Half Marathon

It was so fun. So much more fun that I thought it would be. I hadn't run a race in about two years, and I had forgotten how great it is. Even the feeling, yesterday, of drinking water on a hot day and the cold hitting your stomach in the way it only does when you're nervous the day before a race in hot weather, was familiar and exciting.
It was a cold, wet, windy day, but pretty good for a long race. I wore a long-sleeved shirt for the first five miles, then was fine in a tank-top. Oh, man, it was so, so fun-- I started far back in the pack, as I wanted to, and tried to stay calm the first few miles, but I kept speeding up without meaning to, and I decided to just go with it. I really like the Sheep Farm loop when it's wet-- the colors all seem richer-- and I was having fun, and I figured I might as well have fun while I felt good, and I would deal with dying at the end when the situation arose. But I felt really good the whole time, and gradually passed people, and every time I passed a mile marker I looked at my split and told myself to slow down but didn't. I did end up dying a little around the 11th mile, but I didn't really mind, as it was so much fun racing. And I didn't get passed, so it wasn't that bad, and I can in strong enough.
I really had forgotten how completely different racing is from going for a run, and how the kind of tired you are is completely different. I need to do this more.

My favorite part of that course, which is the Sheep-Farm loop followed by and out-and-back on South Street, is the part running out South Street when you see the horses from Eddy Farm out grazing on the hill sloping down from the barn. They look just like the horses my toy cowboys used to have, and I always expect and Indian raiding party to come riding over the hill.