Army Half Marathon 2009

I wanted to blog with the actual time, but what the hell, it still sucked so I will get it out of my mind asap. It's around 2 hours give or take a few seconds to one minute. It's the worst timing so far but then again I haven't trained and this run is the second in a series of failures.

I was running swiftly uphill when suddenly I got hit with the most horrible cramps ever, the ones that make you want to crawl into a fetal position and lie down in bed with a book and warm covers. Alas, I couldn't do that right at that moment. All in all until km 5 I was well under 25 minutes (about 23?) when I realized my first mistake.

First mistake: I didn't hydrate at all the previous day which made me stop to drink like a hippo at around km 6 or so. I think I drank about 5 cups of water at the first water point I could find, and subsequently I had to stop and drink at every one until km 9 - three water points in total. Still I was nice and dandy and managed to clock about 54 mins for 10 km.

I then decided to try for negative splits and run faster. I ran and ran, clocking about 1hr 20 mins or so for 15-16 km. I even high-fived all of the men on stilts at km 12 woo hoo! Around the slope from km 16-18 I found out mistake numero dos.

Second mistake: Try to go for speed when you HAVE TRAINED FOR SPEED and are able to keep up the pace.

If not, you will end up slowly plodding and counting your remaining km. I swear it! I yelled at my feet to run faster but all I got from them was: "Yeah. WHATEVER."

Oh yeah! Super inspiring! There was this blind old man running the half-marathon. He was not running alone, there was his wife with him (she carried a super big backpack). How's that for an inspiration? What's your excuse reason not to run (other than not liking it, thankyouverymuch) ?