Blue Ridge Parkway Marathon Reviews (1)

Incredibly tough run but the satisfaction of completing my first half marathon was better than I could have imagined.

I almost didn't do it. I won free entry in October then broke my foot right after. At that point I wrote off this race completely. It wasn't until a week ago that I even thought about going through with it. I did 8 miles on Monday and decided that if I felt okay after I would contact the race folks and make sure my free entry was still valid. When they said yes I decided that there would be no excuses. I hadn't been training specifically for this but I knew that by now I should have built up enough running cred to be able to at least finish.

Needless to say I underestimated the course and in hindsight this was probably not the smartest choice for a first half. Miles 2-5 were all uphill and brutal. To make matters worse there was an 11-year-old boy in front of me for most of the way. I was looking at the back of his shirt for the better part of the climb up Mill Mountain. To make matters worse he started to pull away from me, getting smaller and smaller until finally disappearing around a turn around the 5 mile mark. I made it my mission to catch and pass my little red headed nemesis. It took 7 miles to do it but when it happened you would have thought I had just overtaken Ryan Hall. The course flattened out for the most part from there. I never looked back and he didn't pass me again but I was disappointed/impressed to find out that he crossed the line less than a minute after I did. Great for him, humbling for me.

But in the end I triumphed over the course and beat the one person I was really competing with: myself. In my first time racing at this distance, on one of the toughest courses in the country, I managed to run my best time ever for 13.1 miles. My feet are blistered, my body is sore, but for some reason I feel better than I have in a long long time.

Thanks everyone for your support!