Report on Run Tybee

After meeting some friends in Savannah for dinner at the Olive Garden Friday night, Shannon and I stayed in a little condo on the beach with some of my cousins. We all stayed up a little too late for having to run so far the next morning, but I guess that's part of the experience. Saturday morning it turned out not to be as cold as I was worried it would be, but it was still pretty chilly.

I intentionally started at a nice, slow pace, not wanting to burn out before I covered the distance. I told myself that if I was feeling good, I could pick it up about half way, at the eight mile mark and push harder. The first mile and a half is always toughest for me, and then I settle into a rhythm. By mile two I was cruising and felt real strong up to mile nine. My left calf and right quad tightened up a bit as I got up near the light house, but I was able to keep going and it worked itself out. Somewhere between mile eleven and twelve, I cramped up real bad and didn't think I could breathe. I'm pretty sure it's because I missed the water table at mile ten - they didn't have any cups ready when I came by. I was able to keep up my pace, though, and only walked about fifty feet by the twelve mile water table as I quickly guzzled two cups of water and took a few real deep breaths. From there I finished the race strong.

I did listen to my iPod while I ran. I had emptied it and loaded only my 'run' play-list and put it on shuffle, just for the variety and surprise of what would come up next. First song as we started running: God Will Lift Up Your Head, Jars of Clay. Second song: Crazy, Gnarls Barkley. I thought both were probably appropriate for running thirteen miles, but for them to be the first two songs that came up I thought was humorous.

My goal was to finish somewhere between 2hr 30min and 2hr 45min. I thought that was a reasonable pace for me and would feel good about that. You have two times: guntime (when they start the race clock and everyone begins running) and chiptime (when you cross the starting/finish lines, a timing chip they give you is activated/deactivated). According to the stop-watch over the finish line I finished in 2:18:46, but on my timing-chip, I managed to finish in 2:17:59! I beat my goal by twelve minutes. Now, that's not a super fast pace (it's a 10:36mile), but I was happy about it. Shannon made her goal in the 5k, too. She wanted to finish under 30min and ran it in 28. I was proud of her for making her goal.

I think I could do something like this again, and could see myself doing a full marathon. Just not anytime right away!

Technorati tags: Tybee, half marathon