Hard Rock Half Marathon - Nashville

Not much to say about this one..... I wasn't feeling it from the beginning. Not even while I was lying in bed that morning. I looked at Jim and said, "I don't wanna run today." This was the fifth race in 6 weeks that we had signed up for in late Spring. We were originally going to do 7 races in as many weeks, but opted out of the extra two. Thank Goodness. Because by the time this one came around I was done. After my stellar PR the weekend prior, I knew I couldn't pull off anything close to that time. Especially with this being a hilly course. I had ran the Country Music Half in 2008, so I knew that it wasn't flat. I wasn't expecting the nearly all-uphill battle for the first two miles though, and had to walk more than my normal "every mile" pattern. In fact, there's no sense in my doing a play-by-play of the miles because there was no method to my madness during this one. I ran when I felt like running, I walked when I got tired. I do recall Jim's hip bothering him early on, and since we had decided pre-race to stick together on this one (since I wasn't feeling it mentally, and he wasn't feeling it physically, we thought it was a good idea), we ended up walking more than I expected. This didn't bother me however, since by mile 6 or 7 I was growing a little tired myself, and didn't mind the walk breaks. The weather was great, I dressed appropriately, and besides the minor hills here and there, there really wasn't anything that kept this from being a good race - I just wasn't feeling it. Miles 6-9 went straight out, and then straight back into town, so that was a bit brutal, but at least I knew ahead of time that we would be heading back somewhere around Mile 9, so mentally that helped. Those last 4 miles though we basically ran from object to object ("Okay, let's start running at that fire hydrant and try to get to that blue sign") I think we both just wanted it to be done for the sake of being done. I did, anyway. Jim's hip was "killing" him at this time, and I told him that if we made a drinking game out of every time he stopped running and said "Fuck" we'd both be wasted. He didn't find the humor in this comment. Regardless, we made it to Mile 12, which was nothing but uphill. Somewhere along the way we both decided we would like to at least break 2:30, and with a little over 1/2 a mile to go it seemed more than possible. Rounding one of the last corners we had two blocks of nothing but downhill to give us some momentum. Rounding the very last corner, we had about 3 more blocks to the finish and decided to just keep running it - duh. Coming across the finish line, I stopped the Garmin at 2:25:25. A finishing time I thought was really decent considering I wasn't in a great place the entire race. I guess that goes to show how much I've progressed though - when I can have a "bad" race and still come in at what I consider a decent finishing time (for me, anyway). Splits to follow (Garmin battery is low).