We did it!

Rick and I finished the 1/2 marathon in San Antonio today. Our time was about 2:30, which I am pleased with for my first race. It breaks down to an average of 11 minute miles.

Before I give my play-by-play, I have to give a big shout out to our friends the Allessios. If it wasn't for them graciously taking the boys for the weekend, we would have never been able to run the race. Events like this are always much easier when you know your kids are being well-cared for and having a good time.

Rick and I got to San Antonio in the early afternoon and went straight to the Expo to get our packets. We roamed around a while and then headed to the hotel. After checking in we headed to the Quarry (a shopping center) and wandered around to a few places looking for dinner. Our biggest disappointment was that Panera was sold out of bagels; apparently everyone else wanted bagels for breakfast. We were back at the hotel early, had dinner, watched Juno, and then were fast asleep by 10.

We woke up at 4 AM and caught the marathon shuttle for the start line. We hung out at the start line in 30 degree weather for about 2 hours. Thankfully we had some good advice from friends and had some wal-mart (yes, i shopped at wal-mart) sweatpants and sweatshirts that we left on the race course once we got started. The race crew picks up all the clothing and donates it to charity. It took about 40 minutes for us to get to the start line. We had a good steady pace until mile 6 where I hit a wall. Rick stayed back with me and helped me get a good pace back again.

The course was uneventful. We ran mainly through the hoods around the downtown area before movingd to a hood with some nice older homes and then back downtown to finish at the Alamo Dome. It wasn't a bad course, mostly flat until the last 1/2 of mile 12 (which sucked). This was the first year for the Rock n Roll marathon in SA and they definitely have some kinks to work out. There wasn't much crowd support and not nearly as many bands as we had thought, which was probably one the toughest things to deal with. Rick and I had both left our mp3 players at home thinking we would get some good bands. I really needed my music to keep my mind off the miles and my numbing foot.

Prior to the race, I kept telling Rick I was worried that we would lose each other during the race. We never did but when we reached the finish line I took off in search of a porta-potty. Another flaw with the marathon was that all the finish line porta-potties were outside the runner's area and over where you meet your friends/family. Because of this, we missed out chance to get our photo taken and only grabbed a few food items. We tried to get back in but we were stopped by a police officer. The other downside was that since we couldn't get back through we weren't able to help cheer on the remaining finishers.

The swag was definitely disappointing. We got a t-shirt at registration but didn't get finisher shirts or any other cool things at the end. We did get some heavy medals that the boys think are pretty cool.

So that is my recap. Hopefully the race photographers got at least one good photo of us. I'll post the link once we get it. We will be taking a break for a while but we will definitely be looking for another race soon.