Rock 'n' Roll Denver 1/2 Marathon Race report

Or...Your feet hurt because your kicken so much a$$! And I gotta say overall I feel like I kicked a$$!

But let's start at the beginning........

Race shirt and goodies!

This is the shirt I bought, I wasn't sure about it when I bought it but after trying it on when I got home I LOVE IT!

.....And the beginning started really early at about 1:30 when a 14 year old boy that took his mom's car and was being chased by the police crashed through the neighbors split rail fence and into the neighbor behind his house's truck...yea sirens and flashing lights outside my open bedroom window, then more sirens, lots of sirens....turns out there was a shooting a few blocks away too...wow this is the suburbs people!!!! Needless to say sleep there was not much more sleep to be had. I think I may have dozed back off around 3:30 but of course the alarm went off at 4:30. I had my usual bagel thin with PB and banana and a couple of cups of coffee and headed out the door at 5:30. Traffic was a little crazy getting downtown but I managed to find a spot and proceeded to walk at least a mile to the start, stand in line for the potties, drop my gear bad and get to my coral which was clear in the back, so at least I had a little extra time, as the race was starting. I was looking for Kathleen but never found her in the corral although I'm sure she was close.

You can just barley see the start way up there in this photo.

I guess I really wasn't prepared for how many people there would be. Before long we started moving although I crossed the start almost 25 minutes after the start of the race. I felt pretty good starting out so imagine my surprise when I heard my Garmin beep 1 mile and looked down and it said 14:17...what! I'm sure I was running faster then that, I finally decided that because of the building it just wasn't tracking right so it was pretty useless to me through out the whole race. Around 1.5 miles I ran up on Kathleen and her friend Sarah. I ran with them for a few minutes and then kind of pulled ahead. And it's here I think I owe her an apology because I never really said I was taking off and unfortunately I somehow missed her at the end of the race and did not get to talk to her. I was just focused on putting one foot in front of the other. I had decided I would go out hard, keep running and let the end take care of itself instead of worrying if I was doing to much. Truthfully much of the race is a blur. I felt like I was passing many people which surprised me since I thought the corals were set up by time, I'm now pretty sure they weren't. One foot in front of the other, dodging people and enjoying the crowds. Hit the 5k mark at 36:38, One foot in front of the other...feeling pretty good over all checking all the bathrooms, lines to long, keep on running. Did walk a hill at around mile 4. Things are feeling a little rougher as I run into City Park and near the 10k mark. At this point I had really not walked much except to take some water and that one hill. Hit 10k at 1:14:36. At this point I started adding in a few walk breaks. I knew that I would have some relatives cheering at about the nine mile mark and started to look forward to seeing them. I actually saw them twice as that section was an out and back. It was so nice to see some faces that I knew! Shortly after I made the turn I saw Kathleen and got a high five from her and then passed the relatives at mile 9. Not to long after that I passed one of my cousins that was running her very first race ever! High five for Nicole! At this point I should explain that I had several relatives running the 1/2 also. A couple of my cousins were running with their Mom to celebrate her 70th birthday! And a couple others were running also. After that I had no friendly faces to look forward to, so it was back to one foot in front of the other. There were what seemed to be a couple of BIG hills...although I know they weren't that big, coming into Cheeseman Park, funny thing happened there, during the 10 Mile run I did a few weeks ago there was this girl that had the strangest run and she had a run/walk thing going were she would run fast for a short time and then walk for a longer time, well who should I see in the same park but her! I thought it was funny to come upon her like that amount all those people and in the same park. Finally get into mile 11 and look a porta potty with no line! I decided to hit it since I didn't want to take a chance at the end of having to miss people becuase I was in the bathroom. Near the end of mile 11 I run by my cousin Craig running with his mom (the almost 70 year old!) chat with them and here someone call me from behind. It was Sarah she had caught up to me. Now I knew that I would have to kick things up a little if I was going to beat the 2:45 mark and I thank her for keeping me motivate to run that last mile! She pulled ahead of me but it was due to her encouragement that got me across the line in my goal time!
Final stats: 2:42:14 a 12:23 average pace
Overall 7159 out of 9139
Division 350 out of 515
Gender 4689 out of 6312
I am thrilled with that! That gives me about a 17 minute PR! Amazing!!

Enjoying our post race beer! My cousin Nicole and her husband (his 35th bday!) Mike

Jan- my hero (celebrating her 70th! b-day), my cousin Craig and Me

Pretty huh?