SoJo Half Marathon

In Mid-October Dan and I really stretched our comfort zone.  We ran in the SoJo Half Marathon in South Jordan.  My Tri-buddy, Amy, and I had originally planned on running together, and then both of our husbands decided to join.  Amy had to back out but Dan, Ben, and I still ran.

I won’t lie.  Running any kind of marathon has NOT been on my list of things to do.  I have never like running much, but the last year has at least gotten me more comfortable with it.  I figured if I could do a Tri, I only needed to get used to about 45minutes more of exercise to be able to pull off a 1/2 marathon.  Thankfully, Amy had found a marathon workout schedule that was geared to people who were used to training for Tri’s, so it wasn’t too difficult putting on a few extra miles one day a week. (Although, I admit I miss swimming!)

So Dan and I took off WAY early on a Saturday morning to catch the bus.  It was cold, but not awful.  The whole thing was a great experience.  Dan left me in the dust the first mile, but it was expected.  I managed to run the whole race!  It was mostly downhill, which helped, but there were a couple of uphills stints along the way.  The coolest was running up the hill in front of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. 

We totally rocked our times!

Dan	1:50:21	11th place – division	75th of 229	8:25 mile pace
Alicia	2:05:36	23rd place – division	108 of 295	9:35 mile pace

My original goal was 2 hrs 30 minutes, then during training I moved it up to 2 hrs 15 minutes.  There was a moment I thought I could break 2 hrs even, but the last 3 miles killed me.  The steeper downhill for the last 4 miles killed my knee (although I didn’t realize how bad until the next week).

 

Dan and I were both really excited about our times and are looking forward to doing a couple of 1/2’s next year!