Bill Menees's Blog

Yesterday, I completed my first half marathon, the Country Music Half. My chip time was 2:15:00, which was exactly my goal time. My stopwatch (a Garmin 305) said my time was 2:13:15, so I don't understand why it was so different from my chip time. Oh well, at least I hit my goal. I ran most of the way. I only walked through the water stops.

Update (4/30/07): The official results have been updated, and now my chip time is 13 seconds faster at 2:14:47. They've updated a lot of other runner's times too, so I'm convinced they had chip problems.

Running with 30,000 others is a unique experience, but it wasn't bad. All the other runners I met were friendly, and all the volunteers were great. Before the race started, I got to watch the sunrise while sitting on the steps of the Parthenon, which was very cool. The only negative part was the post-finish line corral, which was very overcrowded. After running 13.1 miles, I had to walk in place rapidly to keep my legs from locking up because the herd was just inching along.

This morning, I'm mentally ready to run again, but my feet and legs aren't. I probably need to get some new shoes. I'll start running again on Tuesday, and hopefully next week I'll be in the Davidson Academy Bear Crawl 10K. My goal for the rest of the year is to train for a fall marathon, perhaps the Louisville Marathon or even the Flying Monkey!

For blog completeness, I should mention that two weeks ago I ran in the Purity Moosic City 10K, and four weeks ago I ran in the Runnin' To Beat The Blues 5K. Nashville is a runner's mecca.

Labels: Running