Philly Half Marathon Recap!!

After yesterday, I can finally check “run a half-marathon” off my lifelong to-do list!! I don’t know what took me this long to finally do one; it was so much fun, and I’m already really looking forward to my next one! (Tentatively the Sunshine State Half Marathon on January 17th.)

Here’s my recap from the Gore-Tex Philadelphia Half-Marathon!!

Pre-Race:

When it came to training, I did not prepare properly for this half-marathon at all...I only ran more than eight miles one time: when I decided to run 13.1 miles just to ensure that I actually could do it without too much of a struggle…and that was the week before the race…I got the 13.1 mile training run done, but it wasn’t fast. I finished that training/fun run in 2 hours and 48 minutes, so I figured my nice and easy goal for the Philly Half would be just to cross the finish in under 3 hours and to really enjoy it.

I flew into the Philly airport Saturday afternoon and went straight to the Philly Convention Center to check in, pick up my bib and walk briefly through the expo! Kudos to the Philly Marathon organizational team: 30,000 people ran the marathon and half-marathon and yet I was able to get my packet and everything I needed within about two minutes! No waiting or anything!

Saturday night I had a delicious chicken parm and used the race and carbo-loading as my excuse to splurge and eat extra bread with olive oil! 😀

Race day:

Sunday morning I got up at 4:45 and started my day with a bagel and cream cheese before heading to the Philadelphia Art Museum for the start of the race!!

Courtlyn, pictured below, was the one who helped encourage me to register for the Philly Half! We both agreed that we wanted to pick a half marathon and finally just do it; I’m so glad that I had somebody else who was doing it to ensure that I didn’t back out or change my mind. Thanks, Court!

Courtlyn and I pre-race!

It was still awfully cold before the start, about mid-40s, but I’m just so thankful that it was warmer on Sunday than it had been in Pennsylvania all week! Just a few days before it’d been in the low 20s, etc. Was not looking forward to running in that kind of temp!

The race went off in waves starting at 7 a.m. Knowing that we would finish around 2 hours 30 minutes or longer, Courtlyn and I were in one of the back corrals/waves so we finally crossed the start line around 7:30 a.m.

Almost time to start!

The course was so gorgeous and perfect, and I couldn’t have picked a better race as my first half marathon! With just a few exceptions, it was relatively flat which was also ideal.

Running through the city.

Like I said, my goal was just to finish in a time under 3 hours, and I hadn’t done much training at all, so I made sure to take it pretty easy from the start so that I didn’t get burnt out part way through.

Here are my splits from throughout the race:

Mile 9 was where I stopped to go to the bathroom, discovered how long the line was taking/that there was no toilet paper/that the porter potty really smelled and then continued on my way without even going to the bathroom!! Next time I’m making sure I go to the bathroom before the start of my race and not wasting time considering using the porter potty!! lol

I’m pretty sure that my NikePlus app paused during the bathroom break, rendering my time a little bit off the official race time. My official finish time was 2:44:07 (a 12:31/mile average pace).

All-in-all SO much fun!! Such a runner’s high!! And I finished well within my easy goal pace, so I was happy about that!

Post race:

Continuing to milk the carbo-loading/excessive eating excuse as long as possible…