 5:50.  We had to round up another friend and then head to the start line.   This was a pretty big race, about 6 K runners all running the half.  

It was very well organized with there being tons of porta potties and tons of places to get ready.  We had to be in the corrals about 7:15 for the 7:30 start.  I had decided to stick with the 2:20 pacer at first and go from there.  Unfortunately the next pacer, the 2:15 pacer, was in the wave ahead of me so I never did catch up to them.  The course was very pretty although a bit hillier than I had expected.  I never walked, even though I really wanted to on the hill from mile 7 to mile 8.  It was a mind game though, my body was fine but seeing so many walk really did a mind trick on me.  It was super hot.  Way hotter than any of my training runs thus far.  It was at least 70 if not hotter when we started.  I am use to cold.  I had luckily decided to wear short and a technical T shirt with arm warmers.  

The first few miles I kept looking at my watch and seeing high 9s.  I kept telling myself to reel it in and stop trying to go so fast but my body felt good so I just kept going.  I never could find anyone to pace with really so it was hard to stick to a consistent pace.  I did have to weave a ton in and out of traffic but positioned myself on the inside of the roadway and hoped that I could pass people there and not take too much effort.  I tend to always see longer mileages on my watch that what is marked, meaning I weave too much so tried to stick to a line and stay there.  If I saw a turn the other way, I made myself get over to that side and stay.  I did my GU at miles 4.5 and 8.5 roughly.  I didn't bring my own water so had to take water at the aid stations.  I would take one big gulp for myself and then pour the rest down my shirt.  I was sweating big time and also was getting super salty.  I was kind of worried about dehydration.  I had tried to down as much water the night before but still felt like I needed more.  Yet, I didn't want to have to stop to potty so one gulp was all I was giving myself.  I also had to play mind games with myself because I have become so dependent on miss stella being with me every run, even when my BRF can't be there.  Even though she doesn't say a word, something about her being present helps so much.  I also hit a mental wall around 10 miles.  I kept telling myself that i had run longer than this in training so why was I so mentally done but my mind was really wanting to be done.  I never look at my watch during a long run but I bet i gazed at it every few minutes from mile 10 till I could see the finish line.  I ended up setting a new PR at 2:15:47, finishing 2642 out of 6000 runners and finishing 316 out of 651 in my age group.  Pretty proud of that time since I had basically had a month of zero speedwork and I still had enough juice to do my final miles in under 10 minutes.  

The finisher's medals are huge!  They would even engrave them for you if you wanted.  I was ready to be done and get to the Easter train.  We had gotten tickets to ride the easter train with the easter bunny in a little town called baldwin.  We had 1:00 tickets so we had to hustle out to make it.  I was so excited because it was going to be andrew's first time on the train and he had been such a trooper putting up with the whole weekend.  

I don't think he ever understood he was on the train making the noise.  It was a hot, 45 minute ride in reverse out to a field where they had easter eggs everywhere.  He probably collected 10 or so eggs which of course were all filled with candy.  Then we rode 45 minutes back while eating candy.  At least this time we were going forward.  It was hot, I stunk from the run earlier and we had neglected to bring water.  We will know next time.  We also had the chance to meet the easter bunny but after the santa clause debacle, we passed.   We were super lucky in that andrew slept the whole way down to the train and then the whole way home AND bonus, went to bed early last night because mommy and daddy were spent.  

All in all, I thought it was a good race.  I think i could have done better if I had had speed work this last month.  I had really upped my pace and I think I could have been closer to 2:10. I would like to get down to 2:10 for the next race but will have to see how my legs adapt to two weeks of races.  I can't wait for the next one and being one step closer to finishing my first series!!!!!